FIELDWORK is where the world’s most driven students do real fieldwork, get it independently verified, and carry a permanent public record that universities everywhere can trust and search.
Rolling admissions. Start the week you’re accepted, no waiting for a batch.
The Earth5R Field Verified model is part of the UNFCCC Global Innovation Hub Systemic Innovation Workshop.
Top global universities, UN bodies and global research networks come to Earth5R to run real field projects across the Global South: research and action, ground data and intelligence, and field-tested methodologies. That on-the-ground reach is hard to build and harder to copy, and it is the same infrastructure FIELDWORK fellows plug into.
Every project like these deepens the ground intelligence, data and field methods that make Earth5R the layer institutions, and now students, build real work on.
Ask whether a fellow really did the work and was genuinely part of these Earth5R projects, and it confirms. The background verification of work and association that universities and scholarships increasingly expect.
Former Deputy Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change (UNFCCC), at UN Assistant Secretary-General rank, 2017 to 2023. Helped run five COPs and complete the Paris Agreement rulebook, and is inaugural Vice-Chair of the GHG Protocol Steering Committee. Brings global climate governance to Earth5R, with a focus on youth and on turning commitments into measured action.
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Nobel Peace Prize 2015 with the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, and the first woman to lead UTICA, Tunisia’s employers’ confederation. Professor of Practice of Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at NYU Abu Dhabi. Guides Earth5R communities in designing inclusive programmes for sustainable growth.
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MIT’s first Director of Sustainability, after founding Yale’s Office of Sustainability. Two decades of building universities into living laboratories for sustainability. Helps design the frameworks behind Earth5R’s network for restoring rivers and urban ecosystems.
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Head of Innovation Research at NYU’s Peace Research and Education Program, where she founded the Peace AI initiative, and a former diplomat across three governments. Runs fieldwork in Kenya, Malawi and the Philippines on how communities shape their digital futures. Brings diplomacy and AI expertise to ethical, inclusive frameworks for Earth5R’s work.
Full profile →Engaged with faculty at
ETH ZurichCarnegie MellonImperial College LondonCornellDukeKing’s College LondonDurhamLundAustralian National UniversityIIT Bombay
Students from these universities have trained and worked with Earth5R
YaleHarvardColumbiaCornellBrownPrincetonNYUCambridgeLSESciences PoWarwickArizona StateIITs
IPCC authors and researchers from universities around the world, working on climate, energy, water and health. Each one shares the science behind their work and the journey that shaped it, and FIELDWORK fellows can join these conversations with their own questions from the field.
Aerosol and cloud interactions, one of the hardest parts of the climate puzzle.
Professor of Atmospheric Physics at ETH Zurich. Lead author of the clouds and aerosols chapters in two IPCC assessments (AR4 and AR5), member of the Leopoldina, and 2025 recipient of the EGU Vilhelm Bjerknes Medal.
Putting numbers on what weather and climate do to society, with the open-source CLIMADA model.
Professor for Weather and Climate Risks at ETH Zurich and MeteoSwiss. Spent sixteen years at Swiss Re, including as Global Head of Sustainability, served on the Swiss delegation to the UNFCCC, and advises the Rockefeller Foundation.
Growth, energy and emissions: do countries get cleaner as they get richer?
Energy and environmental economist at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU. Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and on the editorial boards of Nature Energy, The Energy Journal and Ecological Economics.
Water, hazards and fairness in South Asia, and the questions we should be asking instead.
Professor in Critical Geography at King’s College London. Co-authored Pakistan’s first climate change response strategies and a five-year flood response strategy for UNDP Pakistan.
Rivers that cross borders, and how countries end up in conflict or cooperation over shared water.
Professor in Environmental Politics at King’s College London and co-director of the King’s Water Centre. Author of Transboundary Water Politics in the Developing World, lead author on freshwater policy for UN Environment’s GEO-6 report, and a contributor to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Has trained more than 200 policymakers and professionals on water security and cooperation.
Why sustainability reporting began, and what it should do for companies today.
Emeritus Professor at Durham University Business School. Chair of the GRI Global Sustainability Standards Board, founding editor of the Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, and newly elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
How industry can reach net zero, and designing technology together with the ecosystems that support it.
Julie Ann Wrigley Professor at Arizona State University, in engineering and the School of Sustainability. Author of Sustainable Engineering (Cambridge) and editor of Engineering and Ecosystems: Seeking Synergies Toward a Nature-Positive World. AIChE Fellow.
Building energy performance, and how our homes and workplaces shape our footprint.
University Professor and former head of the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon. Co-director of the Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics, and recipient of the AIA Pennsylvania Medal of Distinction.
Energy access, and how the transition can serve people who still lack power.
Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon. Coordinating Lead Author in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment (Working Group III), co-founder of the Open Energy Outlook, and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.
Energy systems for sustainable development, and which policies have held up over time.
Professor Emeritus at Lund University’s International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics. Former Director of UNDP’s Energy and Atmosphere Programme, IPCC Convening Lead Author, and co-recipient of the Volvo Environment Prize.
Mitigation technology and the rural energy transition in India.
Professor at IIT Bombay’s Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA). Works on climate change, carbon capture and storage, renewable energy and energy efficiency, sanitation and waste, and rural electrification.
Hydrogen networks and the decarbonisation of industry and shipping.
Chair of Energy Systems at Durham University and director at the Durham Energy Institute. Associate Director of the National Centre for Energy Systems Integration, and adviser to the UK Government’s Hydrogen Advisory Council.
Biochar and soil: how much carbon better soil management can really store.
Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor at Cornell and one of the world’s best-known biochar scientists. Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, Humboldt Research Prize winner and Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher.
Landscapes and ecosystem services, and what change for nature looks like in practice.
Professor at McGill and Canada Research Chair in Sustainability Science. Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, co-founder of the Seeds of a Good Anthropocene project, and Coordinating Lead Author for IPBES.
Climate and health evidence from Bangladesh, from the team of Prof. Paolo Vineis.
Epidemiologist at Imperial College London’s School of Public Health. Her PhD and field studies with 1,400 women in coastal Bangladesh linked salty drinking water to high blood pressure and pre-eclampsia, a climate and health risk rarely discussed.
The model behind FIELDWORK is built on years of real deployment in the field, and led by a founder recognised on the world’s biggest stages.
Earth5R’s founder, Saurabh Gupta, has given two TEDx talks, one at Panthéon-Assas University in Paris and one in Mumbai.
Every other programme hands you a project to do on the side. FIELDWORK puts you inside real Earth5R science on the ground, and leaves you with a record that holds up to global standards.
Every fellow moves through the same demanding sequence. Each phase is gated and independently assessed, so what ends up on the record is real, not self-reported.
A fellowship runs across a full term, not an afternoon. Here is one fellow’s arc, phase by phase, from the first field visit to a deployed, independently verified result.
What field work looks like at Earth5R
Twelve field visits across the ward. She surveyed 140 households, walked the collection route with municipal workers, and mapped exactly where segregation breaks down. No solutions yet, only primary data from the ground.
Gate cleared · A mapped system, evidenced by real field dataShe analysed the data and rejected the obvious answer. The issue wasn’t “lack of awareness”, households knew, but had no separate bins and no feedback loop. She reframed the problem around that root cause across three rounds of mentor review.
Gate cleared · A root-cause problem that survives challengeShe built a working segregation-tracking tool using an AI stack and applied data science, then piloted it with fifteen households. Two versions failed before one that people actually used.
Gate cleared · A working model, tested with real usersShe deployed across four housing societies for six weeks, measured the change in segregation rates, documented what worked and what didn’t, and published a permanent public record anyone can verify.
Gate cleared · A deployed intervention with measured results, on the recordAnd this is one cycle. Fellows return each year, taking on more scope, ownership and rigour, from Grade 9 through Grade 12, so the record compounds into a multi-year body of real work.
The mentored track isn’t automated feedback. Fellows are guided by working scientists and researchers who hold their work to a real standard.
FIELDWORK’s lead mentor is a working scientist with research experience at NASA and Columbia University, guiding fellows’ projects and holding the work to the standard of real science. Full profile to follow.
Do real fieldwork, clear each phase, and build a permanent public record that stands up to scrutiny anywhere you apply.
Search a registry of verified, opted-in student work. Every record is checkable, so what you see is what a student actually did.
You don’t invent a project to look busy. You join real Earth5R research already on the ground, led by working scientists, and your record carries that science with it.
Fellows work inside flagship projects like these, not simulations. Their documentation and their record carry the real science with them, and that is what separates one Earth5R student from another in front of a university.
FIELDWORK runs in 38 subjects for students in Grades 9 to 12. Open a subject to see its projects, how it fits CAS, the Extended Essay and school projects, and the universities to aim for.
Technology and data
Engineering
Natural sciences
Business, economics and finance
Design and the built environment
Social sciences, policy and law
Health
Media and communication
At university already? See internship fellowships in 38 subjects for university students.
Admissions are rolling and selective. Every fellow gets real supervision, and you join the Earth5R global cohort and begin the week you’re accepted, no waiting for a batch.
