Alex Kutsupis, a graduate student in the University of Michigan School of Information, has been named a 2025 Dow Sustainability Fellow. Supported by the Dow Company Foundation and administered by the Graham Sustainability Institute, the program is designed to foster collaboration across disciplines while encouraging sustainability leadership in different fields and sectors.

Kutsupis, a second-year student earning a dual Master of Science in Information and Master of Science in Geospatial Data Science, is among 32 fellows selected from twelve U-M schools and colleges through a competitive process. He will receive a $25,000 stipend in addition to supplementary project funding, professional development opportunities, and hands-on experience collaborating with an external partner. 

“I was so excited to find out I was selected for the program and look forward to working with our team, client and community,” Kutsupis says. “The fellowship is a unique opportunity to work with a team of students from all over campus to solve some challenging sustainability-related problems.” 

Kutsupis will team up with four other U-M students, who are earning degrees in business, dentistry, mechanical engineering and environmental sciences, and computer science and engineering. In partnership with the Western Lake Erie Basin Coalition, they will create a public database and interactive maps aimed at tracking and reducing nutrient pollution in western Lake Erie. 

“It’s a great opportunity to make a real difference at the intersections of information science, data science and environmental science,” Kutsupis says. 

Last summer, he interned with an Ann Arbor-based water science and engineering company, LimnoTech. Kutsupis, who is studying big data analytics at UMSI, developed a data quality assessment tool and dashboard for buoys and weather stations in the Great Lakes, including Lake Erie and its watershed. He says this fellowship, while not a formal extension of that work, feels “closely related.”

“Excess phosphorus runoff into the Western Lake Erie Basin has posed a serious threat to the ecosystem, economic productivity and clean drinking water,” Kutsupis says. “The focus of the project is to create a web-accessible platform to display data about WLEB projects which aim to reduce nutrient pollution into Lake Erie, helping to improve collaboration, coordination and resource sharing to affected communities.”

View the full list of 2025 Dow Sustainability Fellows.