UCLA Institute for Carbon Management Hosts Epicenter for Action Research

The UCLA Institute for Carbon Management (ICM) at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering has welcomed the Epicenter for Action Research into its ranks, working together to provide tools that enhance team project management and knowledge sharing.

Launched in 2021, Epicenter is a project management resource center that has built intelligent information systems powered by the work management platform monday.com. The web and mobile enterprise capabilities have enabled the center to support a network of projects across 48 major centers on 12 university campuses, 15 outside allies and more than 1200 distinct users within its first year.

“Our mission is to transform research and education and deliver a service to the world,” said Epicenter founder and faculty director Lee Cooper.

The five-year agreement between monday.com and UCLA, formalized in December 2021, grants the Epicenter up to 250,000 free professional licenses per year to distribute to university teams — students, faculty, and staff — and their external collaborators. The cloud-based, premium work-operating system helps smaller teams overcome financial challenges, while providing the organizational memory to learn from each project. The center also offers complimentary onboarding training, consulting support and a student project manager certification course.

“Our mission is to transform research and education and deliver a service to the world,” said Epicenter founder and faculty director Lee Cooper, a professor emeritus at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. “We want our students to add value starting on day one when they join existing team efforts in research centers, capstone projects and technology incubators. This makes it easier for students to initiate, scale and learn from successful projects, while allowing us to activate and mobilize the desire of students to do good in the world.”

The ICM was founded in 2018 and is led by Gaurav Sant, professor of civil and environmental engineering and materials science and engineering. The institute works on developing decarbonizing technologies that have the potential to significantly combat the effects of climate change.

Originally established under the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center at UCLA, Epicenter’s move to ICM was approved by the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in January.

“We needed a scalable home for the Epicenter to deliver our service to more people, from our current few thousand users up to hundreds of thousands, and ICM, with its proven track record of technology development and entrepreneurship, is the perfect place for the Epicenter to continue its work,” Cooper said.