About this CFP
Amazon Sustainability works to make Amazon the most environmentally and socially responsible place to buy or sell goods and services. We conduct research to map, model and measure the end-to-end environmental and social impact of the company and vet sustainability topics that will have the greatest future impact to Amazon to inform business planning and resilience. We develop and test strategies that support revenue growth while reducing negative environmental and social impact. We work with the external science community to drive our mission goals. We accelerate adoption of trustworthy sustainable practices at Amazon by guiding critical decision makers with crisp recommendations backed by scientific rigor. We remove ambiguity around sustainable choices and provide them scientifically credible concepts, reports, data, and tools that they can use to make informed decisions.
We welcome proposals related to the topics below:
- Climate risk / resilience
- Life cycle assessment
- Social responsibility / labor rights / human rights
- Circular strategies
- Plastics
- Waste
- Water
- Machine learning for sustainability
Timeline
Submission period: September 16 to October 26, 2022
Decision letters will be sent out March 2023
Award details
Selected Principal Investigators (PIs) may receive the following:
- Unrestricted funds, no more than $80,000 USD on average
- Training resources, including AWS tutorials and hands-on sessions with Amazon scientists and engineers
Awards are structured as one-year unrestricted gifts. The budget should include a list of expected costs specified in USD, and should not include administrative overhead costs. The final award amount will be determined by the awards panel.
Eligibility requirements
Please refer to the ARA Program rules on the FAQ page.
Proposal requirements
Proposals should be prepared according to the proposal template. In addition, to submit a proposal for this CFP, please also include the following information:
- Please list the open-source tools you plan to contribute to.
- Please list the AWS ML tools you will use.
Selection criteria
ARA will make the funding decisions based on the potential impact to the research community and quality of the scientific content.
Expectations from recipients
To the extent deemed reasonable, Award recipients should acknowledge the support from ARA. Award recipients will inform ARA of publications, presentations, code and data releases, blogs/social media posts, and other speaking engagements referencing the results of the supported research or the Award. Award recipients are expected to provide updates and feedback to ARA via surveys or reports on the status of their research. Award recipients will have an opportunity to work with ARA on an informational statement about the awarded project that may be used to generate visibility for their institutions and ARA.