• Catalyzing regional and collaborative joint enterprises, such as the Great Ships Initiative, with the goal of directly enhancing productive green trade and transportation for the Northeast-Midwest region;
• Providing timely information and analysis to policy makers on Capitol Hill and in state and federal agencies throughout the Northeast-Midwest region in support of effective policy development; and
• Conducting and publishing primary scientific research to fill critical information gaps that hamper effective policy-making.

Current Projects

The Institute’s Aquatic Invasive Species Policy Project is located within the Trade and the Environment/Invasive Species program. The project aims to make federal policy and programs related to the prevention and management of aquatic invasive species as responsive as possible to the needs of the Northeast-Midwest region.

Ecosystems such as the Great Lakes support indigenous bacteria and other tiny organisms that often are critical to the maintenance of the physical, chemical, and biological features of the Great Lakes as we know them. Yet little is known about this invisible biological activity, and little is being done to protect it from damage resulting from human activity. Of urgent interest are the potential effects of introductions of non-native microbes by ships and other vectors into the native microbial community. The Northeast-Midwest Institute, along with several collaborators including Cornell University, Old Dominion University, the Great Lakes Commission, and the University of Minnesota-Duluth received a $1 million grant from the Great Lakes Protection Fund in 2007 to develop tools and processes to probe the sensitivity of the Great Lakes microbial community to newcomers, and to protect it. Federal collaborators include the Western Fisheries Research Center of the U.S. Geological Survey, which has extensive expertise in fish pathogens and their movement globally.

The Institute’s Preventing Forest Pests and Pathogens Project is located within the Trade and the Environment/Invasive Species program. The project aims to advance clean trade in the Northeast-Midwest region and beyond by reducing the introduction and spread of non-native forest pests and diseases. Its mission is to make federal policy and programs related to trade and other vectors of the introduction and spread of forest pests and diseases as effective and responsive to the specific needs of the Northeast-Midwest region as possible. In particular, the Institute is part of the Steering Committee for the Continental Dialogue on Non-Native Forest Insects and Diseases. The Dialogue cultivates and catalyzes collaborative action among a diverse group of leaders in industry, universities, nonprofit groups, and state and municipal governments to abate the threat of forest pests and diseases.