Municipalities and community-based organizations can learn how to partner with MetroBridge below. To join our mailing list and receive requests for proposals via email, click here.

BU Faculty interested in teaching a MetroBridge course should contact David Gross, MetroBridge Program Manager, at davgross@bu.edu.

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Overview

MetroBridge embeds the research questions and needs of municipalities and community organizations into existing courses at BU, enlisting our students and faculty as allies in addressing urban issues. We collaborate with partners to identify the research gaps where our students are best positioned to make a meaningful impact, and then work with our faculty to develop projects that yield mutually beneficial outcomes for both our students and external partners. Projects may include case studies, literature reviews, qualitative or quantitative analyses, research design, program evaluation, and other types of research.

The MetroBridge team serves as a one-stop shop and point of contact for project partners, supporting the project from idea submission to project completion. We assist with project scoping and development, matching courses for each project, providing project management support, and ensuring effective communication between Boston University and project liaisons. At the end of each semester, students present their work to the partner, and the MetroBridge team coordinates the development of final deliverables, which may include a report, a memo, slides, and/or other deliverables specific to the project.

Submit a Project Proposal

We invite local governments and community-based organizations to submit project ideas for the upcoming semesters, particularly for Fall 2025 and Spring 2026.

Submitting a project idea as soon as possible helps us find a more suitable course match for your research and project needs.

View a selection of recent MetroBridge projects here.

A member of our team will contact you after your submission. We strive to match each project idea with a suitable course; however, if we are unable to do so for the upcoming semester, your project idea will also be considered for future semesters.

Submit a Project Idea

Project Submission Deadlines

We accept project submissions throughout the year. However, we strongly recommend that you consider the following deadlines.
Please keep in mind that these are not strict deadlines, but adhering to them is helpful to us and our partnering faculty and increases the likelihood of a project being accepted into the program and embedded into a course:

Fall 2025 Semester (including multi-semester projects beginning in the fall 2025 semester)

  • Priority Consideration: June 5, 2025
  • Recommended Deadline: July 16, 2025 (while not a strict deadline, we strongly encourage submissions by this date)
  • Late Consideration of projects until August 7, 2025

Spring 2026 Semester

  • Priority Consideration: September 5, 2025
  • Recommended Deadline: October 15, 2025 (while not a strict deadline, we strongly encourage submissions by this date)
  • Late Consideration: November 25, 2025
Submit a Project Idea

Topics & Areas of Focus: 2025–2026 Projects

The MetroBridge program is university-wide, meaning we can leverage all of the academic expertise at Boston University on a wide range of topics to address the questions facing our government and community partners.

The following focus areas either (1) pertain to relevant courses taught by faculty interested in incorporating a MetroBridge project during the upcoming 2025-2026 academic year or (2) are MetroBridge priority areas of focus. Please note this list is updated throughout the year. If you have a project idea that does not fall under one of the below areas, we still encourage you to submit a proposal:

Focus areas in bold are remaining priority areas for the fall 2025 semester.

*Denotes our highest priority focus areas remaining for fall 2025.

  • *Climate change, extreme heat, environment, and sustainability
    • Including: urban heat, environmental economics, environmental justice, health impacts, GIS, urban climate, and more.
  • Cultural heritage and historic preservation
    • Including: cultural heritage documentation, neighborhood history, socio-economic history, deed research, reviewing building permits, historic maps, and more.
  • Data science and visualization
    • Including: GIS, machine learning and LLMs, software engineering, application development, and more.
  • Economics
    • Including: cost-benefit analysis, funding/financing, economic analysis of public sector policies, environmental economics, and more.
  • *Education policy
    • Including: researching public policy related to education (at any level), adult learning, and/or human development.
  • *Governance, planning, and public administration
    • Including:
      • Determining a path forward on policy implementation, analyzing root causes of issues faced by departments and public sector agencies
      • Identifying and reducing administrative burdens faced by residents accessing services and programs
      • Planning & development (such as real estate development, neighborhood plans, vision plans, etc.)
  • Hospitality, Tourism, & Leisure
  • Housing & Gentrification
    • Including: Affordable housing and housing inequalities, displacement, population changes/demographics, and more.
  • *Health
    • Including: Researching challenges and solutions, health policy, public health & human services, best practices research, social determinants of health, extreme heat impacts, health inequities, GIS, and more.
  • Marketing
  • Mechanical engineering and public works (prototype, proof of concept development, or white papers):
    • Including: Projects that address problems or needed solutions involving areas such as mechanical structures, fluid flow, thermal and power generation & transfer, dynamic systems (vehicles in motion), sensors, and/or big data/statistical analysis of engineering issues
  • *Policy analysis and policy implementation
  • Racial equity and justice
    • Including reparations policy, health inequities, social determinants of health, environmental justice, and more.

Please note that the above list is not a comprehensive list of possible project topics & focus areas. This may change as we continue to hold conversations with our faculty network.

Project Timeline

For project submission deadlines, please refer to Submit a Project Proposal.

  • The Fall Semester runs from September until December break. A student-led presentation is typically held in December, with final deliverables completed in December or January.
  • The Spring Semester runs from late January until late April or early May. A student-led presentation is typically held in April or May, with final deliverables completed in May.
  • In limited instances, projects span both semesters (Fall and Spring), lasting a total of nine months. These projects begin at the start of the fall semester (September) and conclude at the end of the spring semester (April or May). At this time, these projects are limited to mechanical engineering and city planning.

If a project is large in scope, we may collaborate with partners and faculty to divide it across multiple semesters. These may be taken in back-to-back semesters (e.g., Fall 2025 and Spring 2026) or consecutively over two years (e.g., Fall 2025 and Fall 2026).

Partner Requirements

Local governments and organizations serving as MetroBridge partners should be prepared to donate their time, in addition to sharing data and reports relevant to the project(s). However, we work to ensure the time commitment is not onerous by dedicating the time of one staff member at the IOC to facilitating these partnerships. Please note that the MetroBridge team is your main point of contact supporting the project from idea submission to project completion and project deliverables development, and acts as the liaison between Boston University and partners. Project partners may be expected to:

  • Attend planning and check-in meetings with MetroBridge program staff, faculty, and occasionally with students.
  • Visit the class on campus at the beginning of the semester to provide an overview of the project and the city or town, or host the students at a relevant space in your city or town or organization.
  • Attend the final presentation (depending on class time and partner location, this may be on campus or at the partner’s offices).
  • Host a student site visit (if applicable, depending on class time and partner location).
  • Coordinate meetings with key local government staff and community partners (if applicable; MetroBridge may also assist with such tasks).
  • Provide information such as existing reports, plans, or data related to the project, as well as meeting minutes with pertinent agenda items (if applicable).

Stay in Touch / Contact Us

If you have any questions about the program, want to learn more, or have research needs you’d like to discuss before submitting a proposal above, please reach out to our Program Manager, David Gross.

To receive email updates from MetroBridge regarding calls for project ideas and faculty course matching, please click here to sign up for our email list.