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    How to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ammonia production

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    Ammonia is one of the most widely produced chemicals in the world, used mostly as fertilizer, but also for the production of some plastics, textiles, and other applications. Its production, through processes that require high heat and pressure, accounts for up to 20 percent of all the greenhouse gases from the entire chemical industry, so efforts have been underway worldwide to find ways to reduce those emissions.Now, researchers at MIT have come up with a clever way of combining two different methods of producing the compound that minimizes waste products, that, when combined with some other simple upgrades, could reduce the greenhouse emissions from production by as much as 63 percent, compared to the leading “low-emissions” approach being used today.The new approach is described in the journal Energy & Fuels, in a paper by MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Director William H. Green, graduate student Sayandeep Biswas, MITEI Director of Research Randall Field, and two others.“Ammonia has the most carbon dioxide emissions of any kind of chemical,” says Green, who is the Hoyt C. Hottel Professor in Chemical Engineering. “It’s a very important chemical,” he says, because its use as a fertilizer is crucial to being able to feed the world’s population.Until late in the 19th century, the most widely used source of nitrogen fertilizer was mined deposits of bat or bird guano, mostly from Chile, but that source was beginning to run out, and there were predictions that the world would soon be running short of food to sustain the population. But then a new chemical process, called the Haber-Bosch process after its inventors, made it possible to make ammonia out of nitrogen from the air and hydrogen, which was mostly derived from methane. But both the burning of fossil fuels to provide the needed heat and the use of methane to make the hydrogen led to massive climate-warming emissions from the process.To address this, two newer variations of ammonia production have been developed: so-called “blue ammonia,” where the greenhouse gases are captured right at the factory and then sequestered deep underground, and “green ammonia,” produced by a different chemical pathway, using electricity instead of fossil fuels to hydrolyze water to make hydrogen.Blue ammonia is already beginning to be used, with a few plants operating now in Louisiana, Green says, and the ammonia mostly being shipped to Japan, “so that’s already kind of commercial.” Other parts of the world are starting to use green ammonia, especially in places that have lots of hydropower, solar, or wind to provide inexpensive electricity, including a giant plant now under construction in Saudi Arabia.But in most places, both blue and green ammonia are still more expensive than the traditional fossil-fuel-based version, so many teams around the world have been working on ways to cut these costs as much as possible so that the difference is small enough to be made up through tax subsidies or other incentives.The problem is growing, because as the population grows, and as wealth increases, there will be ever-increasing demands for nitrogen fertilizer. At the same time, ammonia is a promising substitute fuel to power hard-to-decarbonize transportation such as cargo ships and heavy trucks, which could lead to even greater needs for the chemical.“It definitely works” as a transportation fuel, by powering fuel cells that have been demonstrated for use by everything from drones to barges and tugboats and trucks, Green says. “People think that the most likely market of that type would be for shipping,” he says, “because the downside of ammonia is it’s toxic and it’s smelly, and that makes it slightly dangerous to handle and to ship around.” So its best uses may be where it’s used in high volume and in relatively remote locations, like the high seas. In fact, the International Maritime Organization will soon be voting on new rules that might give a strong boost to the ammonia alternative for shipping.The key to the new proposed system is to combine the two existing approaches in one facility, with a blue ammonia factory next to a green ammonia factory. The process of generating hydrogen for the green ammonia plant leaves a lot of leftover oxygen that just gets vented to the air. Blue ammonia, on the other hand, uses a process called autothermal reforming that requires a source of pure oxygen, so if there’s a green ammonia plant next door, it can use that excess oxygen.“Putting them next to each other turns out to have significant economic value,” Green says. This synergy could help hybrid “blue-green ammonia” facilities serve as an important bridge toward a future where eventually green ammonia, the cleanest version, could finally dominate. But that future is likely decades away, Green says, so having the combined plants could be an important step along the way.“It might be a really long time before [green ammonia] is actually attractive” economically, he says. “Right now, it’s nowhere close, except in very special situations.” But the combined plants “could be a really appealing concept, and maybe a good way to start the industry,” because so far only small, standalone demonstration plants of the green process are being built.“If green or blue ammonia is going to become the new way of making ammonia, you need to find ways to make it relatively affordable in a lot of countries, with whatever resources they’ve got,” he says. This new proposed combination, he says, “looks like a really good idea that can help push things along. Ultimately, there’s got to be a lot of green ammonia plants in a lot of places,” and starting out with the combined plants, which could be more affordable now, could help to make that happen. The team has filed for a patent on the process.Although the team did a detailed study of both the technology and the economics that show the system has great promise, Green points out that “no one has ever built one. We did the analysis, it looks good, but surely when people build the first one, they’ll find funny little things that need some attention,” such as details of how to start up or shut down the process. “I would say there’s plenty of additional work to do to make it a real industry.” But the results of this study, which shows the costs to be much more affordable than existing blue or green plants in isolation, “definitely encourages the possibility of people making the big investments that would be needed to really make this industry feasible.”This proposed integration of the two methods “improves efficiency, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and lowers overall cost,” says Kevin van Geem, a professor in the Center for Sustainable Chemistry at Ghent University, who was not associated with this research. “The analysis is rigorous, with validated process models, transparent assumptions, and comparisons to literature benchmarks. By combining techno-economic analysis with emissions accounting, the work provides a credible and balanced view of the trade-offs.”He adds that, “given the scale of global ammonia production, such a reduction could have a highly impactful effect on decarbonizing one of the most emissions-intensive chemical industries.”The research team also included MIT postdoc Angiras Menon and MITEI research lead Guiyan Zang. The work was supported by IHI Japan through the MIT Energy Initiative and the Martin Family Society of Fellows for Sustainability.  More

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      Matthew Shoulders named head of the Department of Chemistry

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      Matthew D. Shoulders, the Class of 1942 Professor of Chemistry, a MacVicar Faculty Fellow, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has been named head of the MIT Department of Chemistry, effective Jan. 16, 2026. “Matt has made pioneering contributions to the chemistry research community through his research on mechanisms of proteostasis and his development of next-generation techniques to address challenges in biomedicine and agriculture,” says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science and the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics. “He is also a dedicated educator, beloved by undergraduates and graduates alike. I know the department will be in good hands as we double down on our commitment to world-leading research and education in the face of financial headwinds.”Shoulders succeeds Troy Van Voorhis, the Robert T. Haslam and Bradley Dewey Professor of Chemistry, who has been at the helm since October 2019.“I am tremendously grateful to Troy for his leadership the past six years, building a fantastic community here in our department. We face challenges, but also many exciting opportunities, as a department in the years to come,” says Shoulders. “One thing is certain: Chemistry innovations are critical to solving pressing global challenges. Through the research that we do and the scientists we train, our department has a huge role to play in shaping the future.”Shoulders studies how cells fold proteins, and he develops ​and applies novel protein engineering techniques to challenges in biotechnology. His work across chemistry and biochemistry fields including proteostasis, extracellular matrix biology, virology, evolution, and synthetic biology is yielding not just important insights into topics like how cells build healthy tissues and how proteins evolve, but also influencing approaches to disease therapy and biotechnology development.“Matt is an outstanding researcher whose work touches on fundamental questions about how the cell machinery directs the synthesis and folding of proteins. His discoveries about how that machinery breaks down as a result of mutations or in response to stress has a fundamental impact on how we think about and treat human diseases,” says Van Voorhis.In one part of Matt’s current research program, he is studying how protein folding systems in cells — known as chaperones — shape the evolution of their clients. Amongst other discoveries, his lab has shown that viral pathogens hijack human chaperones to enable their rapid evolution and escape from host immunity. In related recent work, they have discovered that these same chaperones can promote access to malignancy-driving mutations in tumors. Beyond fundamental insights into evolutionary biology, these findings hold potential to open new therapeutic strategies to target cancer and viral infections.“Matt’s ability to see both the details and the big picture makes him an outstanding researcher and a natural leader for the department,” says Timothy Swager, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry. “MIT Chemistry can only benefit from his dedication to understanding and addressing the parts and the whole.” Shoulders also leads a food security project through the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS). Shoulders, along with MIT Research Scientist Robbie Wilson, assembled an interdisciplinary team based at MIT to enhance climate resilience in agriculture by improving one of the most inefficient aspects of photosynthesis, the carbon dioxide-fixing plant enzyme RuBisCO. J-WAFS funded this high-risk, high-reward MIT Grand Challenge project in 2023, and it has received further support from federal research agencies and the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment. “Our collaborative team of biochemists and synthetic biologists, computational biologists, and chemists is deeply integrated with plant biologists, creating a robust feedback loop for enzyme engineering,” Shoulders says. “Together, this team is making a concerted effort using state-of-the-art techniques to engineer crop RuBisCO with an eye to helping make meaningful gains in securing a stable crop supply, hopefully with accompanying improvements in both food and water security.”In addition to his research contributions, Shoulders has taught multiple classes for Course V, including 5.54 (Advances in Chemical Biology) and 5.111 (Principles of Chemical Science), along with a number of other key chemistry classes. His contributions to a 5.111 “bootcamp” through the MITx platform served to address gaps in the classroom curriculum by providing online tools to help undergraduate students better grasp the material in the chemistry General Institute Requirement (GIR). His development of Guided Learning Demonstrations to support first-year chemistry courses at MIT has helped bring the lab to the GIR, and also contributed to the popularity of 5.111 courses offered regularly via MITx.“I have had the pleasure of teaching with Matt on several occasions, and he is a fantastic educator. He is an innovator both inside and outside the classroom and has an unwavering commitment to his students’ success,” says Van Voorhis of Shoulders, who was named a 2022 MacVicar Faculty Fellow, and who received a Committed to Caring award through the Office of Graduate Education.Shoulders also founded the MIT Homeschool Internship Program for Science and Technology, which brings high school students to campus for paid summer research experiences in labs across the Institute.He is a founding member of the Department of Chemistry’s Quality of Life Committee and chair for the last six years, helping to improve all aspects of opportunity, professional development, and experience in the department: “countless changes that have helped make MIT a better place for all,” as Van Voorhis notes, including creating a peer mentoring program for graduate students and establishing universal graduate student exit interviews to collect data for department-wide assessment and improvement.At the Institute level, Shoulders has served on the Committee on Graduate Programs, Committee on Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Response (in which he co-chaired the provost’s working group on the Faculty and Staff Sexual Misconduct Survey), and the Committee on Assessment of Biohazards and Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight, among other roles.Shoulders graduated summa cum laude from Virginia Tech in 2004, earning a BS in chemistry with a minor in biochemistry. He earned a PhD in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2009 under Professor Ronald Raines. Following an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship at Scripps Research Institute, working with professors Jeffery Kelly and Luke Wiseman, Shoulders joined the MIT Department of Chemistry faculty as an assistant professor in 2012. Shoulders also serves as an associate member of the Broad Institute and an investigator at the Center for Musculoskeletal Research at Massachusetts General Hospital.Among his many awards, Shoulders has received a NIH Director’s New Innovator Award under the NIH High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program; an NSF CAREER Award; an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award; the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award; and most recently the Ono Pharma Foundation Breakthrough Science Award. More

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      MIT chemists boost the efficiency of a key enzyme in photosynthesis

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      During photosynthesis, an enzyme called rubisco catalyzes a key reaction — the incorporation of carbon dioxide into organic compounds to create sugars. However, rubisco, which is believed to be the most abundant enzyme on Earth, is very inefficient compared to the other enzymes involved in photosynthesis.MIT chemists have now shown that they can greatly enhance a version of rubisco found in bacteria from a low-oxygen environment. Using a process known as directed evolution, they identified mutations that could boost rubisco’s catalytic efficiency by up to 25 percent.The researchers now plan to apply their technique to forms of rubisco that could be used in plants to help boost their rates of photosynthesis, which could potentially improve crop yields.“This is, I think, a compelling demonstration of successful improvement of a rubisco’s enzymatic properties, holding out a lot of hope for engineering other forms of rubisco,” says Matthew Shoulders, the Class of 1942 Professor of Chemistry at MIT.Shoulders and Robert Wilson, a research scientist in the Department of Chemistry, are the senior authors of the new study, which appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. MIT graduate student Julie McDonald is the paper’s lead author.Evolution of efficiencyWhen plants or photosynthetic bacteria absorb energy from the sun, they first convert it into energy-storing molecules such as ATP. In the next phase of photosynthesis, cells use that energy to transform a molecule known as ribulose bisphosphate into glucose, which requires several additional reactions. Rubisco catalyzes the first of those reactions, known as carboxylation. During that reaction, carbon from CO2 is added to ribulose bisphosphate.Compared to the other enzymes involved in photosynthesis, rubisco is very slow, catalyzing only one to 10 reactions per second. Additionally, rubisco can also interact with oxygen, leading to a competing reaction that incorporates oxygen instead of carbon — a process that wastes some of the energy absorbed from sunlight.“For protein engineers, that’s a really attractive set of problems because those traits seem like things that you could hopefully make better by making changes to the enzyme’s amino acid sequence,” McDonald says.Previous research has led to improvement in rubisco’s stability and solubility, which resulted in small gains in enzyme efficiency. Most of those studies used directed evolution — a technique in which a naturally occurring protein is randomly mutated and then screened for the emergence of new, desirable features.This process is usually done using error-prone PCR, a technique that first generates mutations in vitro (outside of the cell), typically introducing only one or two mutations in the target gene. In past studies on rubisco, this library of mutations was then introduced into bacteria that grow at a rate relative to rubisco activity. Limitations in error-prone PCR and in the efficiency of introducing new genes restrict the total number of mutations that can be generated and screened using this approach. Manual mutagenesis and selection steps also add more time to the process over multiple rounds of evolution.The MIT team instead used a newer mutagenesis technique that the Shoulders Lab previously developed, called MutaT7. This technique allows the researchers to perform both mutagenesis and screening in living cells, which dramatically speeds up the process. Their technique also enables them to mutate the target gene at a higher rate.“Our continuous directed evolution technique allows you to look at a lot more mutations in the enzyme than has been done in the past,” McDonald says.Better rubiscoFor this study, the researchers began with a version of rubisco, isolated from a family of semi-anaerobic bacteria known as Gallionellaceae, that is one of the fastest rubisco found in nature. During the directed evolution experiments, which were conducted in E. coli, the researchers kept the microbes in an environment with atmospheric levels of oxygen, creating evolutionary pressure to adapt to oxygen.After six rounds of directed evolution, the researchers identified three different mutations that improved the rubisco’s resistance to oxygen. Each of these mutations are located near the enzyme’s active site (where it performs carboxylation or oxygenation). The researchers believe that these mutations improve the enzyme’s ability to preferentially interact with carbon dioxide over oxygen, which leads to an overall increase in carboxylation efficiency.“The underlying question here is: Can you alter and improve the kinetic properties of rubisco to operate better in environments where you want it to operate better?” Shoulders says. “What changed through the directed evolution process was that rubisco began to like to react with oxygen less. That allows this rubisco to function well in an oxygen-rich environment, where normally it would constantly get distracted and react with oxygen, which you don’t want it to do.”In ongoing work, the researchers are applying this approach to other forms of rubisco, including rubisco from plants. Plants are believed to lose about 30 percent of the energy from the sunlight they absorb through a process called photorespiration, which occurs when rubisco acts on oxygen instead of carbon dioxide.“This really opens the door to a lot of exciting new research, and it’s a step beyond the types of engineering that have dominated rubisco engineering in the past,” Wilson says. “There are definite benefits to agricultural productivity that could be leveraged through a better rubisco.”The research was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, an Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab Grand Challenge grant, and a Martin Family Society Fellowship for Sustainability. More

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      Study shows how a common fertilizer ingredient benefits plants

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      Lanthanides are a class of rare earth elements that in many countries are added to fertilizer as micronutrients to stimulate plant growth. But little is known about how they are absorbed by plants or influence photosynthesis, potentially leaving their benefits untapped.Now, researchers from MIT have shed light on how lanthanides move through and operate within plants. These insights could help farmers optimize their use to grow some of the world’s most popular crops.Published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the study shows that a single nanoscale dose of lanthanides applied to seeds can make some of the world’s most common crops more resilient to UV stress. The researchers also uncovered the chemical processes by which lanthanides interact with the chlorophyll pigments that drive photosynthesis, showing that different lanthanide elements strengthen chlorophyll by replacing the magnesium at its center.“This is a first step to better understand how these elements work in plants, and to provide an example of how they could be better delivered to plants, compared to simply applying them in the soil,” says Associate Professor Benedetto Marelli, who conducted the research with postdoc Giorgio Rizzo. “This is the first example of a thorough study showing the effects of lanthanides on chlorophyll, and their beneficial effects to protect plants from UV stress.”Inside plant connectionsCertain lanthanides are used as contrast agents in MRI and for applications including light-emitting diodes, solar cells, and lasers. Over the last 50 years, lanthanides have become increasingly used in agriculture to enhance crop yields, with China alone applying lanthanide-based fertilizers to nearly 4 million hectares of land each year.“Lanthanides have been considered for a long time to be biologically irrelevant, but that’s changed in agriculture, especially in China,” says Rizzo, the paper’s first author. “But we largely don’t know how lanthanides work to benefit plants — nor do we understand their uptake mechanisms from plant tissues.”Recent studies have shown that low concentrations of lanthanides can promote plant growth, root elongation, hormone synthesis, and stress tolerance, but higher doses can cause harm to plants. Striking the right balance has been hard because of our lack of understanding around how lanthanides are absorbed by plants or how they interact with root soil.For the study, the researchers leveraged seed coating and treatment technologies they previously developed to investigate the way the plant pigment chlorophyll interacts with lanthanides, both inside and outside of plants. Up until now, researchers haven’t been sure whether chlorophyll interacts with lanthanide ions at all.Chlorophyll drives photosynthesis, but the pigments lose their ability to efficiently absorb light when the magnesium ion at their core is removed. The researchers discovered that lanthanides can fill that void, helping chlorophyll pigments partially recover some of their optical properties in a process known as re-greening.“We found that lanthanides can boost several parameters of plant health,” Marelli says. “They mostly accumulate in the roots, but a small amount also makes its way to the leaves, and some of the new chlorophyll molecules made in leaves have lanthanides incorporated in their structure.”This study also offers the first experimental evidence that lanthanides can increase plant resilience to UV stress, something the researchers say was completely unexpected.“Chlorophylls are very sensitive pigments,” Rizzo says. “They can convert light to energy in plants, but when they are isolated from the cell structure, they rapidly hydrolyze and degrade. However, in the form with lanthanides at their center, they are pretty stable, even after extracting them from plant cells.”The researchers, using different spectroscopic techniques, found the benefits held across a range of staple crops, including chickpea, barley, corn, and soybeans.The findings could be used to boost crop yield and increase the resilience of some of the world’s most popular crops to extreme weather.“As we move into an environment where extreme heat and extreme climate events are more common, and particularly where we can have prolonged periods of sun in the field, we want to provide new ways to protect our plants,” Marelli says. “There are existing agrochemicals that can be applied to leaves for protecting plants from stressors such as UV, but they can be toxic, increase microplastics, and can require multiple applications. This could be a complementary way to protect plants from UV stress.”Identifying new applicationsThe researchers also found that larger lanthanide elements like lanthanum were more effective at strengthening chlorophyll pigments than smaller ones. Lanthanum is considered a low-value byproduct of rare earths mining, and can become a burden to the rare earth element (REE) supply chain due to the need to separate it from more desirable rare earths. Increasing the demand for lanthanum could diversify the economics of REEs and improve the stability of their supply chain, the scientists suggest.“This study shows what we could do with these lower-value metals,” Marelli says. “We know lanthanides are extremely useful in electronics, magnets, and energy. In the U.S., there’s a big push to recycle them. That’s why for the plant studies, we focused on lanthanum, being the most abundant, cheapest lanthanide ion.”Moving forward, the team plans to explore how lanthanides work with other biological molecules, including proteins in the human body.In agriculture, the team hopes to scale up its research to include field and greenhouse studies to continue testing the results of UV resilience on different crop types and in experimental farm conditions.“Lanthanides are already widely used in agriculture,” Rizzo says. “We hope this study provides evidence that allows more conscious use of them and also a new way to apply them through seed treatments.”The research was supported by the MIT Climate Grand Challenge and the Office for Naval Research. More

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      A journey of resilience, fueled by learning

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      In 2021, Hilal Mohammadzai was set to begin his senior year at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), where he was working toward a bachelor’s degree in computer science. However, that August, the Taliban seized control of the Afghani government, and Mohammadzai’s education — along with that of thousands of other students — was put on hold. “It was an uncertain future for all of the students,” says Mohammadzai.Mohammadzai ultimately did receive his undergraduate degree from AUAF in May 2023 after months of disruption, and after transferring and studying for one semester at the American University of Bulgaria. As he was considering where to take his studies next, Mohammadzai heard about the MIT Emerging Talent Certificate in Computer and Data Science. His friend graduated from the program in early 2023 and had only positive things to say about the education, community, and network. Creating opportunities to learn data sciencePart of MIT Open Learning, Emerging Talent develops global education programs for talented individuals from challenging economic and social circumstances, equipping them with the knowledge and tools to advance their education and careers.The Certificate in Computer and Data Science is a year-long online learning program for talented learners including refugees, migrants, and first-generation low-income students from historically marginalized backgrounds and underserved communities worldwide. The curriculum incorporates computer science and data analysis coursework from MITx, professional skill building, capstone projects, mentorship and internship options, and opportunities for networking with MIT’s global community. Throughout his undergraduate coursework, Mohammadzai discovered an affinity for data visualization, and decided that he wanted to pursue a career in data science. The opportunity with the Emerging Talent program presented itself at the perfect time. Mohammadzai applied and was accepted into the 2023-24 cohort, earning a spot out of a pool of over 2,000 applicants. “I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn more data science to build up on my existing knowledge,” he says.Expanding and deepening his data science knowledgeMohammadzai’s acceptance to the Emerging Talent program came around the same time that he began an MBA program at the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan. For him, the two programs made for a perfect pairing. “When you have data science knowledge, you usually also require domain knowledge — whether it’s in business or economics — to help with interpreting data and making decisions,” he says. “Analyzing the data is one piece, but understanding how to interpret that data and make a decision usually requires domain knowledge.”Although Mohammadzai had some data science experience from his undergraduate coursework, he learned new skills and new approaches to familiar knowledge in the Emerging Talent program.“Data structures were covered at university, but I found it much more in-depth in the MIT courses,” said Mohammadzai. “I liked the way it was explained with real-life examples.” He worked with students from different backgrounds, and used Github for group projects. Mohammadzai also took advantage of personal agency and job-readiness workshops provided by the Emerging Talent team, such as how to pursue freelancing and build a mentorship network — skills that he has taken forward in life.“I found it an exceptional opportunity,” he says. “The courses, the level of education, and the quality of education that was provided by MIT was really inspiring to me.”Applying data skills to real-world situationsAfter graduating with his Certificate in Computer and Data Science, Mohammadzai began a paid internship with TomorrowNow, which was facilitated by introductions from the Emerging Talent team. Mohammadzai’s resume and experience stood out to the hiring team, and he was selected for the internship program.TomorrowNow is a climate-tech nonprofit that works with philanthropic partners, commercial markets, R&D organizations, and local climate adaptation efforts to localize and open source weather data for smallholder farmers in Africa. The organization builds public capacity and facilitates partnerships to deploy and sustain next-generation weather services for vulnerable communities facing climate change, while also enabling equitable access to these services so that African farmers can optimize scarce resources such as water and farm inputs. Leveraging philanthropy as seed capital, TomorrowNow aims to de-risk weather and climate technologies to make high-quality data and products available for the public good, ultimately incentivizing the private sector to develop products that reach last-mile communities often excluded from advancements in weather technology.For his internship, Mohammadzai worked with TomorrowNow climatologist John Corbett to understand the weather data, and ultimately learn how to analyze it to make recommendations on what information to share with customers. “We challenged Hilal to create a library of training materials leveraging his knowledge of Python and targeting utilization of meteorological data,” says Corbett. “For Hilal, the meteorological data was a new type of data and he jumped right in, working to create training materials for Python users that not only manipulated weather data, but also helped make clear patterns and challenges useful for agricultural interpretation of these data. The training tools he built helped to visualize — and quantify — agricultural meteorological thresholds and their risk and potential impact on crops.” Although he had previously worked with real-world data, working with TomorrowNow marked Mohammadzai’s first experience in the domain of climate data. This area presented a unique set of challenges and insights that broadened his perspective. It not only solidified his desire to continue on a data science path, but also sparked a new interest in working with mission-focused organizations. Both TomorrowNow and Mohammadzai would like to continue working together, but he first needs to secure a work visa.Without a visa, Mohammadzai cannot work for more than three to four hours a day, which makes securing a full-time job impossible. Back in 2021, the American University of Afghanistan filed a P-1 (priority one) asylum case for their students to seek resettlement in the United States because of the potential threat posed to them by the Taliban.Mohammadzai’s hearing was scheduled for Feb. 1, but it was postponed after the program was suspended early this year. As Mohammadzai looks to the end of his MBA program, his future feels uncertain. He has lived abroad since 2021 thanks to student visas and scholarships, but until he can secure a work visa he has limited options. He is considering pursuing a PhD program in order to keep his student visa status, while he waits on news about a more permanent option. “I just want to find a place where I can work and contribute to the community.” More

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      Universal nanosensor unlocks the secrets to plant growth

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      Researchers from the Disruptive and Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP) interdisciplinary research group within the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology have developed the world’s first near-infrared fluorescent nanosensor capable of real-time, nondestructive, and species-agnostic detection of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) — the primary bioactive auxin hormone that controls the way plants develop, grow, and respond to stress.Auxins, particularly IAA, play a central role in regulating key plant processes such as cell division, elongation, root and shoot development, and response to environmental cues like light, heat, and drought. External factors like light affect how auxin moves within the plant, temperature influences how much is produced, and a lack of water can disrupt hormone balance. When plants cannot effectively regulate auxins, they may not grow well, adapt to changing conditions, or produce as much food. Existing IAA detection methods, such as liquid chromatography, require taking plant samples from the plant — which harms or removes part of it. Conventional methods also measure the effects of IAA rather than detecting it directly, and cannot be used universally across different plant types. In addition, since IAA are small molecules that cannot be easily tracked in real time, biosensors that contain fluorescent proteins need to be inserted into the plant’s genome to measure auxin, making it emit a fluorescent signal for live imaging.SMART’s newly developed nanosensor enables direct, real-time tracking of auxin levels in living plants with high precision. The sensor uses near infrared imaging to monitor IAA fluctuations non-invasively across tissues like leaves, roots, and cotyledons, and it is capable of bypassing chlorophyll interference to ensure highly reliable readings even in densely pigmented tissues. The technology does not require genetic modification and can be integrated with existing agricultural systems — offering a scalable precision tool to advance both crop optimization and fundamental plant physiology research. By providing real-time, precise measurements of auxin, the sensor empowers farmers with earlier and more accurate insights into plant health. With these insights and comprehensive data, farmers can make smarter, data-driven decisions on irrigation, nutrient delivery, and pruning, tailored to the plant’s actual needs — ultimately improving crop growth, boosting stress resilience, and increasing yields.“We need new technologies to address the problems of food insecurity and climate change worldwide. Auxin is a central growth signal within living plants, and this work gives us a way to tap it to give new information to farmers and researchers,” says Michael Strano, co-lead principal investigator at DiSTAP, Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, and co-corresponding author of the paper. “The applications are many, including early detection of plant stress, allowing for timely interventions to safeguard crops. For urban and indoor farms, where light, water, and nutrients are already tightly controlled, this sensor can be a valuable tool in fine-tuning growth conditions with even greater precision to optimize yield and sustainability.”The research team documented the nanosensor’s development in a paper titled, “A Near-Infrared Fluorescent Nanosensor for Direct and Real-Time Measurement of Indole-3-Acetic Acid in Plants,” published in the journal ACS Nano. The sensor comprises single-walled carbon nanotubes wrapped in a specially designed polymer, which enables it to detect IAA through changes in near infrared fluorescence intensity. Successfully tested across multiple species, including Arabidopsis, Nicotiana benthamiana, choy sum, and spinach, the nanosensor can map IAA responses under various environmental conditions such as shade, low light, and heat stress. “This sensor builds on DiSTAP’s ongoing work in nanotechnology and the CoPhMoRe technique, which has already been used to develop other sensors that can detect important plant compounds such as gibberellins and hydrogen peroxide. By adapting this approach for IAA, we’re adding to our inventory of novel, precise, and nondestructive tools for monitoring plant health. Eventually, these sensors can be multiplexed, or combined, to monitor a spectrum of plant growth markers for more complete insights into plant physiology,” says Duc Thinh Khong, research scientist at DiSTAP and co-first author of the paper.“This small but mighty nanosensor tackles a long-standing challenge in agriculture: the need for a universal, real-time, and noninvasive tool to monitor plant health across various species. Our collaborative achievement not only empowers researchers and farmers to optimize growth conditions and improve crop yield and resilience, but also advances our scientific understanding of hormone pathways and plant-environment interactions,” says In-Cheol Jang, senior principal investigator at TLL, principal investigator at DiSTAP, and co-corresponding author of the paper.Looking ahead, the research team is looking to combine multiple sensing platforms to simultaneously detect IAA and its related metabolites to create a comprehensive hormone signaling profile, offering deeper insights into plant stress responses and enhancing precision agriculture. They are also working on using microneedles for highly localized, tissue-specific sensing, and collaborating with industrial urban farming partners to translate the technology into practical, field-ready solutions. The research was carried out by SMART, and supported by the National Research Foundation of Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence And Technological Enterprise program. More

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      Guardian Ag’s crop-spraying drone is replacing dangerous pilot missions

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      Every year during the growing season, thousands of pilots across the country climb into small planes loaded with hundreds of pounds of pesticides and fly extremely close to the ground at upward of 140 miles an hour, unloading their cargo onto rows of corn, cotton, and soybeans.The world of agricultural aviation is as dangerous as it is vital to America’s farms. Unfortunately, fatal crashes are common. Now Guardian Ag, founded by former MIT Electronics Research Society (MITERS) makers Adam Bercu and Charles Guan ’11, is offering an alternative in the form of a large, purpose-built drone that can autonomously deliver 200-pound payloads across farms. The company’s drones feature an 18-foot spray radius, 80-inch rotors, a custom battery pack, and aerospace-grade materials designed to make crop spraying more safe, efficient, and inexpensive for farmers.“We’re trying to bring technology to American farms that are hundreds or thousands of acres, where you’re not replacing a human with a hand pump — you’re replacing a John Deere tractor or a helicopter or an airplane,” Bercu says.“With Guardian, the operator shows up about 30 minutes before they want to spray, they mix the product, path plan the field in our app, and it gives an estimate for how long the job will take,” he says. “With our fast charging, you recharge the aircraft while you fill the tank, and those two operations take about the same amount of time.”

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      From Battlebots to farmlandsAt a young age, Bercu became obsessed with building robots. Growing up in south Florida, he’d attend robotic competitions, build prototypes, and even dumpster dive for particularly hard-to-find components. At one competition, Bercu met Charles Guan, who would go on to major in mechanical engineering at MIT, and the two robot enthusiasts became lifelong friends.“When Charles came to MIT, he basically convinced me to move to Cambridge,” Bercu says. “He said, ‘You need to come up here. I found more people like us. Hackers!’”Bercu visited Cambridge, Massachusetts, and indeed fell in love with the region’s makerspaces and hacker culture. He moved soon after, and he and Guan began spending free time at spaces including the Artisans Asylum makerspace in Somerville, Massachusetts; MIT’s International Design Center; and the MIT Electronics Research Society (MITERS) makerspace. Guan held several leadership positions at MITERS, including facilities manager, treasurer, and president.“MIT offered enormous latitude to its students to be independent and creative, which was reflected in the degree of autonomy they permit student-run organizations like MITERS to have compared to other top-tier schools,” Guan says. “It was a key selling point to me when I was touring mechanical engineering labs as a junior in high school. I was well-known in the department circle for being at MITERS all the time, possibly even more than I spent on classes.”After Guan graduated, he and Bercu started a hardware consulting business and competed in the robot combat show Battlebots. Guan also began working as a design instructor in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, where he taught a section of Course 2.007 that tasked students with building go-karts.Eventually, Guan and Bercu decided to use their experience to start a drone company.“Over the course of Battlebots and building go-karts, we knew electric batteries were getting really cheap and electric vehicle supply chains were established,” Bercu explains. “People were raising money to build eVTOL [electric vertical take-off and landing] vehicles to transport people, but we knew diesel fuel still outperformed batteries over long distances. Where electric systems did outperform combustion engines was in areas where you needed peak power for short periods of time. Basically, batteries are awesome when you have a short mission.”That idea made the founders think crop spraying could be a good early application. Bercu’s family runs an aviation business, and he knew pilots who would spray crops as their second jobs.“It’s one of those high-paying but very dangerous jobs,” Bercu says. “Even in the U.S., we lose between 1 and 2 percent of all agriculture pilots each year to fatal accidents. These people are rolling the dice every time they do this: You’re flying 6 feet off the ground at 140 miles an hour with 800 gallons of pesticide in your tank.”After cobbling together spare parts from Battlebots and their consulting business, the founders built a 600-pound drone. When they finally got it to fly, they decided the time was right to launch their company, receiving crucial early guidance and their first funding from the MIT-affiliated investment firm the E14 Fund.The founders spent the next year interviewing crop dusters and farmers. They also started engaging with the Federal Aviation Administration.“There was no category for anything like this,” Bercu explains. “With the FAA, we not only got through the approval process, we helped them build the process as we went through it, because we wanted to establish some common-sense standards.”Guardian custom-built its batteries to optimize throughput and utilization rate of its drones. Depending on the farm, Bercu says his machines can unload about 1.5 to 2 tons of payload per hour.Guardian’s drones can also spray more precisely than planes, reducing the environmental impact of pesticides, which often pollute the landscapes and waterways surrounding farms.“This thing has the precision to spray the ‘Mona Lisa’ on 20 acres, but we’re not leveraging that functionality today,” Bercu says. “For the operator we want to make it very easy. The goal is to take someone who sprays with a tractor and teach them to spray with a drone in less than a week.”Scaling for farmersTo date, Guardian Ag has built eight of its aircraft, which are actively delivering payloads over California farms in trials with paying customers. The company is currently ramping up manufacturing in its 60,000-square-foot facility in Massachusetts, and Bercu says Guardian has a backlog of hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of drones.“Grower demand has been exceptional,” Bercu says. “We don’t need to educate them on the need for this. They see the big drone with the big tank and they’re in.”Bercu envisions Guardian’s drones helping with a number of other tasks like ship-to-ship logistics, delivering supplies to offshore oil rigs, mining, and other areas where helicopters and small aircraft are currently flown through difficult terrain. But for now, the company is focused on starting with agriculture.“Agriculture is such an important and foundational aspect of our country,” says Guardian Ag chief operating officer Ashley Ferguson MBA ’19. “We work with multigenerational farming families, and when we talk to them, it’s clear aerial spray has taken hold in the industry. But there’s a large shortage of pilots, especially for agriculture applications. So, it’s clear there’s a big opportunity.”Seven years since founding Guardian, Bercu remains grateful that MIT’s community opened its doors for him when he moved to Cambridge.“Without the MIT community, this company wouldn’t be possible,” Bercu says. “I was never able to go to college, but I’d love to one day apply to MIT and do my engineering undergrad or go to the Sloan School of Management. I’ll never forget MIT’s openness to me. It’s a place I hold near and dear to my heart.” More

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      in Energy

      MIT D-Lab students design global energy solutions through collaboration

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      This semester, MIT D-Lab students built prototype solutions to help farmers in Afghanistan, people living in informal settlements in Argentina, and rural poultry farmers in Cameroon. The projects span continents and collectively stand to improve thousands of lives — and they all trace back to two longstanding MIT D-Lab classes.For nearly two decades, 2.651 / EC.711 (Introduction to Energy in Global Development) and 2.652 / EC.712 (Applications of Energy in Global Development) have paired students with international organizations and communities to learn D-Lab’s participatory approach to design and study energy technologies in low-resource environments. Hundreds of students from across MIT have taken the courses, which feature visits from partners and trips to the communities after the semester. They often discover a passion for helping people in low-resource settings that lasts a lifetime.“Through the trips, students often gain an appreciation for what they have at home, and they can’t forget about what they see,” says D-Lab instructor Josh Maldonado ’23, who took both courses as a student. “For me, it changed my entire career. Students maintain relationships with the people they work with. They stay on the group chats with community members and meet up with them when they travel. They come back and want to mentor for the class. You can just see it has a lasting effect.”The introductory course takes place each spring and is followed by summer trips for students. The applications class, which is more focused on specific projects, is held in the fall and followed by student travel over winter break.“MIT has always advocated for going out and impacting the world,” Maldonado says. “The fact that we can use what we learn here in such a meaningful way while still a student is awesome. It gets back to MIT’s motto, ‘mens et manus’ (‘mind and hand’).”Curriculum for impactIntroduction to Energy in Global Development has been taught since around 2008, with past projects focusing on mitigating the effects of aquatic weeds for fisherman in Ghana, making charcoal for cookstoves in Uganda, and creating brick evaporative coolers to extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables in Mali.The class follows MIT D-Lab’s participatory design philosophy in which students design solutions in close collaboration with local communities. Along the way, students learn about different energy technologies and how they might be implemented cheaply in rural communities that lack basic infrastructure.“In product design, the idea is to get out and meet your customer where they are,” Maldonado explains. “The problem is our partners are often in remote, low-resource regions of the world. We put a big emphasis on designing with the local communities and increasing their creative capacity building to show them they can build solutions themselves.”Students from across MIT, including graduates and undergraduates, along with students from Harvard University and Wellesley College, can enroll in both courses. MIT senior Kanokwan Tungkitkancharoen took the introductory class this spring.“There are students from chemistry, computer science, civil engineering, policy, and more,” says Tungkitkancharoen. “I think that convergence models how things get done in real life. The class also taught me how to communicate the same information in different ways to cater to different people. It helped me distill my approach to what is this person trying to learn and how can I convey that information.”Tungkitkancharoen’s team worked with a nonprofit called Weatherizers Without Borders to implement weatherization strategies that enhance housing conditions and environmental resilience for people in the southern Argentinian community of Bariloche.The team built model homes and used heat sensing cameras to show the impact of weatherization strategies to locals and policymakers in the region.“Our partners live in self-built homes, but the region is notorious for being very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer,” Tungkitkancharoen says. “We’re helping our partners retrofit homes so they can withstand the weather better. Before the semester, I was interested in working directly with people impacted by these technologies and the current climate situation. D-Lab helped me work with people on the ground, and I’ve been super grateful to our community partners.”The project to design micro-irrigation systems to support agricultural productivity and water conservation in Afghanistan is in partnership with the Ecology and Conservation Organization of Afghanistan and a team from a local university in Afghanistan.“I love the process of coming into class with a practical question you need to solve and working closely with community partners,” says MIT master’s student Khadija Ghanizada, who has served as a teacher’s assistant for both the introductory and applications courses. “All of these projects will have a huge impact, but being from Afghanistan, I know this will make a difference because it’s a land-locked country, it’s dealing with droughts, and 80 percent of our economy depends on agriculture. We also make sure students are thinking about scalability of their solutions, whether scaling worldwide or just nationally. Every project has its own impact story.”Meeting community partnersNow that the spring semester is over, many students from the introductory class will travel to the regions they studied with instructors and local guides over the summer.“The traveling and implementation are things students always look forward to,” Maldonado says. “Students do a lot of prep work, thinking about the tools they need, the local resources they need, and working with partners to acquire those resources.”Following travel, students write a report on how the trip went, which helps D-Lab refine the course for next semester.“Oftentimes instructors are also doing research in these regions while they teach the class,” Maldonado says. “To be taught by people who were just in the field two weeks before the class started, and to see pictures of what they’re doing, is really powerful.”Students who have taken the class have gone on to careers in international development, nonprofits, and to start companies that grow the impact of their class projects. But the most immediate impact can be seen in the communities that students work with.“These solutions should be able to be built locally, sourced locally, and potentially also lead to the creation of localized markets based around the technology,” Maldonado says. “Almost everything the D-Lab does is open-sourced, so when we go to these communities, we don’t just teach people how to use these solutions, we teach them how to make them. Technology, if implemented correctly by mindful engineers and scientists, can be highly adopted and can grow a community of makers and fabricators and local businesses.” More

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      in Energy

      MIT students turn vision to reality

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      Life is a little brighter in Kapiyo these days.For many in this rural Kenyan town, nightfall used to signal the end to schoolwork and other family activities. Now, however, the darkness is pierced by electric lights from newly solar-powered homes. Inside, children in this off-the-grid area can study while parents extend daily activities past dusk, thanks to a project conceived by an MIT mechanical engineering student and financed by the MIT African Students Association (ASA) Impact Fund.There are changes coming, too, in the farmlands of Kashusha in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where another ASA Impact Fund project is working with local growers to establish an energy-efficient mill for processing corn — adding value, creating jobs, and sparking new economic opportunities. Similarly, plans are underway to automate processing of locally-grown cashews in the Mtwara area of Tanzania — an Impact Fund project meant to increase the income of farmers who now send over 90 percent of their nuts abroad for processing.Inspired by a desire by MIT students to turn promising ideas into practical solutions for people in their home countries, the ASA Impact Fund is a student-run initiative that launched during the 2023-24 academic year. Backed by an alumni board, the fund empowers students to conceive, design, and lead projects with social and economic impact in communities across Africa.After financing three projects its first year, the ASA Impact Fund received eight project proposals earlier this year and plans to announce its second round of two to four grants sometime this spring, says Pamela Abede, last year’s fund president. Last year’s awards totaled approximately $15,000.The fund is an outgrowth of MIT’s African Learning Circle, a seminar open to the entire MIT community where biweekly discussions focus on ways to apply MIT’s educational resources, entrepreneurial spirit, and innovation to improve lives on the African continent.“The Impact Fund was created,” says MIT African Students Association president Victory Yinka-Banjo, “to take this to the next level … to go from talking to execution.”Aimed at bridging a gap between projects Learning Circle participants envision and resources available to fund them, the ASA Impact Fund “exists as an avenue to assist our members in undertaking social impact projects on the African continent,” the initiative’s website states, “thereby combining theoretical learning with practical application in alignment with MIT’s motto.”The fund’s value extends to the Cambridge campus as well, says ASA Impact Fund board member and 2021 MIT graduate Bolu Akinola.“You can do cool projects anywhere,” says Akinola, who is originally from Nigeria and currently pursuing a master’s degree in business administration at Harvard University. “Where this is particularly catalyzing is in incentivizing folks to go back home and impact life back on the continent of Africa.”MIT-Africa managing director Ari Jacobovits, who helped students get the fund off the ground last year, agrees.“I think it galvanized the community, bringing people together to bridge a programmatic gap that had long felt like a missed opportunity,” Jacobovits says. “I’m always impressed by the level of service-mindedness ASA members have towards their home communities. It’s something we should all be celebrating and thinking about incorporating into our home communities, wherever they may be.”Alumni Board president Selam Gano notes that a big part of the Impact Fund’s appeal is the close connections project applicants have with the communities they’re working with. MIT engineering major Shekina Pita, for example, is from Kapiyo, and recalls “what it was like growing up in a place with unreliable electricity,” which “would impact every aspect of my life and the lives of those that I lived around.” Pita’s personal experience and familiarity with the community informed her proposal to install solar panels on Kapiyo homes.So far, the ASA Impact Fund has financed installation of solar panels for five households where families had been relying on candles so their children could do homework after dark.“A candle is 15 Kenya shillings, and I don’t always have that amount to buy candles for my children to study. I am grateful for your help,” comments one beneficiary of the Kapiyo solar project.Pita anticipates expanding the project, 10 homes at a time, and involving some college-age residents of those homes in solar panel installation apprenticeships.“In general, we try to balance projects where we fund some things that are very concrete solutions to a particular community’s problems — like a water project or solar energy — and projects with a longer-term view that could become an organization or a business — like a novel cashew nut processing method,” says Gano, who conducted projects in his father’s homeland of Ethiopia while an MIT student. “I think striking that balance is something I am particularly proud of. We believe that people in the community know best what they need, and it’s great to empower students from those same communities.”  Vivian Chinoda, who received a grant from the ASA Impact Fund and was part of the African Students Association board that founded it, agrees.“We want to address problems that can seem trivial without the lived experience of them,” says Chinoda. “For my friend and I, getting funding to go to Tanzania and drive more than 10 hours to speak to remotely located small-scale cashew farmers … made a difference. We were able to conduct market research and cross-check our hypotheses on a project idea we brainstormed in our dorm room in ways we would not have otherwise been able to access remotely.”Similarly, Florida Mahano’s Impact Fund-financed project is benefiting from her experience growing up near farms in the DRC. Partnering with her brother, a mechanical engineer in her home community of Bukavu in eastern DRC, Mahano is on her way to developing a processing plant that will serve the needs of local farmers. Informed by market research involving about 500 farmers, consumers, and retailers that took place in January, the plant will likely be operational by summer 2026, says Mahano, who has also received funding from MIT’s Priscilla King Gray (PKG) Public Service Center.“The ASA Impact Fund was the starting point for us,” paving the way for additional support, she says. “I feel like the ASA Impact Fund was really amazing because it allowed me to bring my idea to life.”Importantly, Chinoda notes that the Impact Fund has already had early success in fostering ties between undergraduate students and MIT alumni.“When we sent out the application to set up the alumni board, we had a volume of respondents coming in quite quickly, and it was really encouraging to see how the alums were so willing to be present and use their skill sets and connections to build this from the ground up,” she says.Abede, who is originally from Ghana, would like to see that enthusiasm continue — increasing alumni awareness about the fund “to get more alums involved … more alums on the board and mentoring the students.”Mentoring is already an important aspect of the ASA Impact Fund, says Akinola. Grantees, she says, get paired with alumni to help them through the process of getting projects underway. “This fund could be a really good opportunity to strengthen the ties between the alumni community and current students,” Akinola says. “I think there are a lot of opportunities for funds like this to tap into the MIT alumni community. I think where there is real value is in the advisory nature — mentoring and coaching current students, helping the transfer of skills and resources.”As more projects are proposed and funded each year, awareness of the ASA Impact Fund among MIT alumni will increase, Gano predicts.“We’ve had just one year of grantees so far, and all of the projects they’ve conducted have been great,” he says. “I think even if we just continue functioning at this scale, if we’re able to sustain the fund, we can have a real lasting impact as students and alumni and build more and more partnerships on the continent.” More