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      in Environment

      Podcast: Curiosity Unbounded, Episode 1 — How a free-range kid from Maine is helping green-up industrial practices

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      The Curiosity Unbounded podcast is a conversation between MIT President Sally Kornbluth and newly-tenured faculty members. President Kornbluth invites us to listen in as she dives into the research happening in MIT’s labs and in the field. Along the way, she and her guests discuss pressing issues, as well as what inspires the people running at the world’s toughest challenges at one of the most innovative institutions on the planet.

      In this episode, President Kornbluth sits down with Desirée Plata, a newly tenured associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. Her work focuses on making industrial processes more environmentally friendly, and removing methane — a key factor in global warming — from the air.

      FULL TRANSCRIPT:

      Sally Kornbluth: Hello, I’m Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT, and I’m thrilled to welcome you to this MIT community podcast, Curiosity Unbounded. In my first few months at MIT, I’ve been particularly inspired by talking with members of our faculty who recently earned tenure. Like their colleagues, they are pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Their passion and brilliance, their boundless curiosity, offer a wonderful glimpse of the future of MIT.

      Today, I’m talking with Desirée Plata, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. Desirée’s work is focused on predicting the environmental impact of  industrial processes and translating that research to real-world technologies. She describes herself as an environmental chemist. Tell me a little more about that. What led you to this work either personally or professionally?

      Desirée Plata: I guess I always loved chemistry, but before that, I was just a kid growing up in the state of Maine. I like to describe myself as a free-range kid. I ran around and talked to the neighbors and popped into the local businesses. One thing I observed in my grandparents’ town was that there were a whole lot of sick people. Not everybody, but maybe every other house. I remember being about seven or eight years old and driving home with my mom to our apartment one day and saying, “It’s got to be something everybody shares. The water, maybe something in the food or the air.” That was really my first environmental hypothesis.

      Sally: You had curiosity unbounded even when you were a child. 

      Desirée: That’s right. I spent the next several decades trying to figure it out and ultimately discovered that there was something in the water where my grandmother lived. In that time, I had earned a chemistry degree and came to MIT to do my grad work at MIT in the Woods Hole Oceanographic in environmental chemistry and chemical oceanography.

      Sally: You saw a pattern, you thought about it, and it took some time to get the tools to actually address the questions, but eventually you were there. That is great. As I understand it, you have two distinct areas of interest. One is getting methane out of the atmosphere to mitigate climate warming, and the other is making industrial processes more environmentally sound. Do you see these two as naturally connected?

      Desirée: I’ll start by saying that when I was young and thinking about this chemical contamination that I hypothesized was there in my grandmother’s neighborhood, one of the things—when I finally found out there was a Superfund site there—one of the things I discovered was that it was owned by close family friends. They were our neighbors. The decisions that they made as part of their industrial practice were just part of standard operating procedure. That’s when it clicked for me that industry is just going along, hoping to innovate to make the world a better place. When these environmental impacts occur, it’s often because they didn’t have enough information or know the right questions to ask. I was in graduate school at the time and said, “I’m at one of the most innovative places on planet Earth. I want to go knock on the doors of other labs and say, ‘What are you making and how can I help you make it better?'”

      If we all flash back to around 2008 or so, hydraulic fracturing was really taking off in this country and there was a lot of hypotheses about the number of chemicals being used in that process. It turns out that there are many hundreds of chemicals being used in the hydraulic fracturing process. My group has done an immense amount of work to study every groundwater we could get our hands on across the Appalachian region of the eastern United States, which is where a lot of this development took place and is still taking place. One of the things we discovered was that some of the biggest environmental impacts are actually not from the injected chemicals but from the released methane that’s coming into the atmosphere. Methane is growing at an exorbitant rate and is responsible for about as much warming as CO2 over the next 10 years. I started realizing that we, as engineers and scientists, would need a way to get these emissions back. To take them back from the atmosphere, if you will. To abate methane at very dilute concentrations. That’s what led to my work in methane abatement and methane mitigation.

      Sally: Interesting. Am I wrong about when we think about the impact of agriculture on the environment, that methane is a big piece of that as well?

      Desirée: You are certainly not wrong there. If you look at anthropogenic emissions or human-derived emissions, more than half are associated with agricultural practices. The cultivation of meat and dairy in particular. Cows and sheep are what are known as enteric methane formers. Part of their digestion process actually leads to the formation of methane. It’s estimated that about 28% of the global methane cycle is associated with enteric methane formers in our agricultural practices as humans. There’s another 18% that’s associated with fossil energy extraction.

      Sally: That’s really interesting. Thinking about your work then, particularly in agriculture, part of the equation has got to be how people live, what they eat, and production of methane as part of the sustainability of agriculture. The other part then seems to be how you actually, if you will, mitigate what we’ve already bought in terms of methane in the environment.

      Desirée: Yes, this is a really important topic right now.

      Sally: Tell me a little bit about, maybe in semi-lay terms, about how you think about removal of methane from the environment.

      Desirée: Recently, over 120 countries signed something called the Global Methane Pledge, which is essentially a pledge to reduce 45% of methane emissions by 2030. If you can do that, you can save about 0.5 degree centigrade warming by 2100. That’s a full third of the 1.5 degrees that politicians speak about. We can argue about whether or not that’s really the full extent of the warming we’ll see, but the point is that methane impacts near-term warming in our lifetimes. It’s one of the unique greenhouse gases that can do that.

      It’s called a short-lived climate pollutant. What that means is that it lives in the atmosphere for about 12 years before it’s removed. That means if you take it out of the atmosphere, you’re going to have a rapid reduction in the total warming of planet Earth, the total radiative forcing. Your question more specifically was about, how do we grapple with this? We’ve already omitted so much methane. How do we think about, as technologists, getting it back? It’s a really hard problem, actually. In the air in the room in front of us that we’re breathing, only two of the million molecules in front of us are methane. 417 or so are CO2. If you think direct air capture of CO2 is hard, direct air capture of methane is that much harder.

      The other thing that makes methane a challenge to abate is that activating the bonds in methane to promote its destruction or its removal is really, really tricky. It’s one of the smallest carbon-based molecules. It doesn’t have what we call “Van der Waals interactions”—there are no handles to grab onto. It’s not polar. That first destruction and that first C-H bond is what we as chemists would call “spin forbidden”. It’s hard to do and it takes a lot of energy to do that. One of the things we’ve developed in my lab is a catalyst that’s based on earth-abundant materials. There are some other groups at MIT that also work on these same types of materials. It’s able to convert methane at very low levels, down to the levels that we’re breathing in this room right now.

      Sally: That’s fascinating. do you see that as being something that will move to practical application?

      Desirée: One of the things that we’re doing to try to translate this to meaningful applications for the world is to scale the technology. We’re fortunate to have funding from several different sources, some private philanthropy groups and the United States Department of Energy. They’re helping us over the next three years try to scale this in places where it might matter most. Perhaps counterintuitive places, coal mines. Coal mines emit a lot of methane and it happens to be enriched in such a way that it releases energy. It might release enough energy to actually pay for the technology itself. Another place we’re really focused on is dairy.

      Sally: Really interesting. You mentioned at the beginning that you were at MIT, you left, you came back. I’m just wondering — I’m new to MIT and, obviously, I’m just learning it — but how do you think about the MIT community or culture in a way that is particularly helpful in advancing your work?

      Desirée: For me, I was really excited to come back to MIT because it is such an innovative place. If you’re someone who says, “I want to change the way we invent materials and processes,” it’s one of the best places you could possibly be. Because you can walk down the hall and bump into people who are making new things, new molecules, new materials, and say, “How can we incorporate the environment into our decision-making process?”

      As engineering professors, we’re guilty of teaching our students to optimize for performance and cost. They go out into their jobs, and guess what? That’s what they optimize for. We want to transition, and we’re at a point in our understanding of the earth system, that we could actually start to incorporate environmental objectives into that design process.

      Engineering professors of tomorrow should, say, optimize for performance and cost and the environment. That’s really what made me very excited to come back to MIT. Not just the great research that’s going on in every nook and corner of the Institute, but also thinking about how we might influence engineering education so that this becomes part of the fabric of how humans invent new practices and processes.

      Sally: If you look back in your past, you talked about your childhood in Maine and observing these patterns. You talked about your training and how you came to MIT and have really been, I think, thriving here. Was there a path not taken, a road not taken if you hadn’t become an environmental chemist? Was there something else you really wanted to do?

      Desirée: That’s such a great question. I have a lot of loves. I love the ocean. I love writing. I love teaching and I’m doing that, so I’m lucky there. I also love the beer business. My family’s in the beer business in Maine. I thought, as a biochemist, I would always be able to fall back on that if I needed to. My family’s not in the beer business because we’re particularly good at making beer, but because they’re interested in making businesses and creating opportunities for people. That’s been an important part of our role in the state of Maine.

      MIT really supports that side of my mind, as well. I love the entrepreneurial ecosystem that exists here. I love that when you bump into people and you have a crazy idea, instead of giving you all the reasons it won’t work, an MIT person gives you all the reasons it won’t work and then they say, “This is how we’re going to make it happen.” That’s really fun and exciting. The entrepreneurship environment that exists here is really very supportive of the translation process that has to happen to get something from the lab to the global impact that we’re looking for. That supports my mission just so much. It’s been a joy.

      Sally: That’s excellent. You weren’t actually tempted to become a yeast cell biologist in the service of beer production?

      Desirée: No, no, but I joke, “They only call me when something goes really bad.”

      Sally: That’s really funny. You experienced MIT as a student, now you’re experiencing it as a faculty member. What do you wish there was one thing about each group that the other knew?

      Desirée: I wish that, speaking with my faculty hat on, that the students knew just how much we care about them. I know that some of them do and really appreciate that. When I send an email at 3:00 in the morning, I get emails back from my colleagues at 3:00 in the morning. We work around the clock and we don’t do that for ourselves. We do that to make great sustainable systems for them and to create opportunity for them to propel themselves forward. To me, that’s one of the common unifying features of an MIT faculty member. We care really deeply about the student experience.

      As a student, I think that we’re hungry to learn. We wanted to really see the ins and outs of operation, how to run a research lab. I think sometimes faculty try to spare their students from that and maybe it’s okay to let them know just what’s going on in all those meetings that we sit through.

      Sally: That’s interesting. I think there are definitely things you find out when you become a faculty member and you’re like, “Oh, so this is what they were thinking.” With regard to the passion of the faculty about teaching, it really is remarkable here. I really think some of the strongest researchers here are so invested in teaching and you see that throughout the community.

      Desirée: It’s a labor of love for sure.

      Sally: Exactly. You talked a little bit about the passion for teaching. Were there teachers along your way that you really think impacted you and changed the direction of what you’re doing?

      Desirée: Yes, absolutely. I could name all of them. I had a kindergarten teacher who would stay after school and wait for my mom to be done work. I was raised by a single mom and her siblings and that was amazing. I had a fourth-grade teacher who helped promote me through school and taught me to love the environment. If you ask fourth graders if they saw any trash on the way to school, they’ll all say, “No.” You take them outside and give them a trash bag to fill up and it’ll be full by the end of the hour. This is something I’ve done with students in Cambridge to this day and this was many years on now. She really got me aware and thinking about environmental problems and how we might change systems.

      Sally: I think it’s really great for faculty to think about their own experiences, but also to hear people who become faculty members reflect on the great impact their own teachers had. I think the things folks are doing here are going to reverberate in their student’s minds for many, many years. It also is interesting in terms of thinking about the pipeline and when you get students interested in science. You talk about your own early years of education that really ultimately had an impact.

      It’s funny, when I became president at MIT, I got a note from my second-grade teacher. I remembered her like it was yesterday. These are people that really had an impact. It’s great that we honor teaching here at MIT and we acknowledge that this is going to have a really big impact on our student’s lives.

      Desirée: Yes, absolutely. It’s a privilege to teach these top talents. At many schools around the country, it’s just young people that have so much potential. I feel like when we walk into that classroom, we’ve got to bring inspiration with us along with the tangible, practical skills. It’s been great to see what they become.

      Sally: Tell me a little bit about what you do outside of work. When you ask faculty hobbies, sometimes I go, “Hobbies?” There must be something you spend your time on. I’m just curious.

      Desirée: We’re worried we’re going to fail this part of the Q&A. Yes. I have four children.

      Sally: You don’t need any hobbies then.

      Desirée: I know. It’s been the good graces of the academic institution. Just for those people who are out there thinking about going into academia and say, “It’s too hard. I couldn’t possibly have the work and life that I seek if I go into academia,” I don’t think that’s true anymore. I know there are a lot of women who paved the way for me, and men for that matter. I remember my PhD advisors being fully present for their children. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to do the same thing. I spend lots of time taking care of them right now. But we love being out in nature hiking, skiing, and kayaking and enjoying what the Earth gives us.

      Sally: It’s also fun to see that “aha” moment in your children when they start to learn a little bit about science and they get the idea that you really can discover things by observing closely. I don’t know if they realize they benefit from having parents who think that way, but I think that also stays with them through their lives.

      Desirée: My son is just waiting for the phone call to be able to be part of MIT’s toy design class.

      Sally: That’s fantastic.

      Desirée: As an official evaluator. Yes.

      Sally: In the last five years or so, we’ve been through the pandemic. In practical terms, how you think about your work and your life, what do you do that has improved your life? I always hate the words of “work-life balance” because they’re so intermeshed, but just for the broader community, how have you thought about that?

      Desirée: I’ve been thinking about my Zoom world and how I am still able to do quite a bit of talking to my colleagues and advancing the research mission and talking to my students that I wouldn’t have been able to do. Even pre-pandemic, it would’ve been pretty hard. We’re all really trained to interact more efficiently through these media and mechanisms. I know how to give a good talk on Zoom, for better or worse. I think that that’s been something that has been great.

      In the context of environment, I think a lot of us—this might be cliched at this point—but realize that there are things that we don’t need to get up on a plane for and perhaps we can work on the computer and interact in that way. I think that’s awesome. There’s not much that can replace real, in-person human interaction, but if it means that you can juggle a few more balls in the air and have your family feel valued and yourself feel valued while you’re also valuing your work that thing that is igniting for you, I think that’s a great outcome.

      Sally: I think that’s right. Unfortunately, though, your kids may never know the meaning of a snow day.

      Desirée: You got it.

      Sally: They may be on a remote school whenever we would’ve been home building snow forts.

      Desirée: As a Mainer, I appreciate this fully, and almost had to write a note this year. Just let them go outside.

      Sally: Exactly, exactly. As we’re wrapping up, just thinking about the future of climate work and coming back to the science, I think you’ve thought a lot about what you’re doing and impact on the climate. I’m just wondering, as you look around MIT, where you think we might have some of the greatest impact? How do you think about what some of your colleagues are doing? Because I’m starting to think a lot about what MIT’s real footprint in this area is going to be.

      Desirée: The first thing I want to say is that I think for a long time, the world’s been looking for a silver bullet climate solution. That is not how we got into this problem and it’s not how we’re going to get out of it.

      Sally: Exactly.

      Desirée: We need a thousand BBs. Fortunately, at MIT, there are many thousands of minds that all have something to contribute. I like to impose, especially on the undergraduates and the graduate researchers, our student population out there, think, “How can I bring my talents to bear on this really most pressing and important problem that’s facing our world right now?” I would say just whatever your skill is and whatever your passion is, try to find a way to marry those things together and find a way to have impact.

      The other thing I would say is that we think really differently about problems. That’s what might be needed. If you’re going to break systems, you need to come at it from a different perspective or a different angle. Encouraging people to think differently, as this community does so well, I think is going to be an enormous asset in bringing some solutions to the climate change challenge.

      Sally: Excellent. If you look back over your career, and even earlier than when you became a faculty member, what do you think the best advice is that you’ve ever been given?

      Desirée: There’s so much. I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of really great mentors. What is the best piece of advice? I think this notion of balancing work and not work. I’ve gotten two really key points of advice. One is about travel. I think that ties into this concept of COVID and whether now we can actually go remote for a lot of things. It was from an MIT professor. He said, “You know, the biggest thing you can do to protect your personal life and your life with your family is to say no and travel less. Travel eats up time on the front, in the back, and it’s your family that’s paying the price for that, so be really judicious about your choices.” That was excellent advice for me.

      Another female faculty member of mine said, “You have to prioritize your family like they are an appointment on your calendar and it’s okay when you do that.” I think those have been really helpful for me as I navigate and struggle with my own very mission-oriented self where I want to keep working and put my focus there, but know that it’s okay to maybe go for a walk and talk to real people.

      Sally: Go wild.

      Desirée: Yes, that’s right.

      Sally: This issue, actually, of saying no, not only to travel but thinking about where you really place your efforts and when there’s a finite amount of time. When I think about this—and advising junior faculty in terms of service—every faculty member is going to be asked way more things than they’re going to want to do. Yet, their service to the department, service to the Institute, is important, not only for their advancement but in how we create a community. I always advise people to say yes to the things they’re truly interested in and they’re passionate about, and there will be enough of those things.

      Desirée: I have a flowchart for when to say yes and when to say no. Having an interest is at the top of the list and then feeling like you’re going to have an impact. That’s something I think, when we do this service at MIT, we really are able to have an impact. It’s not just the oldest people in the room that get to drive the bus. They’re really listening and want to hear that perspective from everybody.

      Sally: That’s excellent. Thanks again, Desirée. I really enjoyed that conversation. To our audience, thanks again for listening to Curiosity Unbounded. I very much hope you’ll all join us again. I’m Sally Kornbluth. Stay curious. More

    • 63 Shares169 Views

      in Environment

      Recycling plastics from research labs

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      In 2019, MIT’s Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) Office collaborated with several research labs in the Department of Biology to determine the feasibility of recycling clean lab plastics. Based on early successes with waste isolation and plastics collection, EHS collaborated with GreenLabs Recycling, a local startup, to remove and recycle lab plastics from campus. It was a huge success.

      Today, EHS spearheads the campus Lab Plastics Recycling Program, and its EHS technicians regularly gather clean lab plastics from 212 MIT labs, transferring them to GreenLabs for recycling. Since its pilot stage, the number of labs participating in the program has grown, increasing the total amount of plastic gathered and recycled. In 2020, EHS collected 170 pounds of plastic waste per week from participating labs. That increased to 250 pounds per week in 2021. In 2022, EHS collected a total of 19,000 pounds, or 280 pounds of plastic per week.

      Joanna Buchthal, a research assistant with the MIT Media Lab, indicates that, prior to joining the EHS Lab Plastics Recycling Program, “our laboratory was continuously troubled by the substantial volume of plastic waste we produced and disheartened by our inability to recycle it. We frequently addressed this issue during our group meetings and explored various ways to repurpose our waste, yet we never arrived at a viable solution.”

      The EHS program now provides a solution to labs facing similar challenges with plastics use. After pickup and removal, the plastics are shredded and sold as free stock for injection mold product manufacturing. Buchthal says, “My entire lab is delighted to recycle our used tip boxes and transform them into useful items for other labs!”

      Recently, GreenLabs presented EHS with a three-gallon bucket that local manufacturers produced from 100 percent recycled plastic gathered from MIT labs. No fillers or additives were used in its production.

      Keeping it clean

      The now-growing EHS service and operation started as a pilot. In June 2019, MIT restricted which lab-generated items could be placed in single-stream recycling. MIT’s waste vendors were no longer accepting possibly contaminated waste, such as gloves, pipette tip boxes, bottles, and other plastic waste typically generated in biological research labs. The waste vendors would audit MIT’s single-stream recycling and reject items if they observed any contamination.

      Facing these challenges, the EHS coordinator for biology, John Fucillo, and several EHS representatives from the department met with EHS staff to brainstorm potential recycling solutions. Ensuring the decontamination of the plastic and coordinating its removal in an efficient way were the primary challenges for the labs, says Fucillo, who shared his and lab members’ concerns about the amount of plastic being thrown away with Mitch Galanek, EHS associate director for the Radiation Protection Program. Galanek says, “I immediately recognized the frustration expressed by John and other lab contacts as an opportunity to collaborate.”

      In July 2019, Galanek and a team of EHS technicians began segregating and collecting clean plastic waste from several labs within the biology department. EHS provided the labs with collection containers, and its technicians managed the waste removal over a four-month period, which produced a snapshot of the volume and type of waste generated. An audit of the waste determined that approximately 80 percent of the clean plastic waste generated was empty pipette tip boxes and conical tube racks.

      Based on these data, EHS launched a lab plastics recycling pilot program in November 2019. Labs from the Department of Biology and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research were invited to participate by recycling their clean, uncontaminated pipette tip boxes and conical tube racks. In addition to providing these labs with collection boxes and plastic liners, EHS also developed an online waste collection request tool to submit plastic pickup requests. EHS also collected the waste containers once they were full.

      Assistant professor of biology Seychelle Vos joined the pilot program as soon as she started her lab in fall 2019. Vos shares that “we already use pipette tips boxes that produce minimal waste, and this program allows us to basically recycle any part of the box except for tips. Pipette boxes are a significant source of plastic waste. This program helps us to be more environmentally and climate friendly.” 

      Given the increased participation in the program, EHS technician Dave Pavone says that plastic pickup is now a “regular component of our work schedules.”

      Together, the EHS technicians, commonly known as “techs,” manage the pickup of nearly 300 plastic collection containers across campus. Normand Desrochers, one of the EHS techs, shares that each morning he plans his pickup route “to get the job done efficiently.” While weekly pickups are a growing part of their schedules, Desrochers notes that everyone has been “super appreciative in what we do for their labs. And what we do makes their job that much easier, being able to focus on their research.”

      Barbara Karampalas, a lab operations manager within the Department of Biological Engineering, is one of many to express appreciation for the program: “We have a fairly large lab with 35 researchers, so we generate a lot of plastic waste … [and] knowing how many tip boxes we were using concerned me. I really appreciate the effort EHS has made to implement this program to help us reduce our impact on the environment.” The program also “makes people in the lab more aware of the issue of plastic waste and MIT’s commitment to reduce its impact on the environment,” says Karampalas.

      Looking ahead

      MIT labs continue to enthusiastically embrace the EHS Lab Plastics Recycling Program: 112 faculty across 212 labs are currently participating in the program. While only empty pipette tip boxes and conical tube racks are currently collected, EHS is exploring which lab plastics could be manufactured into products for use in the labs and repeatedly recycled. Specifically, the EHS Office is considering whether recycled plastic could be used to produce secondary containers for collecting hazardous waste and benchtop transfer containers used for collecting medical waste. As Seychelle notes, “Most plastics cannot be recycled in the current schemes due to their use in laboratory science.”

      Says Fucillo, “Our hope is that this program can be expanded to include other products which could be recycled from the wet labs.” John MacFarlane, research engineer and EHS coordinator for civil and environmental engineering, echoes this sentiment: “With plastic recycling facing economic constraints, this effort by the Institute deserves to be promoted and, hopefully, expanded.”

      “Having more opportunities to recycle ’biologically clean’ plastics would help us have a smaller carbon footprint,” agrees Vos. “We love this program and hope it expands further!”

      MIT labs interested in participating in the EHS Lab Plastics Recycling Program can contact pipetip@mit.edu to learn more. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in Environment

      Celebrating a decade of a more sustainable MIT, with a focus on the future

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      When MIT’s Office of Sustainability (MITOS) first launched in 2013, it was charged with integrating sustainability across all levels of campus by engaging the collective brainpower of students, staff, faculty, alumni, and partners. At the eighth annual Sustainability Connect, MITOS’s signature event, held nearly a decade later, the room was filled with MIT community members representing 67 different departments, labs, and centers — demonstrating the breadth of engagement across MIT.

      Held on Feb. 14 and hosting more than 100 staff, students, faculty, and researchers, the event was a forum on the future of sustainability leadership at MIT, designed to reflect on the work that had brought MIT to its present moment — focused on a net-zero future by 2026 and elimination of direct campus emissions by 2050 — and to plan forward.

      Director of Sustainability Julie Newman kicked off the day by reflecting on some of the questions that influenced the development of the MITOS framework, including: “How can MIT be a game-changing force for campus sustainability in the 21st century?” and “What are we solving for?” Newman shared that while these questions still drive the work of the office, considerations of the impact of this work have evolved. “We are becoming savvier at asking the follow-up question to these prompts,” she explained. “Are our solutions causing additional issues that we were remiss to ask, such as the impact on marginalized communities, unanticipated human health implications, and new forms of extraction?” Newman then encouraged attendees to think about these types of questions when envisioning and planning for the next decade of sustainability at MIT.

      While the event focused broadly on connecting the sustainability community at MIT, the day’s sessions tracked closely to the climate action plans that guided the office, 2015’s A Plan for Action on Climate Change and the current Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade. Both plans call for using the campus as a test bed, and at “A Model for Change: Field Reports from Campus as a Test Bed,” panelists Miho Mazereeuw, associate professor of architecture and urbanism, director of the Urban Risk Lab, and MITOS Faculty Fellow; Ken Strzepek, MITOS Faculty Fellow and research scientist at the MIT Center for Global Change Science; and Ippolyti Dellatolas graduate student and MITOS Climate Action Sustainability researcher shared ways in which they utilize the MIT campus as a test bed to design, study, and implement solutions related to flood risk, campus porosity, emissions reductions, and climate policy — efforts that can also inform work beyond MIT. Dellatolas reflected on success in this space. “With a successful campus as a test bed project, there is either output: we achieved these greenhouse gas emissions reductions or we learned something valuable in the process, so even if it fails, we understand why it failed and we can lend that knowledge to the next project,” she explained.

      Later in the morning, an “On the Horizon” panel focused on what key areas of focus, partnerships, and evolutions will propel the campus forward — anchored in the intersectional topics of decarbonization, climate justice, and experiential learning. To kick off the discussion, panelists John Fernández, director of the Environmental Solutions Initiative and professor of architecture; Joe Higgins, vice president for campus services and stewardship; Susy Jones, senior sustainability project manager; and Kate Trimble, senior associate dean for experiential learning shared which elements of their work have shifted in the last five years. Higgins commented on exciting progress being made in the space of renewables, electrification, smart thermostats, offshore wind, and other advances both at MIT and the municipal level. “You take this moment, and you think, these things weren’t in the moment five years ago when we were here on this stage. It brings a sense of abundance and optimism,” he concluded.

      Jones, for her part, shared how thinking about food and nutrition evolved over this period. “We’ve developed a lot of programming around nutrition. In the past few years, this new knowledge around the climate impact of our food system has joined the conversation,” she shared. “I think it’s really important to add that to the many years and decades of work that have been going on around food justice and food access and bring that climate conversation into that piece and acknowledge that, yes, the food system is accountable for about a quarter of global greenhouse gases.”

      Throughout the event, attendees were encouraged to share their questions and ideas for the future. In the closing workshop, “The Future of Sustainability at MIT,” attendees responded to questions such as, “What gives you hope?” and “What are we already doing well at MIT, what could we do more of?” The answers and ideas — which ranged from fusion to community co-design to a continued focus on justice — will inform MITOS’s work going forward, says Newman. “This is an activity we did within our core team, and the answers were so impactful and candid that we thought to bring it to the larger community to learn even more,” she says.

      That larger community was also recognized for their contributions with the first-ever Sustainability Awards, which honored nominated staff and students from departments across MIT for their contributions to building a more sustainable MIT. “This year we had a special opportunity to spotlight some of those individuals and teams leading transformative change at MIT,” explained Newman. “But everyone in the room and everyone working on sustainability at MIT in some way are our partners in this work. Our office could not do what we do without them.” More

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      in Environment

      MIT community in 2022: A year in review

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      In 2022, MIT returned to a bit of normalcy after the challenge of Covid-19 began to subside. The Institute prepared to bid farewell to its president and later announced his successor; announced five flagship projects in a new competition aimed at tackling climate’s greatest challenges; made new commitments toward ensuring support for diverse voices; and celebrated the reopening of a reimagined MIT Museum — as well as a Hollywood blockbuster featuring scenes from campus. Here are some of the top stories in the MIT community this year.

      Presidential transition

      In February, MIT President L. Rafael Reif announced that he planned to step down at the end of 2022. In more than 10 years as president, Reif guided MIT through a period of dynamic growth, greatly enhancing its global stature and magnetism. At the conclusion of his term at the end of this month, Reif will take a sabbatical, then return to the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In September, Reif expressed his gratitude to the MIT community at an Institute-wide dance celebration, and he was honored with a special MIT Dome lighting earlier this month.

      After an extensive presidential search, Sally Kornbluth, a cell biologist and the current provost of Duke University, was announced in October as MIT’s 18th president. Following an introduction to MIT that included a press conference, welcoming event, and community celebration, Kornbluth will assume the MIT presidency on Jan. 1, 2023.

      In other administrative transitions: Cynthia Barnhart was appointed provost after Martin Schmidt stepped down to become president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Sanjay Sarma stepped down as vice president for open learning after nine years in the role; professors Brent Ryan and Anne White were named associate provosts, while White was also named associate vice president for research administration; and Agustín Rayo was named dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

      Climate Grand Challenges

      MIT announced five flagship projects in its first-ever Climate Grand Challenges competition. These multiyear projects focus on unraveling some of the toughest unsolved climate problems and bringing high-impact, science-based solutions to the world on an accelerated basis. Representing the most promising concepts to emerge from the two-year competition that yielded 27 finalist projects, the five flagship projects will receive additional funding and resources from MIT and others to develop their ideas and swiftly transform them into practical solutions at scale.

      CHIPS and Science Act

      President Reif and Vice President for Research Maria Zuber were among several MIT representatives to witness President Biden’s signing of the $52 billion “CHIPS and Science” bill into law in August. Reif helped shape aspects of the bill and was a vocal advocate for it among university and government officials, while Zuber served on two government science advisory boards during the bill’s gestation and consideration. Earlier in the year, MIT.nano hosted U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, while MIT researchers released a key report on U.S. microelectronics research and manufacturing.

      MIT Morningside Academy for Design

      Supported by a $100 million founding gift, the MIT Morningside Academy for Design launched as a major interdisciplinary center that aims to build on the Institute’s leadership in design-focused education. Housed in the School of Architecture and Planning, the academy provides a hub that will encourage design work at MIT to grow and cross disciplines among engineering, science, management, computing, architecture, urban planning, and the arts.

      Reports of the Institute

      A number of key Institute reports and announcements were released in 2022. They include: an announcement of the future of gift acceptance for MIT: an announcement of priority MIT investments; a new MIT Values Statement; a renewed commitment to Indigenous scholarship and community; the Strategic Action Plan for Belonging, Achievement, and Composition; a report on MIT’s engagement with China; a report of the Working Group on Reimagining Public Safety at MIT; a report of the Indigenous Working Group; and a report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Arts, Culture, and DEI.

      Nobel Prizes

      MIT affiliates were well-represented among new and recent Nobel laureates who took part in the first in-person Nobel Prize ceremony since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. MIT-affiliated winners for 2022 included Ben Bernanke PhD ’79, K. Barry Sharpless, and Carolyn Bertozzi. Winners in attendance from 2020 and 2021 included Professor Joshua Angrist, David Julius ’77, and Andrea Ghez ’87.

      New MIT Museum

      A reimagined MIT Museum opened this fall in a new 56,000-square-foot space in the heart of Cambridge’s Kendall Square. The museum invites visitors to explore the Institute’s innovations in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math — and to take part in that work with hands-on learning labs and maker spaces, interactive exhibits, and venues to discuss the impact of science and technology on society.

      “Wakanda Forever”

      In November, the Institute Office of Communications and the Division of Student Life hosted a special screening of Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” The MIT campus had been used as a filming location in summer 2021, as one of the film’s characters, Riri Williams (also known as Ironheart), is portrayed as a student at the Institute.

      In-person Commencement returns

      After two years of online celebrations due to Covid-19, MIT Commencement returned to Killian Court at the end of May. World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala MCP ’78, PhD ’81 delivered the Commencement address, while poet Kealoha Wong ’99 spoke at a special ceremony for the classes of 2020 and 2021.

      Students win distinguished fellowships

      As in previous years, MIT students continued to shine. This year, exceptional undergraduates were awarded Fulbright, Marshall, Mitchell, Rhodes, and Schwarzman scholarships.

      Remembering those we’ve lost

      Among MIT community members who died this year were Robert Balluffi, Louis Braida, Ashton Carter, Tom Eagar, Dick Eckaus, Octavian-Eugen Ganea, Peter Griffith, Patrick Hale, Frank Sidney Jones, Nonabah Lane, Leo Marx, Bruce Montgomery, Joel Moses, Brian Sousa Jr., Mohamed Magdi Taha, John Tirman, Richard Wurtman, and Markus Zahn.

      In case you missed it:

      Additional top community stories of 2022 included MIT students dominating the 82nd Putnam Mathematical Competition, an update on MIT’s reinstating the SAT/ACT requirement for admissions, a new mathematics program for Ukrainian students and refugees, a roundup of new books from MIT authors, the renaming of the MIT.nano building, an announcement of winners of this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, the new MIT Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel, and MIT students winning the 45th International Collegiate Programming Contest for the first time in 44 years. More

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      in Security

      Food for thought, thought for food

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      According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, approximately 3.1 billion people worldwide were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2020. Meanwhile, in 2021 close to 2.3 billion people were moderately or severely food insecure. Given the strong link between malnutrition and income disparity, the numbers paint a grim picture representing one of the grand challenges of our time.

      “I’m probably an idealist,” says MIT Research Scientist Christopher Mejía Argueta, “but I really believe that if we change our diets and think about ways to help others, we can make a difference — that’s my motivation.”

      Mejía Argueta is the founder and director of the MIT Food and Retail Operations Lab (FaROL). He has more than a decade of experience in supply chain management, optimization, and effective data-driven decision-making on pressing issues like the evolution of end consumers for retail and e-tail supply chains, food waste, and equitable access to nutrition.  

      Supply chain network designs typically focus on minimizing costs without considering the implications (e.g., cost) of changes in consumer behavior. Mejía Argueta and his colleagues at the FaROL, however, are working to understand and design optimal supply chains to create high-performance operations based on consumer choice. “Understanding the significant factors of consumer choice and analyzing their evolution over time becomes critical to designing forward-looking retail operations with data-driven and customer-centric supply chains, inventory management, and distribution systems,” explains Mejía Argueta. 

      Play video

      One of his recent projects examined the challenges of small retailers worldwide. These mom-and-pop outlets, or nanostores, account for 50 percent of the global market share and are the primary source of consumer packaged goods for people in urban areas. Worldwide there are nearly 50 million nanostores, each serving between 100-200 households in a community. In India alone, there are 14 million nanostores known as kiranas. And while these retailers are more prevalent in emerging markets, they play an important role in developed markets, particularly in under-resourced communities, and are frequently located in “food deserts,” where they are the only source of essential goods for the community.  

      These small retailers thrive thanks, partly, to their ability to offer the right combination of affordability and convenience while fostering trust with local customers, who often lack access to a supermarket or a grocery store. They often exist in fragmented, densely populated areas where infrastructure and public transportation services are poor and consumers have limited purchasing power. But nanostore shopkeepers and owners are intimately familiar with their customers and their consumption patterns, which means they can connect those consumption patterns or information to the larger supply chain. According to Mejía Argueta, when it comes to the future of retail, nanostores will be the cornerstones of growth in emerging economies. 

      But it’s a complicated scenario. Mom-and-pop shops don’t have the capacity to offer a broad range of products to their customers, and often, they lack access to nutritious food options. Logistically speaking, it is expensive to supply them, and the cost-to-serve (i.e., the logistics cost) is between 10 to 30 percent more expensive than other retailers. According to Mejía Argueta, this has a significant ripple effect, impacting education, productivity, and, eventually, the economic performance of an entire nation.  

      “The high fragmentation of nanostores causes substantial distribution inefficiencies, especially in congested megacities,” he says. “At my lab, we study how to make nanostores more efficient and effective by considering various commercial and logistics strategies while considering inherent technical challenges. We need to serve these small retailers better to help them survive and thrive, to provide a greater impact for underserved communities and the entire economic ecosystem.”

      Play video

      Mejía Argueta and his team recently collaborated with Tufts University and the City of Somerville, Massachusetts, to conduct research on food access models in underserved communities. The Somerville Project explored various interventions to supply fresh produce in food desert neighborhoods.

      “A lack of nutrition does not simply mean a lack of food,” Mejía Argueta says. “It can also be caused by an overabundance of unhealthy foods in a given market, which is particularly troublesome for U.S. cities where people in underserved communities don’t have access to healthy food options. We believe that one way to combat the problem of food deserts is to supply these areas with healthy food options affordably and create awareness programs.”  

      The collaborative project saw Mejía Argueta and his colleagues assessing the impact of several intervention schemes designed to empower the end consumer. For example, they implemented a low-cost grocery delivery model similar to Instacart as well as a ride sharing system to transport people from their homes to grocery stores and back. They also collaborated with a nonprofit organization, Partnership for a Healthier America, and began working with retailers to deliver “veggie boxes” in underserved communities. Models like these provide low-income people access to food while providing dignity of choice, Mejía Argueta explains.  

      When it comes to supply chain management research, sustainability and societal impact often fall by the wayside, but Mejía Argueta’s bottom-up approach shirks tradition. “We’re trying to build a community, employing a socially driven perspective because if you work with the community, you gain their trust. If you want to make something sustainable in the long term, people need to trust in these solutions and engage with the ecosystem as a whole.”  

      And to achieve real-world impact, collaboration is key. Mejía Argueta says that government has an important role to play, developing policy to connect the models he and his colleagues develop in academia to societal challenges. Meanwhile, he believes startups and entrepreneurs can function as bridge-builders to link the flows of information, the flows of goods and cash, and even knowledge and security in an ecosystem that suffers from fragmentation and siloed thinking among stakeholders.

      Finally, Mejía Argueta reflects on the role of corporations and his belief that the MIT Industrial Liaison Program is essential to getting his research to the frontline of business challenges. “The Industrial Liaison Program does a fantastic job of connecting our research to real-world scenarios,” he says. “It creates opportunities for us to have meaningful interactions with corporates for real-world impact. I believe strongly in the MIT motto ‘mens et manus,’ and ILP helps drive our research into practice.” More

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      in Environment

      Nonabah Lane, Navajo educator and environmental sustainability specialist with numerous ties to MIT, dies at 46

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      Nonabah Lane, a Navajo educator and environmental sustainability specialist with numerous MIT ties to MIT, passed away in October. She was 46.

      Lane had recently been an MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow; MIT Solve 2019 Indigenous Communities Fellow; Department of Urban Studies and Planning guest lecturer and community partner; community partner with the PKG Public Service Center, Terrascope, and D-Lab; and a speaker at this year’s MIT Energy Week.

      Lane was a passionate sustainability specialist with experience spearheading successful environmental civic science projects focused in agriculture, water science, and energy. Committed to mitigating water pollutants and environmental hazards in tribal communities, she held extensive knowledge of environmental policy and Indigenous water rights. 

      Lane’s clans were Ta’neezahnii (Tangled People), born for Tł’izíłání (Manygoats People), and her maternal grandfathers are the Kiiyaa’aanii (Towering House People), and paternal grandfathers are Bįįh Bitoo’nii (Deer Spring People).

      Lane was a member of the Navajo Nation, Nenahnezad Chapter. At Navajo Power, she worked as the lead developer for solar and energy storage projects to benefit tribal communities on the Navajo Nation and other tribal nations in New Mexico. Prior to joining Navajo Power, Lane co-founded Navajo Ethno-Agriculture, a farm that teaches Navajo culture through traditional farming and bilingual education. Lane also launched a campaign to partner with local Navajo schools and tribal colleges to create their own water-testing capabilities and translate data into information to local farmers.

      “I had the opportunity to collaborate closely with Nonabah on a range of initiatives she was championing on energy, food, justice, water, Indigenous leadership, youth STEM, and more. She was innovative, entrepreneurial, inclusive, heartfelt, and positively impacted MIT on every visit to campus. She articulated important things that needed saying and expanded people’s thinking constantly. We will all miss her insights and teamwork,” says Megan Smith ’86, SM ’88, MIT Corporation life member; third U.S. chief technology officer and assistant to the president in the Office of Science and Technology Policy; and founder and CEO of shift7.

      In March 2019, Lane and her family — parents Gloria and Harry and brother Bruce — welcomed students and staff of the MIT Terrascope first-year learning community to their farm, where they taught unique, hands-on lessons about traditional Diné farming and spirituality. She then continued to collaborate with Terrascope, helping staff and students develop community-based work with partners in Navajo Nation. 

      Terrascope associate director and lecturer Ari Epstein says, “Nonabah was an inspiring person and a remarkable collaborator; she had a talent for connecting and communicating across disciplinary, organizational, and cultural differences, and she was generous with her expertise and knowledge. We will miss her very much.”

      Lane came to MIT in May 2019 for the MIT Solve Indigenous Communities Fellowship and Solve at MIT event, representing Navajo Ethno-Agriculture with her mother, Gloria Lane, and brother, Bruce Lane, and later serving as a Fellow Leadership Group member. 

      “Nonabah was an incredible individual who worked tirelessly to better all of her communities, whether it was back home on the Navajo Nation, here at MIT Solve, or supporting her family and friends,” says Alex Amouyel, executive director of MIT Solve. “More than that, Nonabah was a passionate mentor and caring friend of so many, carefully tending the next generation of Indigenous innovators, entrepreneurs, and change-makers. Her loss will be felt deeply by the MIT community, and her legacy of heartfelt service will not be forgotten.”

      She continued to be heavily involved across the MIT campus — named as a 2019 Media Lab Director’s Fellow, leading a workshop at the 2020 MIT Media Lab Festival of Learning on modernizing Navajo foods using traditional food science and cultural narrative, speaking at the 2022 MIT Energy Conference “Accelerating the Clean Energy Transition,” and taking part in the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) innovation weekly co-working groups for Covid-response related innovations. 

      “My CBA colleagues and I enjoyed working with Nonabah on rapid-prototyping for the Covid response, on expanding access to digital fabrication, and on ambitious proposals for connecting emerging technology with Indigenous knowledge,” says Professor Neil Gershenfeld, director, MIT Center for Bits and Atoms.

      Nonabah also guest lectured for the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning’s Indigenous Environmental Planning class in Spring 2022. Professors Lawrence Susskind and Gabriella Carolini and teaching assistant Dení López led the class in cooperation with Elizabeth Rule, Chickasaw Nation member and professor at American University. 

      Carolini shares, on behalf of Susskind and the class, “During this time, our teaching team and students from a broad range of fields at MIT had the deep honor of learning from and with the inimitable Nonabah Lane. Nonabah was a dedicated and critical partner to our class, representing in this instance Navajo Power — but of course, also so much more. Her broad experiences and knowledge — working with fellow Navajo members on energy and agriculture sovereignty, as well as in advancing entrepreneurship and innovation — reflected the urgency Nonabah saw in meeting the challenges and opportunities for sustainable and equitable futures in Navajo nation and beyond. She was a pure life force, running on all fires, and brought to our class a dedicated drive to educate, learn, and extend our reference points beyond current knowledge frontiers.” 

      Three MIT students — junior Isabella Gandara, Alexander Gerszten ’22, and Paul Picciano MS ’22 — who worked closely with Lane on a project with Navajo Power, recalled how she shared herself with them in so many ways, through her truly exceptional work ethic, stories about herself and her family, and the care and thought that she put into her ventures. They noted there was always something new to feel inspired by when in her presence. 

      “The PKG Public Service Center mourns the passing of Nonabah Lane. Navajo Ethno-Agriculture is a valued PKG Center partner that offers MIT undergraduate students the opportunity to support community-led projects with the Diné Community on Navajo Nation. Nonabah inspired students to examine broad social and technical issues that impact Indigenous communities in Navajo Nation and beyond, in many cases leaving an indelible mark on their personal and professional paths,” says Jill S. Bassett, associate dean and director of the PKG Public Service Center.

      Lane was a Sequoyah Fellow of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) and remained actively engaged in the AISES community by mentoring young people interested in the fields of science, engineering, agriculture, and energy. Over the years, Lane collaborated with leaders across tribal lands and beyond on projects related to agriculture, energy, sustainable chemicals, and finance. Lane had an enormous positive impact on many through her accomplishments and also the countless meaningful connections she helped to form among people in diverse fields.

      Donations may be made to a memorial fund organized by Navajo Power, PBC in honor of Nonabah Lane, in support of Navajo Ethno-Agriculture, the Native American nonprofit she co-founded and cared deeply for. More

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      in Energy

      Doubling down on sustainability innovation in Kendall Square

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      From its new headquarters in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, The Engine is investing in a number of “tough tech” startups seeking to transform the world’s energy systems. A few blocks away, the startup Inari is using gene editing to improve seeds’ resilience to climate change. On the MIT campus nearby, researchers are working on groundbreaking innovations to meet the urgent challenges our planet faces.

      Kendall Square is known as the biotech capital of the world, but as the latest annual meeting of the Kendal Square Association (KSA) made clear, it’s also a thriving hub of sustainability-related innovation.

      The Oct. 20 event, which began at MIT’s Welcome Center before moving to the MIT Museum for a panel discussion, brought together professionals from across Cambridge’s prolific innovation ecosystem — not just entrepreneurs working at startups, but also students, restaurant and retail shop owners, and people from local nonprofits.

      Titled “[Re] Imagining a Sustainable Future,” the meeting highlighted advances in climate change technologies that are afoot in Kendall Square, to help inspire and connect the community as it works toward common sustainability goals.

      “Our focus is on building a better future together — and together is the most important word there,” KSA Executive Director Beth O’Neill Maloney said in her opening remarks. “This is an incredibly innovative ecosystem and community that’s making changes that affect us here in Kendall Square and far, far beyond.”

      The pace of change

      The main event of the evening was a panel discussion moderated by Lee McGuire, the chief communications officer of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The panel featured Stuart Brown, chief financial officer at Inari; Emily Knight, chief operating officer at The Engine; and Joe Higgins, vice president for campus services and stewardship at MIT.

      “Sustainability is obviously one of the most important — if not the most important — challenge facing us as a society today,” said McGuire, opening the discussion. “Kendall Square is known for its work in biotech, life sciences, AI, and climate, and the more we dug into it the more we realized how interconnected all of those things are. The talent in Kendall Square wants to work on problems relevant for humanity, and the tools and skills you need for that can be very similar depending on the problem you’re working on.”

      Higgins, who oversees the creation of programs to reduce MIT’s environmental impact and improve the resilience of campus operations, focused on the enormity of the problem humanity is facing. He showed the audience a map of the U.S. power grid, with power plants and transmission lines illuminated in a complex web across the country, to underscore the scale of electrification that will be needed to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.

      “The U.S. power grid is the largest machine ever made by mankind,” Higgins said. “It’s been developed over 100 years; it has 7,000 generating plants that feed into it every day; it has 7 million miles of cable and wires; there are transformers and substations; and it lives in every single one of your walls. But people don’t think about it that much.”

      Many cities, states, and organizations like MIT have made commitments to shift to 100 percent clean energy in coming decades. Higgins wanted the audience to try to grasp what that’s going to take.

      “Hundreds of millions of devices and equipment across the planet are going to have to be swapped from fossil fuel to electric-based,” Higgins said. “Our cars, appliances, processes in industry, like making steel and concrete, are going to need to come from this grid. It’ll need to undergo a major modernization and transformation. The good news is it’s already changing.”

      Multiple panelists pointed to developments like the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act to show there was progress being made in reaching urgent sustainability goals.

      “There is a tide change coming, and it’s not only being driven by private capital,” Knight said. “There’s a huge opportunity here, and it’s a really important part of this [Kendall Square] ecosystem.”

      Chief among the topics of discussion was technology development. Even as leaders implement today’s technologies to decarbonize, people in Kendall Square keep a close eye on the new tech being developed and commercialized nearby.

      “I was trying to think about where we are with gene editing,” Brown said. “CRISPR’s been around for 10 years. Compare that to video games. Pong was the first video game when it came out in 1972. Today you have Chess.com using artificial intelligence to power chess games. On gene editing and a lot of these other technologies, we’re much closer to Pong than we are to where it’s going to be. We just can’t imagine today the technology changes we’re going to see over the next five to 10 years.”

      In that regard, Knight discussed some of the promising portfolio companies of The Engine, which invests in early stage, technologically innovative companies. In particular, she highlighted two companies seeking to transform the world’s energy systems with entirely new, 100 percent clean energy sources. MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems is working on nuclear fusion reactors that could provide abundant, safe, and constant streams of clean energy to our grids, while fellow MIT spinout Quaise Energy is seeking to harvest a new kind of deep geothermal energy using millimeter wave drilling technology.

      “All of our portfolio companies have a focus on sustainability in one way or another,” Knight said. “People who are working on these very hard technologies will change the world.”

      Knight says the kind of collaboration championed by the KSA is important for startups The Engine invests in.

      “We know these companies need a lot of people around them, whether from government, academia, advisors, corporate partners, anyone who can help them on their path, because for a lot of them this is a new path and a new market,” Knight said.

      Reasons for hope

      The KSA is made up of over 150 organizations across Kendall Square. From major employers like Sanofi, Pfizer, MIT, and the Broad Institute to local nonprofit organizations, startups, and independent shops and restaurants, the KSA represents the entire Kendall ecosystem.

      O’Neill Maloney celebrated a visible example of sustainability in Kendall Square early on by the Charles River Conservancy, which has built a floating wetland designed to naturally remove harmful algae blooms from Charles River.

      Other examples of sustainability work in the neighborhood can be found at MIT. Under its “Fast Forward” climate action plan, the Institute has set a goal of eliminating direct emissions from its campus by 2050, including a near-term milestone of achieving net-zero emissions by 2026. Since 2014, when MIT launched a five-year plan for action on climate change, net campus emissions have already been cut by 20 percent by making its campus buildings more energy efficient, transitioning to electric vehicles, and enabling large-scale renewable energy projects, among other strategies.

      In the face of a daunting global challenge, such milestones are reason for optimism.

      “If anybody’s going to be able to do this [shift to 100 percent clean energy] and show how it can be done at an urban, city scale, it’s probably MIT and the city of Cambridge,” McGuire said. “We have a lot of good ingredients to figure this out.”

      Throughout the night, many speakers, attendees, and panelists echoed that sentiment. They said they see plenty of reasons for hope.

      “I’m absolutely optimistic,” Higgins said. “I’m seeing utility companies working with businesses working with regulators — people are coming together on this topic. And one of these new technologies being commercialized is going to change things before 2030, whether its fusion, deep geothermal, small modular nuclear reactors, the technology is just moving so quickly.” More

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      in Environment

      “Drawing Together” is awarded Norman B. Leventhal City Prize

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      “Drawing Together,” a social and ecological resilience project in New York City, has been awarded the 2022 Norman B. Leventhal City Prize. 

      The project is a collaboration between MIT faculty, researchers, and students, and Green City Force (GCF), a nonprofit organization in New York City that trains young people for careers with a sustainability focus while they serve local public housing communities.

      The winning proposal was submitted by a team led by MIT’s Miho Mazereeuw, associate professor and director of the Urban Risk Lab; Nicholas de Monchaux, professor and head of the Department of Architecture; Carlos Sandoval Olascoaga PhD ’21, a postdoc in the Department of Architecture and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing; and Tonya Gayle, executive director of Green City Force.

      Through their Service Corps (affiliated with the national AmeriCorps service and training program), GCF trains young residents of New York City Housing Authority public housing to participate in large-scale environmental and health initiatives in public housing and other local communities.

      The Drawing Together team will collaborate with GCF on its “Eco-Hubs,” an urban farms initiative. In a co-design effort, Drawing Together will create a new digital platform to support community-led planning and design processes for the siting, design, and operation of these spaces. This platform will also facilitate the scaling-up of community engagement with Eco-Hubs.

      The $100,000 triennial prize was established in 2019 by MIT’s Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU) to catalyze innovative interdisciplinary urban design and planning approaches worldwide to improve the environment as well as the quality of life for residents. The first awardee was “Malden River Works for Waterfront Equity and Resilience,” a project for a civic waterfront space in Malden, Massachusetts.

      The 2022 Leventhal City Prize call for submissions sought proposals that focused on digital urbanism — investigating how life in cities can be improved using digital tools that are equitable and responsive to social and environmental conditions. The jury reviewed proposals for projects that offered new urban design and planning solutions using evolving data sources and computational techniques that transform the quality of life in metropolitan environments.

      “Digital urbanism is the intersection between cities, design, and technology and how we can identify new ways to include technology and design in our cities,” says LCAU Director Sarah Williams. “Drawing Together perfectly exemplifies how digital urbanism can assist in the co-development of design solution and improve the quality of life for the public.”

      The team will expand the workforce training currently offered by GCF to incorporate digital skills, with the goal of developing and integrating a sustainability-focused data science curriculum that supports sustainable urban farming within the Eco-Hubs.

      “What is most inspiring about this project is that young people are the writers, rather than passive subjects of urban transformation,” says juror Garrett Dash Nelson, president and head curator of the Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library. “By taking the information and design architectures and making them central to youth-driven decisions about environmental planning, this project has the potential to activate a new participatory paradigm that will resonate far beyond New York City.”

      “In addition to community-based digital methods for urban environmental design, this project has the potential to strengthen computational skills in green job opportunities for youth that the Green City Force Eco-Hubs serve,” says juror James Wescoat, MIT Aga Khan Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture and Geography. 

      In addition to Nelson and Wescoat, the jury for this year’s competition included Lilian Coral, director of National Strategy and Technology Innovation at the Knight Foundation; Jose Castillo, principal at a|911 and professor of urbanism at CENTRO University; and Nigel Jacob, senior fellow at the Burnes Center for Global Impact at Northeastern University.

      The prize jury identified two finalists. Co-HATY Accelerator Team is a multidisciplinary project that helps provide housing and social support to Ukraine’s displaced residents. The team of urban planners, information technologists, architects, and sociologists are using digital technology to better connect residents across the country with housing opportunities. Team members include Brent D. Ryan, associate professor of urban design and public policy at MIT, and Anastasiya Ponomaryova, urban designer and co-founder of co-HATY.

      “The Ukraine’s team proposal makes a point of the relevance of architecture and planning in the context of humanitarian crises,” says Castillo. “It forces us to deploy techniques, methods, and knowledge to resolve issues ‘on demand.’ Different from a view of architecture and planning as ’slow practices,’ where design processes, research, pedagogies, and buildings take a long time to be deployed and finalized, this research shows an agile but thorough approach to the immediate and the contingent.”

      The second finalist is “Ozymandias: Using Artificial Intelligence to Map Urban Power Structures and Produce Fairer Results for All,” a project led by the Portland, Maine, Society for Architecture. The team behind this project seeks to encourage broader civic participation and positive change in municipal governments. By using emerging AI computation tools to illuminate patterns in power structures and decision-making, the team hopes to highlight correctable yet previously unrecognizable inequities. Principal investigator for the project is Jeff Levine, a lecturer in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning and a past director of planning and urban development for Portland.

      “The Ozymandias project recognizes an important truth about urban decision-making — that it is neither a bottom-up nor a top-down structure, but a tangled and often obscure network of formal and informal power systems,” says Nelson. “By bringing analytical methods to bear on a perennial question for civic action — who really governs in a democratic system? — the project offers a provocative methodology for examining why nominally participatory urban processes so often fail at producing inclusive and equitable outcomes.” More