Brittany Kruger in her lab working with a microscope wearing a lab coat and gloves.

Brittany Kruger, Ph.D. receives the 2024 Harold J. Kruse Farming and Environment Award

By | Feb 24, 2025 | Donor Stories

Brittany Kruger, Ph.D. was selected as the 2024 recipient of this award for her proposal “Nitrogen Dynamics in Arid Agriculture: Optimizing for both Farmer and Environment.” The Harold J. Kruse Farming and Environment Award was established in 2022 by Stephanie Kruse, DRI Foundation Trustee, to honor her father’s legacy and recognize his farming business sense. Thank you to Stephanie Kruse and her brother, Norm Kruse, for their continued support of this award.

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Researcher in the lab wearing gloves and using equipment.

This Giving Season, Please Consider Supporting the IRP Endowment  

By | Dec 12, 2024 | Donor Stories

This giving season, please join us in supporting bright minds and their best ideas by donating to the IRP Endowment, which was established earlier this year to ensure that innovative science continues for generations to come. Your gift will bring us one step closer to our goal of raising $5 million to fully fund this endowment. To date, this program has supported more than 20 research teams and several successful research programs have grown out of IRP-supported preliminary research.

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Two children at a table drawing a pathway with colored markers for the robot to follow.

Ray of Sunshine Ministry Uses Green Boxes to Bring STEM Education to Foster Children and Homeschool Families 

By | Nov 14, 2024 | Donor Stories

Tiffany Morales, Founder and President of Ray of Sunshine Ministry, is bringing STEM education to foster children and homeschool students in Southern Nevada. This year, Ray of Sunshine is utilizing DRI STEM Education Program's Green Boxes to provide STEM and robotics programs to these groups. Morales said, “With DRI’s service, we’re able to provide excellent robotics programs to homeschool groups and foster care facilities, absolutely free of cost to us and to them.”

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Sue Wagner wearing glasses and smiling at something just off camera against a black background.

Peter B. Wagner Memorial Endowment Honors the Work of Exceptional Women Graduate Students for 26th Year

By | Oct 15, 2024 | Donor Stories

Twenty-six years since it was first awarded, the Peter B. Wagner Award for Women in Atmospheric Science remains the only award in the United States for female graduate students in the atmospheric sciences. Thanks to the generosity of Sue Wagner, the exceptional work of women graduate students in the atmospheric sciences will continue to be recognized and honored in perpetuity.

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Darkened conference room with panelists on stage sitting in chairs. The audience is seated at round tables.

DRI’s AWE+ Summit Tackles Wildfire Resilience and Recovery

By | Aug 23, 2024 | Announcements

DRI, one of our nation’s leading applied environmental research institutes, together with the DRI Foundation, this week held its inaugural AWE+ Summit -Wildfire Recovery and Resilience: Working Across Silos to Drive Solutions. The summit is a call-to-action for communities to implement measures that support resilience and human adaptability to devastating wildfire events. Nationally recognized scientific leaders discussed challenges, progress, and hope through actions that will lead to solutions.

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Researcher studying a plant illuminated by the sun.

Donors Fund Endowment that Transforms Big Ideas into Groundbreaking Environmental Solutions and Offer a Dollar-for-Dollar Match up to $2 million

By | Aug 20, 2024 | Donor Stories, Uncategorized

Earlier this year, thanks to generous matching commitments from the Tom and Mary Gallagher Foundation and the Bretzlaff Foundation, DRI established the IRP Endowment, ensuring funding in perpetuity. To maximize the impact of the IRP Endowment, the Gallagher Foundation and Bretzlaff Foundation have made their commitments a dollar for dollar match up to $2 million with a goal of raising a $5 million endowment.

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