Mason as a Living Lab

 

The Mason Living Labs Initiative encourages and supports students, faculty, and staff to pose questions, experiment, gather data, monitor changes, and propose novel solutions to a range of sustainability challenges associated with the George Mason University campus environment and its socio-environmental systems.

What is Mason as a Living Lab?

With nearly 1,000 acres of land, waterways, forests, and buildings, George Mason University’s campuses are a dynamic, living learning environment. With diverse and growing arrays of buildings, roadways, watercourses, and forests, the George Mason campus complex faces the urgent challenge of becoming more sustainable and resilient. In this context, the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of George Mason faculty, staff, and students are critically important resources. Recent and ongoing experiments in research and learning across campus spaces have included the Innovation Food Forest, the Honeybee Initiative, the Green Studio, and the Mason Arboretum.

The Living Labs Initiative will enlist the enormous talent and expertise on George Mason University campuses to help achieve the university’s sustainability goals. Furthermore, with George Mason’s commitment to campus sustainability, the Living Labs Initiative serves as a conduit to engage in sustainability oriented curricular and research development. Consequently, the Living Labs Initiative will propel George Mason University forward as a regional and national leader in sustainability, with explicit links to George Mason’s entrepreneurship efforts so that our innovations can be widely adopted elsewhere. 

Core Functions of the Living Labs Initiative

Strategic support with initiatives that are first getting off the ground

Coordination of sustainability research initiatives taking place on George Mason’s campuses

Web presence and communication to amplify campus research and projects to the George Mason community and beyond

Data catalog for shared learning and understanding of sustainability topics on George Mason’s campuses

Benefits of Mason as a Living Lab

There are numerous benefits for participating in the Living Labs Initiative. Projects undergo a review that ensures that project implementation in a living campus environment will be seamless. The projects receive strategic support to help get them started if they are in the inception phase, become part of a dynamic group with other living lab projects, get designated web space and communications support. Opportunities for securing funding or scaling up pilot projects will also be supported.

How to Engage

We are collecting past and ongoing projects in our clearinghouse!  Submit your project to be part of the Initiative using this form. 

You can also get in touch via email at malila@gmu.edu.

Apply for funding! We accepted proposals for new and ongoing projects for the 2023 and 2024 Mason’s Living Lab Research Funding opportunities. Watch this space for new funding opportunities. Read the previous calls for proposals below.

We want to know what sustainability work is being done at Mason to propose solutions to sustainability challenges! Be one of the first Living Labs projects to assist with testing our procedures and provide your feedback on the support you need to conduct campus centered projects. In doing so, your project will help determine best practices for wider campus implementation of the initiative and showcase your work to a wider campus audience.