The U.S.-China EcoPartnership for Environmental Sustainability (USCEES), one of 30 EcoPartnerships, was established within the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue framework in May 2011 by a joint agreement between the U.S. Department of State and China's National Development and Reform Commission. The USCEES has the goal of fostering bi-national research innovation, communication, and entrepreneurship to address the interconnected challenges of environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Research and education programs within the USCEES are focused on understanding current and past degradation of natural resources, investigating the drivers, impacts, and mitigation of global climate change, and assessing options for sustainable use of natural resources. Although both the U.S. and China have embraced a future based on science, technology, and innovation, our bi-national framework acknowledges that these two nations have vastly different cultural, political, and demographic legacies that could pose distinct challenges to uniform solutions or mandated collaborative networks. The peer-to-peer connections that drive the research component of the USCEES program are promoted and initiated from the ground up; they are based on the voluntary participation of scientists and engineers who are fascinated by the intellectual challenge of solving complex problems of inherent interest to them. Herein, we present highlights of USCEES activities that describe our efforts to discover, incubate, and nurture U.S.-China research collaborations to meet our collective goals. We discuss our pilot programs that are designed to highlight university facilities, resources, and technologies for tech transfer and licensing with an environmental solutions-oriented direction. Additionally, programs to promote cross-EcoPartnership collaborations are discussed. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.