The institute's research team is highly interdisciplinary, bringing together computer scientists, biologists, environmental scientists, biological and environmental engineers, mathematicians, and economists from 7 different colleges, in 12 different departments.

[10] The team is led by: The NSF Expeditions in Computing grant supporting ICS has the following goals:[10] The National Science Foundation announced in 2008 that it has established a five-year program to support research in the field of computational sustainability.

Quoting from their Press Release 08-141:[1] August 18, 2008 The Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) has established four new Expeditions in Computing.

Each of these $10 million grants will allow teams of researchers and educators to pursue far-reaching research agendas that promise significant advances in the computing frontier and great benefit to society.

In the Expedition Computational Sustainability: Computational Methods for a Sustainable Environment, Economy, and Society, Carla Gomes and her colleagues at Cornell University, Bowdoin College, the Conservation Fund, Howard University, Oregon State University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will explore the development and application of computational methods to enable a sustainable environment, economy and society.