The Princeton Environmental Institute was founded in 1994 as part of a broader initiative led by university president
Harold T. Shapiro, to make Princeton a center for addressing global environmental challenges. Shapiro met with
Tom Barron,
Robert H. Socolow and
Henry S. Horn in 1992 to discuss the university's possible direction. Shapiro then formed a faculty committee which recommended the creation of the Princeton Environmental Institute. In December 1995, the Institute moved into the newly-renovated Guyot Hall. The founding director of the institute in 1994 was
Simon Levin.
François M. M. Morel held the position of Director twice, first between 1998 and 2004.
Ignacio Rodríguez-Iturbe, who served as acting director of the institute in 2002, founded the field of
ecohydrology.
Stephen W. Pacala was Acting Director of the Princeton Environmental Institute from 2005 to 2006, and Director from 2006 to 2014.
François M. M. Morel returned for a second time as Director from 2014-2017. The Director of the institute from 2017-2021 was
Michael A. Celia, the Theodora Shelton Pitney Professor of Environmental Studies and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton. As of July 2021, the Director became Gabriel Vecchi. In 2000, the institute established the Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI) in partnership with
BP. In 2014, with funding from the
National Science Foundation (NSF), the institute established the
Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling project (SOCCOM), to study the Southern Ocean's role in climate regulation. In 2019, the institute received $2.5 million in federal funding to study resilience and sustainability in urban food systems. In 2020, the Institute received a gift to create the Thomas A. and Currie C. Barron Family Biodiversity Research Challenge Fund to support research on the preservation of species and ecosystems. The Princeton Environmental Institute was renamed as the High Meadows Environmental Institute, following a gift from Judy and Carl Ferenbach III's High Meadows Foundation in 2020. The High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI) is projected to move to a new building at Princeton in early 2025. ==References==