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LEAP Invites Applications for 2025 Student Grant Program

An interior-facing brick façade of Sterling Law Building with multiple pitched rooflines and stone-trimmed, leaded glass windows against a dark blue sky

The Law, Environment & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School is inviting applications for its Student Grant Program. The program supports Yale student-led research and creative projects that advance understanding of, draw attention to, or develop strategies to address the urgent threats facing non-human animals. All current Yale students can submit proposals for term time and summer projects. 

Since its launch in 2021, the LEAP Student Grant Program has funded an expansive range of student-led projects. Last year’s grantees used their awards to direct and produce a documentary, study comparative farmed animal and biotechnology law, and examine the history of biological control. Projects supported by the program in 2024 include: 

  • Daniel Blokh, a recent Yale College graduate, directed and produced “Looking Back with Laika,” a short documentary about the famous dog who became the first living creature in space. Through interviews with people the former Soviet Union, he explored the range of feelings Soviet citizens harbored toward Laika — from pride and patriotism to sadness and ethical uncertainty — as well as their own memories and personal experiences with dogs.  
  • Ilaria Cimadori, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at the Yale School of the Environment and LEAP Student Fellow, conducted a comparative law analysis across the U.S., E.U., and Switzerland assessing the adequacy of laws safeguarding farm animal welfare against detrimental applications of breeding techniques and emerging biotechnologies such as gene-editing. She explored how these jurisdictions approach this problem and proposed policy recommendations to improve the protection of animals in breeding using insights from different legal systems. 
  • Lauren Killingsworth, an M.D.-Ph.D. student at Yale School of Medicine’s Department of History of Science and Medicine and LEAP Student Fellow, examined the practice and history of biological control, the use of living organisms (such as mosquito-eating fish and parasitic insects) to eradicate vector-borne diseases. She studied the archives of the World Health Organization, the Commonwealth Institute for Biological Control, and other international organizations involved in this global exchange of species to examine the myriad ethical dilemmas raised by biological control. 

The deadline for submitting a proposal is March 28 at 12 p.m. ET. Interested students can find more detailed grant information and application instructions on LEAP’s website. For questions, please contact LEAP Postgraduate Fellow Laurie Sellars.