Networking for the future of the planet — New platform connects research and researchers for environmental solutions

Date published: July 17, 2025 | Estimated read time: 5 min Social SCiences and Humanities Research Council

Climate change is one of the biggest and most daunting issues facing society today. The solutions can be equally complex, requiring collaboration across multiple disciplines and industries. But for that collaboration to happen, those involved need to be able to find each other and build on their work, instead of starting from scratch and duplicating what has already been done.

That’s why Juan Camilo Serpa, associate professor in the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, created the Sustainability Academic Network (SUSAN)—a comprehensive directory of sustainability-related grants, papers, events, datasets and researchers.

Juan Camilo Serpa’s students during a field trip in AI and sustainability in Costa Rica.

Photo: Miray Wahib

“I want SUSAN to be a social network for academics to get to know each other and connect their initiatives, so we can all fight climate change more efficiently,” he says.

Siloed research hinders new breakthroughs

Sustainability research often involves many different elements that transcend individual research disciplines. For example, a project looking at water use might involve chemists, biologists, engineers, municipal planners and many others. But their work is often done in silos. With everyone focusing on just their own part, it can be difficult for anyone to see the whole picture.

“It’s hard to know what all is being done, even within your own school,” says Serpa. “Other departments could be doing research directly related to what you’re studying, and you might never know.”

Finding the right community and resources is a substantial barrier for new researchers trying to enter the sustainability field. That reality was underscored for Serpa when he was trying to put together a proposal to secure funding for a research project of his own. He found himself having to search through dozens of websites to look for sources of funding, potential team members and previous studies that could be used in a literature review. To solve that challenge for himself and others, Serpa created SUSAN as a unified place to bring all the elements for sustainability research together.

Coming together for a common good

Supported by a SSHRC Connection Grant, work on SUSAN started in 2024 with the creation of a basic directory of academic institutions doing sustainability work around the world. Serpa used an AI algorithm to identify some 2,500 of these institutions and sort them into more than 40 categories, including those studying circular economies, coastal studies, environmental policy, social justice and bioengineering.

With the help of summer students and other researchers, Serpa was then able to expand the directory to include 57,000 individual researchers at the identified institutions, along with hundreds of thousands of their published papers. His team used additional AI algorithms to classify these by theme and generate profile pages for each one.

The platform took on a social dimension when Serpa subsequently reached out to the profiled researchers to invite them to create their own accounts, enabling them to contribute directly to the site. Expecting most to dismiss the invitation from an unknown platform as spam, he was gratified to receive thousands of positive responses.

Today, SUSAN includes filters for datasets, papers, individuals, institutions, conferences, jobs, events and grants, with a lot of the information being uploaded by members themselves. It also includes discussion boards where members can interact and contribute their ideas for building out the platform. Within just four months of its launch at the end of 2024, SUSAN had become the largest sustainability network in the world.

Juan Camilo Serpa’s students learn to make monkey bridges at one of Serpa’s research projects in Costa Rica.

Photo: Keira Gagliardi

“The way this platform has grown since we launched it shows how much of a real need there was for something like this,” says Serpa.

The go-to source for sustainability networking

The platform is already starting to have its intended impact of bringing together sustainability research and researchers. Datasets have been uploaded by SUSAN members and downloaded by others, and Serpa has seen researchers on other platforms publicly acknowledging how the use of datasets they found on SUSAN has enhanced their own work. Through SUSAN, researchers have found teammates, contributed ideas to others’ projects and shared advice.

The platform is also helping preserve data being removed from other websites, with members downloading critical datasets and sharing them on SUSAN to ensure they remain accessible.

But Serpa says the biggest impacts on climate change research will come when industry players are also involved in sustainability initiatives. That’s why he hopes SUSAN will continue to expand and eventually grow into a fully fledged social media platform, with more interactive engagement tools and broader industry participation.

“I want SUSAN to be the LinkedIn of sustainability,” he says. “When you think of career networking, you think of LinkedIn. When you think of sustainability networking, I want you to think of SUSAN.”

By making climate change science more accessible to more people and enabling greater ties between academics, industry players and other interested parties, SUSAN has the potential to accelerate research and develop innovative solutions to protect the future of the planet.