On 26 August 2014, the University of Sheffield announced it had received a £2.6m donation from the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment to found the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, with funds matched by the university itself. The Grantham Centre, with Ryan as Director, builds on the work of Project Sunshine through an interdisciplinary PhD training programme that gives students (known as 'Grantham Scholars') the skills to become sustainability advocates, as well as experts in their particular fields of research. The Grantham Centre supports sustainability research at the University of Sheffield and Ryan represented the Grantham Centre at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015.