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      Powering the future in Mongolia

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      Nestled within the Tuul River valley and embraced by the southern Khentii Mountain Range, Ulaanbaatar (UB), Mongolia’s largest city, presents itself as an arena where nature’s forces wage an unrelenting battle against human resilience. The capital city is an icy crucible, with bone-chilling winters that plummet temperatures to an astonishing -40 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 degrees Celsius). Mongolia, often hailed with the celestial moniker of “The Land of the Eternal Blue Sky,” paradoxically succumbs to a veil of pollution and energy struggles during the winter months, obscuring the true shade of the cherished vista.

      To understand the root of these issues, MIT students from classes 22.S094 (Climate and Sustainability Systems: Decarbonizing Ulaanbaatar at Scale) and 21A.S01 (Anthro-Engineering: Decarbonization at the Million-Person Scale) visited Mongolia to conduct on-site surveys, diving into the diverse tapestry of local life as they gleaned insight from various stakeholder groups. Setting foot on Mongolian soil on a crisp day in January, they wasted no time in shaking off the weariness of their arduous 17-hour flight, promptly embarking on a waiting bus. As they traversed the vast expanse of the countryside, their eyes were captivated by snow-laden terrain.

      That is, until a disconcerting sight unfolded — thick smog, akin to ethereal pillars, permeated the cityscape ahead. These imposing plumes emanated from the colossal smokestacks of Ulaanbaatar’s coal-fired power plants, steadfastly churning electricity and heat to fuel Mongolia’s central and district energy systems. Over 93 percent of the nation’s energy comes from coal-fired power plants, where the most considerable load is caused by household consumption. Nevertheless, with nearly half of Ulaanbaatar’s population disconnected from the central heating networks, one of Mongolia’s most significant sources of pollution comes from coal-burning stoves in the residential settlements known as the ger districts. Over the past three decades, since the democratic revolution in 1990, Mongolians have grappled with escalating concerns surrounding energy provision, accessibility, and sustainability.

      Engineers who think like anthropologists

      “We find ourselves compelled to venture on-site, engaging in direct conversations with the locals, and immersing ourselves in the fabric of daily life to uncover what we don’t know,” emphasized Michael Short, professor in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and faculty lead of MIT’s NEET Climate and Sustainability Systems thread, shortly before heading to Mongolia.

      The Ulaanbaatar Project sprang from a multiyear collaboration between MIT and the National University of Mongolia (NUM). Shedding light on the matter, Professor Munkhbat Byambajav of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at NUM underscored the paramount importance of mitigating environmental pollution at an economic scale to alleviate the heavy burden borne by the people.

      Class 22.S094 is offered through MIT’s New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) program, which allows students with multidisciplinary interests to collaborate across departments within four different subject areas, or threads. In this capstone project, students consider ways to decarbonize a city like Ulaanbaatar, transitioning from burning coal briquettes to a more sustainable, energy-efficient solution, given several parameters and constraints set by the local context.

      One of the ideas students have recently explored is a thermal battery made with molten salt that can store enough energy to heat a ger for up to 12 hours with added insulation for cooling curve regulation. The Mongolian ger, meaning home, is a dome-like portable dwelling covered in felt and canvas, held together by ropes traditionally crafted of animal hair or wool. Over several semesters, students have been testing a version of their proposed idea on campus, working with a prototype that weighs around 35 pounds.

      Nathan Melenbrink, the lead instructor of NEET’s Climate and Sustainability Systems (CSS) thread, believes that the complexity of the Ulaanbaatar capstone project allows students to reject the one-way solution approach and instead consider challenges with a nonprescriptive mindset. The uniqueness of the CSS thread is that students are asked to build on the previous findings from the past cohort and iterate on their designs each year. This workflow has allowed the project to mature and advance in ways that may not be feasible within a semester schedule. When asked how the recent trip impacted the ongoing research back on campus, Melenbrink states, “In light of the recent trip to Mongolia, students are beginning to see the impact of cultural immersion and social awareness leveraging the technical scope and rigor of their work.”

      Course 21A.S01, taught by Professor Manduhai Buyandelger of the MIT Anthropology Section, proved instrumental in deepening students’ understanding of the intricate dynamics at play. She asks, “The prototype works in the lab, but does it work in real life once you factor in the challenges in the larger structures of delivery, production, and implementation in Mongolia?”

      This recognition of the social dimensions of engineering permeated the early stages of the UB project, engaging all participants, including students from MIT and NUM, professionals residing in Mongolia, and local nongovernmental organizations, fostering what Buyandelger aptly describes as “a collaboration on multiple scales: trans-disciplinary and transcontinental.” Lauren Bonilla, co-lecturer for the anthropology course, was crucial in devising the first onsite trip to Mongolia. Drawing upon her extensive ethnographic research in Mongolia that spans decades, Bonilla remarks, “To me, engineering is a highly social discipline.” She further stresses how anthro-engineering elevates the social dimensions of engineering by critically questioning the framing of problems and solutions, stating, “It draws on anthropological insights and methods, like ethnography, to bring a human face to the users of a technology and adds complexity and nuance to the social constraints that limit designs.”

      Making of khorkhog

      Amidst the frigid atmosphere, a traditional Mongolian ger stands in front of the Nuclear Science Laboratory at the National University of Mongolia, emitting warm steam from its roof. The faculty and students of NUM organize a welcoming event inside the ger, inviting everyone to partake in a khorkhog cookout. Earlier that week, a remark from the Mongolian energy representative stood out during one of the presentations: “We need powerful heat. Solar is not enough, and electricity is not enough. Mongolians need fire,” he had emphasized.

      Indeed, the culinary delight known as khorkhog demands the relentless embrace of scorching flames. The process involves a large metal jug, stones, fire, and lamb. With skillful precision, the volunteer chef places the fire-heated stones and large pieces of lamb into the cooking container, triggering a cascade of steam that fills the ger, accompanied by the sounds of sizzling and hissing. Everyone waits patiently as the cook carefully inspects the dish, keenly listening for signs of readiness. And when the time comes, a feast is shared among all, complemented by steam-cooked potatoes, freshly sliced onions, and vegetables. In this moment, the presence of fire symbolizes a profound connection with the heart of Mongolian culture, evoking a deep resonance among the gathered crowd as they partake in this cherished staple meal.

      The distance between two points

      Familiar faces form a grid on the computer screen as the standing meeting between the students in Massachusetts and Ulaanbaatar begins. Sharing the morning (evening in Mongolia) for updates has been a critical effort by both sides to stay engaged and make decisions together. NEET CSS students in Cambridge proceeded to share their latest findings.

      Lucy Nester, a nuclear science and engineering major, has been diligently working on developing a high-efficiency electrical heating solution for individual consumers. Her primary focus is leveraging the discounted electricity rates available in the ger districts and utilize existing infrastructure. Recognizing the importance of maximum flexibility in heating the brick, Nester emphasizes the “no one-size-fits-all” solution. She shares the results of her test trials, which involve both inductive and resistive heating methods, outlining the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Despite her limited experience in electrical engineering and circuit building, Nester has impressively overcome the steep learning curve. She enthusiastically describes her UB trip as “one of the most remarkable experiences I’ve had during my time at MIT.”

      Darshdeep Grewal, a dedicated materials science and engineering major with a strong passion for data science and computation, has been diligently conducting research on convection heating using COMSOL Multiphysics. In his investigation, Grewal explores the correlation between air temperature and heating, investigates the impact of convecting air arrangement on the heating process, and examines the conditions that may contribute to overheating. Leveraging his expertise in computational workflows, Grewal presents an impressive collection of heatmap simulations derived from the extensive data accumulated by his team throughout the project. Recognizing the immense value of these simulations in modeling complex scenarios, he highlights the importance of running experiments concurrently with simulations to ensure accurate calibration of results, stating, “It’s important to stay rooted in reality.”

      Arina Khotimsky, another materials science and engineering major, has actively engaged in NEET’s Climate and Sustainability Systems thread since her sophomore year. Balancing the demands of her final semester at MIT and the upcoming review of 22.S094, Khotimsky reveals how she has seamlessly integrated her project involvement into her energy studies minor. Reflecting on her journey, she remarks, “Working on the Ulaanbaatar project has taught me the significance of taking local context into account while suggesting solutions as an engineer.” Khotimsky has been tirelessly iterating and refining the insulation box prototype, which holds the thermal battery and controls the rate at which the battery releases heat. In addition, the on-site observations have unveiled another design challenge — ensuring the insulation box functions as a secure and dependable means of transportation. 

      To “engineer” means to contrive through one’s deliberate use of skills. What confronted the UB Project team on site was not the limitations of skill or technology, but the real-world constraints often amiss in the early equation: the people and their everyday lives. With over 6,195 miles of distance between the two groups, it takes more than just dedication to make a collaboration blossom. That may be the desire for a positive impact. Moreover, it may be the goal of cultivating a healthier relationship with energy that spans a million-person scale. No matter where you are, there is no one solution to the complex story of energy. This progressive realization brings the two teams together every two weeks in virtual space, bridging the distance between the two points.  More

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      Arina Khotimsky ’23 awarded 2023 Michel David-Weill Scholarship

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      Arina Khotimsky ’23 was selected for the 2023 Michel David-Weill scholarship, awarded each year to one student from the United States in a master’s program at Sciences Po in France who exemplifies the core values embodied by its namesake: excellence, leadership, multiculturalism, and high achievement. This fall Khotimsky will enter the master’s program in international energy, which is part of Sciences Po’s Paris School of International Affairs. The program aims to provide a holistic understanding of energy issues, across disciplines and across all energy sources.

      Khotimsky graduated this year from MIT with a major in materials science and engineering, and minors in energy studies and in French.

      Asked what drew her to her major, Khotimsky talked about her love of the outdoors. Seeing effects of climate change on the world around made her made her want to explore solutions. “I settled on material science and engineering because there’s so many different applications: whether it be solar power, developing different battery materials and chemistries, or some other technology. Getting that technical background at MIT can help me understand how we can implement solutions around the world, with diverse cultures in mind.”

      One of Khotimsky’s material sciences professors, Polina Anikeeva, observes that “Arina possesses the spirit of creativity, optimism, and unparalleled work ethic — all necessary ingredients to solve energy and climate challenges of our century.”

      Khotimsky is well aware of the big stakes in discussions around energy policy. She explains, “We have to cooperate internationally to make a dent in carbon emissions. The United States is historically the biggest CO2 emitter and has a large role to play to transition to a more sustainable future.”

      Her interest in studying climate change solutions on a world scale also converged with her interest in studying other languages and cultures. Her main language studies at MIT have been in French, although she also speaks Russian and beginner Chinese.

      Due to her achievement in MIT French classes, Khotimsky was one of nine students selected for a two-week cultural immersion program in Paris last June, led by MIT Professor Bruno Perreau. Perreau also had her in class last fall, and spoke about the energy and commitment she brought to class, describing her as “one of my very best students since I started to teach 22 years ago.” Khotimsky is excited to be living in France for her master’s program and putting her French skills to work.

      Khotimsky’s impressive undergraduate career has also included being co-president of the MIT Energy and Climate Club, and participating in the MIT delegation to 2022 Conference of the Parties summit (COP27) of the United Nations in Egypt last November. She also participated in the NEET Decarbonizing Ulaanbaatar project, traveling to Mongolia in Independent Activities Period 2023 with a group of students and instructors to work on clean heating technologies for traditional ger homes.

      In addition to her academic work and other extracurricular activities, Khotimsky was also a member of the MIT women’s rowing team. She walked onto the team as a first-year student, making it into the Varsity 8 boat for her senior season. Holly Metcalf, MIT women’s varsity openweight rowing coach, explains, “Being on the rowing team has in many ways become a metaphor for what Arina has come to study … She realized that rowing is about so much more than physics — it is about who one must become as an individual to contribute to the sum of mental and physical strength of the entire team.” Khotimsky was recognized on May 22 by the Patriot League, who named her the 2023 Patriot League Women’s Rowing Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

      Looking ahead, Khotimsky envisions her future involving international energy negotiations or policy. “The master’s degree I’m pursuing in international relations will help me develop skills to communicate with stakeholders from around the world and figure out how to implement solutions globally.” More

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      Embracing life’s surprises

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      Experiments often yield unexpected results. In research and in life, MIT Associate Professor Cem Tasan has learned to embrace that uncertainty.

      “Very often we start with an idea or a hypothesis, and to test that idea we design experiments, and when we run the experiments, we see something totally different,” says Tasan, the newly tenured Thomas B. King Associate Professor of Metallurgy.

      Tasan has used those surprises to explore the boundaries of metallurgy and solid mechanics, gleaning new insights into how metals break and deform, and designing new kinds of damage-resistant alloys.

      “As they say, science is like taking a walk in the hills,” Tasan says. “You see the mountain far away, and that’s where you want to go, but as you head toward it, you see a beautiful flower on a different pathway, so you check that out. That happens so often to [my group]. It’s exciting.”

      Tasan has extended that approach to his career, leading him to take a faculty position at MIT despite not seeing the campus until his first job interview.

      “Being at MIT, or even in the USA, was never on my radar,” Tasan says. “It just wasn’t part of a plan.”

      That mindset has also helped him mentor students, whom he’s learned never to judge based on initial impressions.

      “I had a really bright student reach out and say ‘Everything is great, we have funding, we are productive, but I’m not sure I like what I’m doing,’” Tasan recalls. “We talked and identified another direction closer to the student’s interests, but that would mean we might not have secure funding or the necessary know-how, so there were all these disadvantages.

      “But we went down that road and it was amazing, because now this student was doing the research they really liked, and that successful student became an amazing student. Mentoring is complicated because on the outside things can seem fine, but the key idea is to pay attention to small details and keep communicating with these young people, who are on their own journeys. There’s no easy way other than communicating and observing.”

      A winding path

      Tasan grew up in Turkey and studied metallurgical and materials engineering at the country’s top college in the field, the Middle East Technical University.

      “What intrigued me about metallurgy is that it’s an engineering field, but it’s also strongly related with basic sciences,” Tasan says. “That connection exists in other engineering fields as well, but not as strongly. In materials science, it’s fair to say one leg is almost always in the fundamental side of things.”

      Tasan also travelled a lot as a young adult, backpacking with friends across Europe on a shoestring budget.

      “Early on, my personal goal in life was to move to Spain and eat tapas all the time and have fun,” Tasan jokes.

      During one such trip, Tasan packed a suit in the bottom of his backpack just in case he landed an interview with a graduate program. The preparation paid off in the Netherlands, where he met with members of the mechanical engineering department at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Tasan would go on to earn his PhD at the school, studying how damage and cracking takes place in metals.

      After earning his PhD in 2010, Tasan joined the Max Planck Institute for Iron Research in Germany, where he eventually led a research group that continued studying metal behavior and worked on creating new metal alloys that were more damage-resistant and had other unique properties.

      By 2015, Tasan was settled into a comfortable life in Germany. Then a position at MIT opened up.

      “At MIT, I could suddenly do much more on these topics that excited me, so my research could create a bigger impact,” Tasan says.

      After traveling to MIT for interviews, the talent and atmosphere also convinced Tasan to make the move.

      “I think it’s important to be surrounded by people who are very ambitious and who want to have a big impact,” Tasan says. “You walk in the Infinite Corridor, or any other MIT corridor, and every board you pass has stuff about people changing the world in a different way. Being in that environment inspires you.”

      Once in Cambridge, Tasan immediately loved what he describes as its “small-town feel,” comparing it to some European towns. He’s also embraced the Boston culture, becoming a fan of baseball and the Red Sox.

      Since arriving at MIT, Tasan’s group has studied metal samples’ response to stress and other stimuli in real time using a technique called in situ electron microscopy.

      “We do in situ tests, which means you take an electron microscope and basically build machines inside that allows you to take any metal and put it under different conditions, as you watch its structure evolve,” Tasan explains. “Because these experiments are so unique and complex, when a student designs an experiment and eventually brings the results back to me, it’s often the first-ever observation of some phenomena.”

      In 2020 Tasan’s group developed new in-situ methods for studying the effects of hydrogen in metals, leading to insights that could help with the transition to clean hydrogen energy. The approach has been adopted by other labs for further study.

      Tasan’s group also created a more damage resistant, high temperature alloy that’s part of a class of metals known as high entropy alloys. That work was published in the journal Nature Materials.

      “Doing physical metallurgy research allows us to connect basic understanding of metals and industrial applications,” Tasan says. “I’m dealing with atoms and how they interact — and at the same time I’m talking weekly with companies that produce thousands of tons of metals, and we’re using the same language. I can talk to a company producing steels for auto bodies or titanium for airplane engines, and the stuff I study in my lab is still valuable to them.”

      In one much-publicized Science paper, Tasan’s group uncovered the reasons why even the sharpest knives and razors dull after everyday processes like shaving.

      “We like to demonstrate the importance of materials science and metallurgy to a broader audience,” Tasan says. “The paper on why hair deforms steel was great because it was picked up in all kinds of news channels around the world, and it showed that even in very conventional areas, like making knives or blades, there’s a lot of new insights and paths to find.”

      Solving the ultimate puzzles

      Tasan brings the same careful diligence he uses to study metals to support students. He says he’s found that like metals, people also typically have more complex stories that you can only see if you look closely enough.

      “It’s interesting because everybody is so different,” Tasan says. “Once you start working with people and trying to help them, you see so many different dimensions that were not visible before. You have the opportunity to sit down with them and look them in the eye and try to understand what they really want. And it’s interesting because often they also don’t know what they want, and sometimes they even don’t know that they don’t know that!”

      Fortunately, Tasan enjoys those challenges most of all.

      “In a way, the researchers are puzzles waiting to be solved, like the research itself,” Tasan says. “And if you put in enough effort and you really care, you get this enormously gratifying feeling of helping someone succeed in life. It’s really a unique part of the job, and it’s what I love more than anything.” More

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      Tackling the MIT campus’s top energy consumers, building by building

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      When staff in MIT’s Department of Facilities would visualize energy use and carbon-associated emissions by campus buildings, Building 46 always stood out — attributed to its energy intensity, which accounted for 8 percent of MIT’s total campus energy use. This high energy draw was not surprising, as the building is home of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Complex and a large amount of lab space, but it also made the building a perfect candidate for an energy performance audit to seek out potential energy saving opportunities.

      This audit revealed that several energy efficiency updates to the building mechanical systems infrastructure, including optimization of the room-by-room ventilation rates, could result in an estimated 35 percent reduction of energy use, which would in turn lower MIT’s total greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 2 percent — driving toward the Institute’s 2026 goal of net-zero and 2050 goal of elimination of direct campus emissions.

      Building energy efficiency projects are not new for MIT. Since 2010, MIT has been engaged in a partnership agreement with utility company Eversource establishing the Efficiency Forward program, empowering MIT to invest in more than 300 energy conservation projects to date and lowering energy consumption on campus for a total calculated savings of approximately 70 million kilowatt hours and 4.2 million therms. But at 418,000 gross square feet, Building 46 is the first energy efficiency project of its size on the campus.

      “We’ve never tackled a whole building like this — it’s the first capital project that is technically an energy project,” explains Siobhan Carr, energy efficiency program manager, who was part of the team overseeing the energy audit and lab ventilation performance assessment in the building. “That gives you an idea of the magnitude and complexity of this.”

      The project started with the full building energy assessment and lab ventilation risk audit. “We had a team go through every corner of the building and look at every possible opportunity to save energy,” explains Jessica Parks, senior project manager for systems performance and turnover in campus construction. “One of the biggest issues we saw was that there’s a lot of dry lab spaces which are basically offices, but they’re all getting the same ventilation as if they were a high-intensity lab.” Higher ventilation and more frequent air exchange rates draw more energy. By optimizing for the required ventilation rates, there was an opportunity to save energy in nearly every space in the building.

      In addition to the optimized ventilation, the project team will convert fume hoods from constant volume to variable volume and install equipment to help the building systems run more efficiently. The team also identified opportunities to work with labs to implement programs such as fume hood hibernation and unoccupied setbacks for temperature and ventilation. As different spaces in the building have varying needs, the energy retrofit will touch all 1,254 spaces in the building — one by one — to implement the different energy measures to reach that estimated 35 percent reduction in energy use.

      Although time-consuming and complex, this room-by-room approach has a big benefit in that it has allowed research to continue in the space largely uninterrupted. With a few exceptions, the occupants of Building 46, which include the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, The McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, have remained in place for the duration of the project. Partners in the MIT Environment, Health and Safety Office are instrumental to this balance of renovations and keeping the building operational during the optimization efforts and are one of several teams across MIT contributing to building efficiency efforts.

      The completion date of the building efficiency project is set for 2024, but Carr says that some of the impact of this ongoing work may soon be seen. “We should start to see savings as we move through the building, and we expect to fully realize all of our projected savings a year after completion,” she says, noting that the length of time is required for a year-over-year perspective to see the full reduction in energy use.

      The impact of the project goes far beyond the footprint of Building 46 as it offers insights and spurred actions for future projects — including buildings 76 and 68, the number two and three top energy users on campus. Both buildings recently underwent their own energy audits and lab ventilation performance assessments. The energy efficiency team is now crafting a plan for full-building approaches, much like Building 46. “To date, 46 has presented many learning opportunities, such as how to touch every space in a building while research continues, as well as how to overcome challenges encountered when working on existing systems,” explains Parks. “The good news is that we have developed solutions for those challenges and the teams have been proactively implementing those lessons in our other projects.”

      Communication has proven to be another key for these large projects where occupants see the work happening and often play a role in answering questions about their unique space. “People are really engaged, they ask questions about the work, and we ask them about the space they’re in every day,” says Parks. “The Building 46 occupants have been wonderful partners as we worked in all of their spaces, which is paving the way for a successful project.”

      The release of Fast Forward in 2021 has also made communications easier, notes Carr, who says the plan helps to frame these projects as part of the big picture — not just a construction interruption. “Fast Forward has brought a visibility into what we’re doing within [MIT] Facilities on these buildings,” she says. “It brings more eyes and ears, and people understand that these projects are happening throughout campus and not just in their own space — we’re all working to reduce energy and to reduce greenhouse gas across campus.”

      The Energy Efficiency team will continue to apply that big-picture approach as ongoing building efficiency projects on campus are assessed to reach toward a 10 to 15 percent reduction in energy use and corresponding emissions over the next several years. More

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      Understanding boiling to help the nuclear industry and space missions

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      To launch extended missions in space, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is borrowing a page from the nuclear engineering industry: It is trying to understand how boiling works.

      Planning for long-term missions has NASA researching ways of packing the least amount of cryogenic fuel possible for efficient liftoff. One potential solution is to refuel the rocket in space using fuel depots placed in low Earth orbits. This way, the spacecraft can carry the lightest fuel load — enough to reach the low Earth orbit to refuel as necessary and complete the mission. But refueling in space requires a thorough knowledge of cryogenic fuels.

      “We [need to understand] how boiling of cryogens behaves in microgravity conditions [encountered in space],” says Florian Chavagnat, a sixth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE). After all, understanding how cryogens boil in space is critical to NASA’s fuel management strategy. The vast majority of studies on boiling evaluate fluids that boil at high temperatures, which doesn’t necessarily apply to cryogens. Under the advisement of Matteo Bucci and Emilio Baglietto, Chavagnat is working on NASA-sponsored research about cryogens and the way the lack of buoyancy in space affects boiling.

      A childhood spent tinkering

      A deep understanding of engineering and physical phenomena is exactly what Chavagnat developed growing up in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, a suburb of Paris, with parents who worked for SNCF, the national state-owned rail company. Chavagnat remembers discussing the working of trains and motors with his engineer dad and building a variety of balsa-wood models. One of his memorable projects was a sailboat propelled by a motor from an electric toothbrush.

      By the time he was a teenager, Chavagnat received a metal lathe as a gift. His tinkering became an obsession; a compressed air engine was a favorite project. Soon his parents’ small shed, meant for gardening, became a factory, Chavagnat recalls, laughing.

      A lifelong love of math and physics propelled a path to the National Institute of Applied Science in Rouen, Normandy, where Chavagnat studied energetics and propulsion as part of a five-year engineering program. In his final year, Chavagnat studied atomic engineering from INSTN Paris-Saclay, part of the esteemed French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).

      The final year of studies at CEA required a six-month-long internship, which traditionally sets the course for a job. Chavagnat decided to take a chance and apply for an internship at MIT NSE instead, knowing his future course might be uncertain. “I didn’t take a lot of risk in my life, but this one was a big risk,” Chavagnat says. The gamble paid off: Chavagnat won the internship with Charles Forsberg, which paved the way for his admission as a doctoral student. “I selected MIT because it has always been my dream school,” Chavagnat says. He also enjoyed the idea of challenging himself to improve his English-speaking skills.

      A love of physics and heat transfer

      Chavagnat loves physics — “if I can study any problem in physics, I’d be happy” he says — which led him to working on heat transfer, more specifically on boiling heat transfer. His early doctoral research focused on transient boiling in nuclear reactors, part of which has been published in the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer.

      Chavagnat’s research targets a specific kind of nuclear reactor called a material test reactor (MTR). Nuclear scientists use MTRs to understand how materials used in plant operations might behave under long-term use. Densely packed nuclear fuel, running at high power, simulates long-term effects using a very intense neutron flux.

      To prevent failure, operators limit reactor temperature by flowing very cold water at high velocity. When reactor heat power increases uncontrollably, the piped water begins to boil. Boiling works to prevent meltdown by altering neutron moderation and extracting heat from the fuel. “[Unfortunately], that only works until you reach a certain heat flux at the fuel cladding, after which the efficiency completely drops,” Chavagnat says. Once the critical heat flux is reached, water vapor starts to blanket and insulate the fuel elements, leading to rapidly rising cladding temperatures and potential burnout.

      The key is to figure out the behavior of maximum boiling heat flux under routine MTR conditions — cold water, high flow velocity, and narrow spacing between the fuel elements.

      Study of cryogenic boiling

      Boiling continues to occupy center stage as Chavagnat pursues the question for NASA. Cryogens boil at very low temperatures, so the question of how to prevent fuel loss from routine space-based operations is an important one to answer.

      Chavagnat is studying how boiling would behave under reduced or absent buoyancy, which are the conditions cryogenic rocket fuel will encounter in space.

      To reproduce space-like conditions on Earth, buoyancy can be modified without going to space. Chavagnat is manipulating the inclination of the boiling surface — placing it upside down is an example — such that buoyancy does not do what it usually does: help bubbles break away from the surface. He is also performing boiling experiments in parabolic flights to simulate microgravity, similar to what is experienced aboard the International Space Station.

      Chavagnat designed and built equipment which can perform both methods with minimum changes. “We observed nitrogen boiling on our surface by imaging it using two high-speed video cameras,” he says. The experiment was approved to go on board the parabolic flights operated by Zero-G, a company that operates weightless flights. The team successfully completed four parabolic flights in 2022.

      “Flying an experiment aboard an aircraft and operating it in microgravity is an incredible experience, but is challenging,” Chavagnat says, “Knowing the details the experiment is a must, but other skills are quite useful — in particular, working as a team, being able to manage high stress levels, and being able to work while being motion-sick.” Another challenge is that the majority of issues cannot be fixed once aboard, as aircraft pilots perform the parabola (each lasting 17 seconds) almost back-to-back.

      Throughout his research at MIT, Chavagnat has been captivated by how complex a simple phenomenon like boiling can truly be. “In your childhood, you have a certain idea of how boiling looks, relatively slow bubbles that you can see with the naked eye,” he says, “but you don’t realize the complexity until you see it with your own eyes.”

      In his infrequent spare time, Chavagnat plays soccer with the NSE’s team, the Atom Smashers. The group meets only five times a semester so it’s a low-key commitment, says Chavagnat who spends most of his time at the lab. “I am doing mostly experiments at MIT; it turns out the skills I learned in my shed when I was 15 are actually quite useful here,” he laughs. More

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      MIT junior Anushree Chaudhuri named 2023 Udall Scholar

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      MIT junior Anushree Chaudhuri has been selected as a 2023 Morris K. Udall and Stewart L. Udall Foundation Scholar. She is only the second MIT student to win this award and the first winner since 2008.

      The Udall Scholarship honors students who have demonstrated a commitment to the environment, Native American health care, or tribal public policy. Chaudhuri is one of 55 Udall Scholars selected nationally out of 384 nominated applicants.

      Chaudhuri, who hails from San Diego, studies urban studies and planning as well as economics at MIT. She plans to work across the public and private sectors to drive structural changes that connect the climate crisis to local issues and inequities. Chaudhuri has conducted research with the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative Rapid Response Group, which develops science-based analysis on critical environmental issues for community partners in civil society, government, and industry.

      Throughout her sophomore year, Chaudhuri worked with MIT’s Office of Sustainability, creating data visualizations for travel and Scope 3 emissions as a resource for MIT departments, labs, and centers. As an MIT Washington intern at the U.S. Department of Energy, she also developed the Buildings Upgrade Equity Tool to assist local governments in identifying areas for decarbonization investments.

      While taking Bruno Verdini’s class 11.011 (Art and Science of Negotiation) in fall 2021, Chaudhuri became deeply interested in the field of dispute resolution as a way of engaging diverse stakeholders in collaborative problem-solving, and she began work with Professor Lawrence Susskind at the MIT Science Impact Collaborative. She has now completed multiple projects with the group, as part of the MIT Renewable Energy Siting Clinic, including creating qualitative case studies to inform mediated siting processes and developing an open-access website and database for 60 renewable energy siting conflicts from findings published in Energy Policy. Through the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium’s Climate Scholars Program and a DUSP-PKG Fellowship, she is conducting an ethnographic and econometric study on the energy justice impacts of clean infrastructure on local communities.

      As part of a yearlong campaign to revise MIT’s Fast Forward Climate Action Plan, Chaudhuri led the Investments Student Working Group, which advocated for institutional social responsibility and active engagement in the Climate Action 100+ investor coalition. She also served as chair of the Undergraduate Association Committee on Sustainability and co-leads the Student Sustainability Coalition. Her work led her to be selected by MIT as an undergraduate delegate to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Summit (COP27).

      Chaudhuri’s research experiences and leadership in campus sustainability organizations have strengthened her belief in deep community engagement as a catalyst for change. By taking an interdisciplinary approach that combines law, planning, conflict resolution, participatory research, and data science, she’s committed to a public service career creating policies that are human-centered and address climate injustices, creating co-benefits for diverse communities. More

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      Six ways MIT is taking action on climate

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      From reuse and recycling to new carbon markets, events during Earth Month at MIT spanned an astonishing range of ideas and approaches to tackling the climate crisis. The MIT Climate Nucleus offered funding to departments and student organizations to develop programming that would showcase the countless initiatives underway to make a better world.

      Here are six — just six of many — ways the MIT community is making a difference on climate right now.

      1. Exchanging knowledge with policymakers to meet local, regional, and global challenges

      Creating solutions begins with understanding the problem.

      Speaking during the annual Earth Day Colloquium of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) about the practical challenges of implementing wind-power projects, for instance, Massachusetts State Senator Michael J. Barrett offered a sobering assessment.

      The senate chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy, Barrett reported that while the coast of Massachusetts provides a conducive site for offshore wind, economic forces have knocked a major offshore wind installation project off track. The combination of the pandemic and global geopolitical instability has led to such great supply chain disruptions and rising commodity costs that a project considered necessary for the state to meet its near-term climate goals now faces delays, he said.

      Like others at MIT, MITEI researchers keep their work grounded in the real-world constraints and possibilities for decarbonization, engaging with policymakers and industry to understand the on-the-ground challenges to technological and policy-based solutions and highlight the opportunities for greatest impact.

      2. Developing new ways to prevent, mitigate, and adapt to the effects of climate change

      An estimated 20 percent of MIT faculty work on some aspect of the climate crisis, an enormous research effort distributed throughout the departments, labs, centers, and institutes.

      About a dozen such projects were on display at a poster session coordinated by the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS), Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), and MITEI.

      Students and postdocs presented innovations including:

      Graduate student Alexa Reese Canaan describes her research on household energy consumption to Massachusetts State Senator Michael J. Barrett, chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy.

      Photo: Caitlin Cunningham

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      3. Preparing students to meet the challenges of a climate-changed world

      Faculty and staff from more than 30 institutions of higher education convened at the MIT Symposium on Advancing Climate Education to exchange best practices and innovations in teaching and learning. Speakers and participants considered paths to structural change in higher education, the imperative to place equity and justice at the center of new educational approaches, and what it means to “educate the whole student” so that graduates are prepared to live and thrive in a world marked by global environmental and economic disruption.

      Later in April, MIT faculty voted to approve the creation of a new joint degree program in climate system science and engineering.

      4. Offering climate curricula to K-12 teachers

      At a daylong conference on climate education for K-12 schools, the attendees were not just science teachers. Close to 50 teachers of arts, literature, history, math, mental health, English language, world languages, and even carpentry were all hungry for materials and approaches to integrate into their curricula. They were joined by another 50 high school students, ready to test out the workshops and content developed by MIT Climate Action Through Education (CATE), which are already being piloted in at least a dozen schools.

      The CATE initiative is led by Christopher Knittel, the George P. Shultz Professor of Energy Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, deputy director for policy at MITEI, and faculty director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. The K-12 Climate Action and Education Conference was hosted as a collaboration with the Massachusetts Teachers Association Climate Action Network and Earth Day Boston.

      “We will be honest about the threats posed by climate change, but also give students a sense of agency that they can do something about this,” Knittel told MITEI Energy Futures earlier this spring. “And for the many teachers — especially non-science teachers — starved for knowledge and background material, CATE offers resources to give them confidence to implement our curriculum.”

      High school students and K-12 teachers participated in a workshop on “Exploring a Green City,” part of the Climate Action and Education Conference on April 1.

      Photo: Tony Rinaldo

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      5. Guiding our communities in making sense of the coming changes

      The arts and humanities, vital in their own right, are also central to the sharing of scientific knowledge and its integration into culture, behavior, and decision-making. A message well-delivered can reach new audiences and prompt reflection and reckoning on ethics and values, identity, and optimism.

      The Climate Machine, part of ESI’s Arts and Climate program, produced an evening art installation on campus featuring dynamic, large-scale projections onto the façade of MIT’s new music building and a musical performance by electronic duo Warung. Passers-by were invited to take a Climate Identity Quiz, with the responses reflected in the visuals. Another exhibit displayed the results of a workshop in which attendees had used an artificial intelligence art tool to imagine the future of their hometowns, while another highlighted native Massachusetts wildlife.

      The Climate Machine is an MIT research project undertaken in collaboration with record label Anjunabeats. The collaborative team imagines interactive experiences centered on sustainability that could be deployed at musical events and festivals to inspire climate action.

      Dillon Ames (left) and Aaron Hopkins, known as the duo Warung, perform a live set during the Climate Machine art installation.

      Photo: Caitlin Cunningham

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      6. Empowering students to seize this unique policy moment

      ESI’s TILclimate Podcast, which breaks down important climate topics for general listeners, held a live taping at the MIT Museum and offered an explainer on three recent, major pieces of federal legislation: the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill of 2021, and the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.

      The combination of funding and financial incentives for energy- and climate-related projects, along with reinvestment in industrial infrastructure, create “a real moment and an opportunity,” said special guest Elisabeth Reynolds, speaking with host Laur Hesse Fisher. Reynolds was a member of the National Economic Council from 2021 to 2022, serving as special assistant to the president for manufacturing and economic development; after leaving the White House, Reynolds returned to MIT, where she is a lecturer in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

      For students, the opportunities to engage have never been better, Reynolds urged: “There is so much need. … Find a way to contribute, and find a way to help us make this transformation.”

      “What we’re embarking on now, you just can’t overstate the significance of it,” she said.

      For more information on how MIT is advancing climate action across education; research and innovation; policy; economic, social, and environmental justice; public and global engagement; sustainable campus operations; and more, visit Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade. The actions described in the plan aim to accelerate the global transition to net-zero carbon emissions, and to “educate and empower the next generation.” More

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      Will the charging networks arrive in time?

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      For many owners of electric vehicles (EVs), or for prospective EV owners, a thorny problem is where to charge them. Even as legacy automakers increasingly invest in manufacturing more all-electric cars and trucks, there is not a dense network of charging stations serving many types of vehicles, which would make EVs more convenient to use.

      “We’re going to have the ability to produce and deliver millions of EVs,” said MIT Professor Charles Fine at the final session this semester of the MIT Mobility Forum. “It’s not clear we’re going to have the ability to charge them. That’s a huge, huge mismatch.”

      Indeed, making EV charging stations as ubiquitous as gas stations could spur a major transition within the entire U.S. vehicle fleet. While the automaker Tesla has built a network of almost 2,000 charging stations across the U.S., and might make some interoperable with other makes of vehicles, independent companies trying to develop a business out of it are still trying to gain significant traction.

      “They don’t have a business model that works yet,” said Fine, the Chrysler Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, speaking of startup firms. “They haven’t figured out their supply chains. They haven’t figured out the customer value proposition. They haven’t figured out their technology standards. It’s a very, very immature domain.”

      The May 12 event drew nearly 250 people as well as an online audience. The MIT Mobility Forum is a weekly set of talks and discussions during the academic year, ranging widely across the field of transportation and design. It is hosted by the MIT Mobility Initiative, which works to advance sustainable, accessible, and safe forms of transportation.

      Fine is a prominent expert in the areas of operations strategy, entrepreneurship, and supply chain management. He has been at MIT Sloan for over 30 years; from 2015 to 2022, he also served as the founding president, dean, and CEO of the Asia School of Business in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a collaboration between MIT Sloan and Bank Negara Malaysia. Fine is also author of “Faster, Smarter, Greener: The Future of the Car and Urban Mobility” (MIT Press, 2017).

      In Fine’s remarks, he discussed the growth stages of startup companies, highlighting three phases where firms try to “nail it, scale it, and sail it” — that is, figure out the concept and workability of their enterprise, try to expand it, and then operate as a larger company. The charging-business startups are still somewhere within the first of these phases.

      At the same time, the established automakers have announced major investments in EVs — a collective $860 billion over the next decade, Fine noted. Among others, Ford says it will invest $50 billion in EV production by 2026; General Motors plans to spend $35 billion on EVs by 2025; and Toyota has announced it will invest $35 billion in EV manufacturing by 2030.

      With all these vehicles potentially coming to market, Fine suggested, the crux of the issue is a kind of “chicken and egg” problem between EVs and the network needed to support them.

      “If you’re a startup company in the charging business, if there aren’t many EVs out there, you’re not going to be making much money, and that doesn’t give you the capital to continue to invest and grow,” Fine said. “So, they need to wait until they have revenue before they can grow further. On the other hand, why should anybody buy an electric car if they don’t think they’re going to be able to charge it?”

      Those living in single-family homes can install chargers. But many others are not in that situation, Fine noted: “For people who don’t have fixed parking spaces and have to rely on the public network, there is this chicken-and-egg problem. They can’t buy an EV unless they know how they’re going to be able to charge it, and charging companies can’t build out their networks unless they know how they’re going to get their revenue.”

      The event featured a question-and-answer session and audience discussion, with a range of questions, and comments from some industry veterans, including Robin Chase SM ’86, the co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar. She expressed some optimism that startup charging companies will be able to get traction in the nascent market before long.

      “The right companies can learn very fast,” Chase said. “There’s no reason why they can’t correct those scaling problems in short-ish order.”

      In answer to other audience questions, Fine noted some of the challenges that will have to be addressed by independent charging firms, such as unified standards and interoperability among automakers and charging stations.

      “For a driver to have to have six different apps, or [their] car doesn’t fit in the plug here or there, or my software doesn’t talk to my credit card … connectivity, standards, technical issues need to be worked out as well,” Fine said.

      There are also varying regulatory issues, including grid policies and what consumers can be billed for, which have to be worked out on a state-by-state basis, meaning that even modest-size startups will have to have knowledgeable and productive legal departments.

      All of which makes it possible, as Fine suggested, that the large legacy automakers will start investing more heavily in the charging business in the near future. Mercedes, he noted, just announced in January that it is entering into a partnership with charging firms ChargePoint and MN8 Energy to develop about 400 charging stations across North America by 2027. By necessity, others might have to follow suit if they want to protect their massive planned investments in the EV sector.

      “I’m not in the business of telling [automakers] what to do, but I do think they have a lot at risk,” Fine said. “They’re spending billions and billions of dollars to produce these cars, and I don’t think they can afford an epic failure [if] people don’t buy them because there’s no charging infrastructure. If they’re waiting for the startups to build out rapidly, then they may be waiting longer than they hope to wait.” More