Center for the Environment

Signature Areas

Welcome to Purdue’s Center for the Environment! The C4E, as we refer to it, is a major home of interdisciplinary, problem-driven research and teaching at Purdue focused on some of the world’s largest environmental problems. C4E faculty are currently working on problems ranging from eliminating hazardous electronic waste, to reducing nutrient runoff in farm systems, to understanding the fate and transport of new chemicals in our soil and water, to understanding and addressing threats to soundscapes—acoustic resources that are an important part of many ecosystems.

Message from the Director

Featured research


Congratulations to Dan Kelly on receiving a fellowship at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS)

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West Lafayette City Council votes to reduce plastic straw use

February 5, 2019

The West Lafayette City Council voted unanimously in favor of a resolution that would urge commercial and educational...

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Food for thought: What IF food was digital?

February 26, 2019

“What IF food was digital?”

Join Miles O’Brien, science correspondent for “PBS NewsHour,” and Caleb Harper, principal investigator and director of the Open Agriculture Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab for a discussion on this topic.

February 26th, 6:30pm, Stewart Center's Fowler Hall.

This event will be livestreamed. 

The event is a part of Purdue’s Ideas Festival, the centerpiece of Purdue’s Giant Leaps Sesquicentennial Campaign, which is a series of events that connect world-renowned speakers and Purdue expertise in a conversation on the most critical problems facing the world. One of the Ideas Festival’s themes is Toward a Sustainable Economy & Planet: Innovative Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow.

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