Environmental Collaboratory, the (TEC)

Drexel University · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA · Jointly established with the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University · Launched 2022

Overview

The Environmental Collaboratory (TEC) is a joint interdisciplinary initiative of Drexel University and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University — the oldest natural science research institution in the Americas, founded in 1812 and merged with Drexel in 2011. Launched in February 2022, it was conceived by Academy of Natural Sciences President and CEO Scott Cooper as a vehicle for mobilizing the combined research, educational, and civic engagement resources of both institutions in service of climate, environmental justice, and human wellbeing goals. It is designed to do something that individual academic departments and research centers typically cannot: operate simultaneously across the often-disparate fields of engineering, public health, law, finance, medicine, data science, history, and civil and human rights — bringing those disciplines together around specific, community-identified environmental problems rather than organizing research by disciplinary boundaries.

The founding argument for The Environmental Collaboratory is that the most pressing environmental challenges — climate change, urban air pollution, lead contamination, the transition to clean energy — require exactly this kind of multi-domain, community-anchored approach. Technical solutions exist for many of these problems; the barriers are not primarily scientific but institutional, political, financial, and social. A community living near a contaminated industrial site needs not just an environmental scientist but an attorney who can navigate regulatory remediation, an economist who can model community benefit agreements, a public health researcher who can document health outcomes, and a community organizing capacity that keeps the affected residents in the room as decision-makers rather than as study subjects. TEC is designed to assemble and deploy exactly that combination.

Executive Director: Mathy Vathanaraj Stanislaus

Mathy Vathanaraj Stanislaus was appointed inaugural Vice Provost and Executive Director of The Environmental Collaboratory in November 2021, formally taking up the role in early 2022. His career path to this position is unusually well-matched to TEC's founding mission. For eight years under President Obama, he served as the Senate-confirmed Assistant Administrator for the Office of Land and Emergency Management at the US Environmental Protection Agency — the office responsible for the Superfund program, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (governing hazardous waste management), the Oil Spills program, the Emergency Response program, and Brownfields redevelopment. In this role he had direct authority over the EPA's remediation of the most contaminated sites in the United States and experience navigating the intersection of environmental science, law, federal regulation, community advocacy, and corporate liability that defines the field.

Prior to the EPA, Stanislaus was the founding co-director of New Partners for Community Revitalization in New York — an organization dedicated to strengthening low-income communities and communities of color — work that grounded his understanding of environmental issues in the specific experience of frontline communities rather than in regulatory frameworks alone. Following his EPA tenure, he worked within the World Economic Forum as interim director and policy director of the Global Battery Alliance — a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on human rights and sustainability in the battery supply chain, addressing child labor, forced labor, and Indigenous rights violations in the lithium and cobalt extraction that underpins EV battery production. He joined Drexel from this role, bringing a specific expertise in the governance of clean energy transitions that directly serves TEC's electric mobility and clean energy focus.

Stanislaus has described TEC's founding orientation as a commitment to "transforming the historic asymmetric power dynamics of environmental challenges" — a phrase that acknowledges directly that environmental problems are not merely technical failures but power failures, in which the communities most affected by pollution and climate change have the least institutional capacity to change the conditions producing those harms. TEC's co-design methodology — developing solutions with community leaders rather than for them — is the operational expression of this orientation.

Focus Areas and Initial Projects

Climate Mitigation and Adaptation

Research and community engagement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting Philadelphia-area communities to climate impacts — flooding, heat, and extreme weather — with particular attention to communities that face both highest exposure and lowest institutional capacity to adapt.

Clean Energy and Electric Mobility Scale-Up

Drawing on Stanislaus's WEF Battery Alliance experience, TEC addresses the governance, financing, and community equity dimensions of the clean energy transition — including the supply chain integrity of battery materials, equitable access to EV infrastructure, and workforce development for the clean energy economy in underserved communities.

Local Air Pollution Reduction

Urban air quality research and advocacy focused on the disproportionate air pollution burden in Philadelphia communities of color near industrial facilities, major roadways, and port operations — connecting public health research on respiratory and cardiovascular impacts with regulatory advocacy and community-based monitoring programs.

Lead Poisoning Remediation — West Philadelphia

TEC's inaugural community research project, launched with inaugural industry partner Glenmede (which established the Glenmede Environmental Collaboratory Research Fund). The project partners Drexel's Kroll, PhD (assistant research professor, College of Arts and Sciences; watershed ecology section lead at the Academy) with Jerome Shabazz (executive director, Overbrook Environmental Education Center) to identify practices that have reduced blood lead level concentrations in comparable communities and develop scalable solutions for West Philadelphia.

Environmental Justice and Civil Rights

TEC's explicit commitment to environmental justice — the equitable distribution of environmental benefits and burdens across race, class, and geography — is woven through all its focus areas rather than siloed as a separate program. Its partnership model is designed to ensure that communities experiencing disproportionate environmental harm are co-designers of solutions rather than objects of study.

ESG Implementation and Corporate Accountability

Research and advisory work helping corporations operationalize their environmental, social, and governance commitments in ways that are measurable, credible, and aligned with community benefit — addressing the gap between corporate ESG declarations and verifiable environmental outcomes in the specific communities corporations affect.

The Academy of Natural Sciences Partnership

TEC's joint establishment with the Academy of Natural Sciences — the oldest natural science research institution in the Western Hemisphere, with collections of 19 million specimens and active research programs in ecology, entomology, botany, ichthyology, and environmental monitoring — gives it research capabilities that no university environmental initiative could build from scratch. The Academy's watershed ecology, freshwater biology, and environmental monitoring expertise is directly relevant to TEC's work on water quality, climate adaptation, and urban lead contamination. The Academy's Patrick Center for Environmental Research, which has been monitoring the health of the Delaware and other regional rivers for decades, provides exactly the long-term environmental baseline data that community-based remediation projects require.

Academy President and CEO Scott Cooper is credited by Drexel Provost Paul Jensen with initiating and championing the concept of The Collaboratory — a recognition that the Academy's research depth in natural science needed an institutional vehicle for connecting its findings to community action and policy advocacy, and that Drexel's size, breadth, and co-op model provided the right partner for that ambition.

Access and Engagement

The Environmental Collaboratory's programs, research, and partnership opportunities are described at drexel.edu/environmental-collaboratory. Community organizations, corporations, government agencies, and foundations interested in partnering with TEC on research, policy, or civic engagement projects can inquire through the website. TEC also engages through Drexel's co-op program, providing students with experiential learning placements in environmental and community settings. Mathy Vathanaraj Stanislaus's profile and contact information are at drexel.edu/provost/about/leadership/stanislaus-mathy.