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      in Environment

      Passion projects prepare to launch

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      At the start of the sixth annual MITdesignX “Pitch Day,” Svafa Grönfeldt, the program’s faculty director, made a point of noting that many of the teams about to showcase their ventures had changed direction multiple times on their projects.

      “Some of you have pivoted more times than we can count,” Grönfeldt said in her welcoming address. “This makes for a fantastic idea because you have the courage to actually question if your ideas are the right ones. In the true spirit of human-centered design, you actually try to understand the problem before you solve it!”

      MITdesignX, a venture accelerator based in the School of Architecture and Planning, is an interdisciplinary academic program operating at the intersection of design, business, and technology. The launching pad for startups focuses on applying design to engage complex problems and discovering high-impact solutions to address critical challenges facing the future of design, cities, and the global environment. The program reflects a new approach to entrepreneurship education, drawing on business theory, design thinking, and entrepreneurial practices.

      At this year’s event, 11 teams pitched their ideas before a panel of three judges, an on-site audience, and several hundred viewers watching the livestream event.

      “These teams have been working hard on solutions,” Gilad Rosenzweig, executive director of MITdesignX, told the audience. “They’re not designing solutions for people. They’re designing solutions with people.”

      Solving urgent problems

      Some of the issues addressed by the teams were lack of adequate housing, endangered food supplies, toxic pollution, and threats to democracy. Many of the students were inspired to create their venture because of problems they encountered in their careers or concerns impacting their home countries. The 25 team members in this year’s cohort represent work on five continents.

      “We’re very proud of our international representation because we want our impact to be felt outside of Cambridge,” said Rosenzweig. “We want to make an impact around the country and around the world.”

      John Devine, a JD/Masters in City Planning (MCP) candidate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, created a new software platform, “Civic Atlas.” In his pitch, he explained that having worked in city planning in Texas for a decade before coming to MIT, he saw how difficult it was for communities to wade through and comprehend the dense, technical language in city council agendas. Zoning cases, bond projects, and transportation investments are just some of the significant projects that affect a community, and Devine saw many instances where decisions were being made without community awareness as a result of inadequate communication.

      “When communities don’t have access to clear, accessible information, we have poor outcomes,” Devine told the audience. “I realized the solution to this is to make accessible and inclusive digital experiences that really facilitate communication between planners, developers, and members of the community.”

      Seizing the opportunity, Devine taught himself how to code and built a fully automated web tool for the Dallas City Planning Commission. The tool checks the city’s website daily and translates documents into interactive maps, allowing residents to view plans in their community. Devine is starting in Dallas, but says that there are more than 800 cities across the United States with a population greater than 50,000 that present an excellent target market for this product.

      “I think cities have a ton to gain from working with us, including building trust and communication with constituents — something that’s vital for city halls to function,” says Devine.

      Next steps for the cohort

      The judges for this year’s event — Yscaira Jimenez, founder of LaborX; Magnus Ingi Oskarsson of Eyrir Venture Management in Reykjavik, Iceland; and Frank Pawlitschek, director, HPI School of Entrepreneurship in Potsdam, Germany — deliberated to identify the best teams based on three criteria: most innovative, greatest impact, and best presentation. The competition was so strong that the judges decided to award two honorable mentions. This year’s awardees are:

      Atacama, a company that is developing biomaterials to replace plastics, received the “Most Innovative” award and $5,000. The company accelerates the adoption of renewable and sustainable materials through machine learning and robotics, ensuring performance, cost-effectiveness, and environmental impact. Its founders are Paloma Gonzalez-Rojas PhD ’21, Jose Tomas Dominguez, and Jose Antonio Gonzalez.
      Grain Box, a startup focusing on optimizing the post-harvest supply chain for smallholder farmers in rural India, was awarded “Greatest Impact” and a $5,000 award. Its founders are Mona Vijaykumar SMArchS ’22 and T.R. (Radha) Radhakrishnan.
      Lamarr.AI, which offers an autonomous solution for rapid building envelope diagnostics using AI and cloud computing, was recognized for “Best Presentation” and awarded $2,500. Its founders are Norhan Bayomi PhD ’22, Tarek Rakha, PhD ’15, and John E. Fernandez ’85, professor and director of the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative.
      Honorable Mention: “News Detective,” a platform combining moderated, professional fact-checking and AI to fight misinformation on social media, created by rising senior Ilana Strauss.
      Honorable Mention: “La Firme,” which digitizes architectural services to reach families who self-build their homes in Latin America, created by Mora Orensanz MCP ’21, Fiorella Belli Ferro MCP ’21, and rising senior Raul Briceno Brignole.
      Following the award ceremony, Rosenzweig told the students that the process was not yet over because MITdesignX faculty and staff would always be available to continue guiding and supporting their journeys as they launch and grow their ventures.

      “You’re going to become alumni of MITdesignX,” he said. “You’re going to be joining over 50 teams that are working around the world, making an impact. They’re being recognized as leaders in innovation. They’re being recognized by investors who are helping them make an impact. This is your next step.” More

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      in Energy

      MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium announces recipients of inaugural MCSC Seed Awards

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      The MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) has awarded 20 projects a total of $5 million over two years in its first-ever 2022 MCSC Seed Awards program. The winning projects are led by principal investigators across all five of MIT’s schools.

      The goal of the MCSC Seed Awards is to engage MIT researchers and link the economy-wide work of the consortium to ongoing and emerging climate and sustainability efforts across campus. The program offers further opportunity to build networks among the awarded projects to deepen the impact of each and ensure the total is greater than the sum of its parts.

      For example, to drive progress under the awards category Circularity and Materials, the MCSC can facilitate connections between the technologists at MIT who are developing recovery approaches for metals, plastics, and fiber; the urban planners who are uncovering barriers to reuse; and the engineers, who will look for efficiency opportunities in reverse supply chains.

      “The MCSC Seed Awards are designed to complement actions previously outlined in Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade and, more specifically, the Climate Grand Challenges,” says Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering, Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and chair of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium. “In collaboration with seed award recipients and MCSC industry members, we are eager to engage in interdisciplinary exploration and propel urgent advancements in climate and sustainability.” 

      By supporting MIT researchers with expertise in economics, infrastructure, community risk assessment, mobility, and alternative fuels, the MCSC will accelerate implementation of cross-disciplinary solutions in the awards category Decarbonized and Resilient Value Chains. Enhancing Natural Carbon Sinks and building connections to local communities will require associations across experts in ecosystem change, biodiversity, improved agricultural practice and engagement with farmers, all of which the consortium can begin to foster through the seed awards.

      “Funding opportunities across campus has been a top priority since launching the MCSC,” says Jeremy Gregory, MCSC executive director. “It is our honor to support innovative teams of MIT researchers through the inaugural 2022 MCSC Seed Awards program.”

      The winning projects are tightly aligned with the MCSC’s areas of focus, which were derived from a year of highly engaged collaborations with MCSC member companies. The projects apply across the member’s climate and sustainability goals.

      The MCSC’s 16 member companies span many industries, and since early 2021, have met with members of the MIT community to define focused problem statements for industry-specific challenges, identify meaningful partnerships and collaborations, and develop clear and scalable priorities. Outcomes from these collaborations laid the foundation for the focus areas, which have shaped the work of the MCSC. Specifically, the MCSC Industry Advisory Board engaged with MIT on key strategic directions, and played a critical role in the MCSC’s series of interactive events. These included virtual workshops hosted last summer, each on a specific topic that allowed companies to work with MIT and each other to align key assumptions, identify blind spots in corporate goal-setting, and leverage synergies between members, across industries. The work continued in follow-up sessions and an annual symposium.

      “We are excited to see how the seed award efforts will help our member companies reach or even exceed their ambitious climate targets, find new cross-sector links among each other, seek opportunities to lead, and ripple key lessons within their industry, while also deepening the Institute’s strong foundation in climate and sustainability research,” says Elsa Olivetti, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering and MCSC co-director.

      As the seed projects take shape, the MCSC will provide ongoing opportunities for awardees to engage with the Industry Advisory Board and technical teams from the MCSC member companies to learn more about the potential for linking efforts to support and accelerate their climate and sustainability goals. Awardees will also have the chance to engage with other members of the MCSC community, including its interdisciplinary Faculty Steering Committee.

      “One of our mantras in the MCSC is to ‘amplify and extend’ existing efforts across campus; we’re always looking for ways to connect the collaborative industry relationships we’re building and the work we’re doing with other efforts on campus,” notes Jeffrey Grossman, the Morton and Claire Goulder and Family Professor in Environmental Systems, head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and MCSC co-director. “We feel the urgency as well as the potential, and we don’t want to miss opportunities to do more and go faster.”

      The MCSC Seed Awards complement the Climate Grand Challenges, a new initiative to mobilize the entire MIT research community around developing the bold, interdisciplinary solutions needed to address difficult, unsolved climate problems. The 27 finalist teams addressed four broad research themes, which align with the MCSC’s focus areas. From these finalist teams, five flagship projects were announced in April 2022.

      The parallels between MCSC’s focus areas and the Climate Grand Challenges themes underscore an important connection between the shared long-term research interests of industry and academia. The challenges that some of the world’s largest and most influential companies have identified are complementary to MIT’s ongoing research and innovation — highlighting the tremendous opportunity to develop breakthroughs and scalable solutions quickly and effectively. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry underscored the importance of developing these scalable solutions, including critical new technology, during a conversation with MIT President L. Rafael Reif at MIT’s first Climate Grand Challenges showcase event last month.

      Both the MCSC Seed Awards and the Climate Grand Challenges are part of MIT’s larger commitment and initiative to combat climate change; this was underscored in “Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade,” which the Institute published in May 2021.

      The project titles and research leads for each of the 20 awardees listed below are categorized by MCSC focus area.

      Decarbonized and resilient value chains

      “Collaborative community mapping toolkit for resilience planning,” led by Miho Mazereeuw, associate professor of architecture and urbanism in the Department of Architecture and director of the Urban Risk Lab (a research lead on Climate Grand Challenges flagship project) and Nicholas de Monchaux, professor and department head in the Department of Architecture
      “CP4All: Fast and local climate projections with scientific machine learning — towards accessibility for all of humanity,” led by Chris Hill, principal research scientist in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and Dava Newman, director of the MIT Media Lab and the Apollo Program Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
      “Emissions reductions and productivity in U.S. manufacturing,” led by Mert Demirer, assistant professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Jing Li, assistant professor and William Barton Rogers Career Development Chair of Energy Economics in the MIT Sloan School of Management
      “Logistics electrification through scalable and inter-operable charging infrastructure: operations, planning, and policy,” led by Alex Jacquillat, the 1942 Career Development Professor and assistant professor of operations research and statistics in the MIT Sloan School of Management
      “Powertrain and system design for LOHC-powered long-haul trucking,” led by William Green, the Hoyt Hottel Professor in Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering and postdoctoral officer, and Wai K. Cheng, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Sloan Automotive Laboratory
      “Sustainable Separation and Purification of Biochemicals and Biofuels using Membranes,” led by John Lienhard, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab, and director of the Rohsenow Kendall Heat Transfer Laboratory; and Nicolas Hadjiconstantinou, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, co-director of the Center for Computational Science and Engineering, associate director of the Center for Exascale Simulation of Materials in Extreme Environments, and graduate officer
      “Toolkit for assessing the vulnerability of industry infrastructure siting to climate change,” led by Michael Howland, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

      Circularity and Materials

      “Colorimetric Sulfidation for Aluminum Recycling,” led by Antoine Allanore, associate professor of metallurgy in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering
      “Double Loop Circularity in Materials Design Demonstrated on Polyurethanes,” led by Brad Olsen, the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser (1960) Professor and graduate admissions co-chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Kristala Prather, the Arthur Dehon Little Professor and department executive officer in the Department of Chemical Engineering
      “Engineering of a microbial consortium to degrade and valorize plastic waste,” led by Otto Cordero, associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Desiree Plata, the Gilbert W. Winslow (1937) Career Development Professor in Civil Engineering and associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
      “Fruit-peel-inspired, biodegradable packaging platform with multifunctional barrier properties,” led by Kripa Varanasi, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering
      “High Throughput Screening of Sustainable Polyesters for Fibers,” led by Gregory Rutledge, the Lammot du Pont Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Brad Olsen, Alexander and I. Michael Kasser (1960) Professor and graduate admissions co-chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering
      “Short-term and long-term efficiency gains in reverse supply chains,” led by Yossi Sheffi, the Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and director of the Center for Transportation and Logistics
      The costs and benefits of circularity in building construction, led by Siqi Zheng, the STL Champion Professor of Urban and Real Estate Sustainability at the MIT Center for Real Estate and Department of Urban Studies and Planning, faculty director of the MIT Center for Real Estate, and faculty director for the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab; and Randolph Kirchain, principal research scientist and co-director of MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub

      Natural carbon sinks

      “Carbon sequestration through sustainable practices by smallholder farmers,” led by Joann de Zegher, the Maurice F. Strong Career Development Professor and assistant professor of operations management in the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Karen Zheng the George M. Bunker Professor and associate professor of operations management in the MIT Sloan School of Management
      “Coatings to protect and enhance diverse microbes for improved soil health and crop yields,” led by Ariel Furst, the Raymond A. (1921) And Helen E. St. Laurent Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Mary Gehring, associate professor of biology in the Department of Biology, core member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and graduate officer
      “ECO-LENS: Mainstreaming biodiversity data through AI,” led by John Fernández, professor of building technology in the Department of Architecture and director of MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative
      “Growing season length, productivity, and carbon balance of global ecosystems under climate change,” led by Charles Harvey, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and César Terrer, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

      Social dimensions and adaptation

      “Anthro-engineering decarbonization at the million-person scale,” led by Manduhai Buyandelger, professor in the Anthropology Section, and Michael Short, the Class of ’42 Associate Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
      “Sustainable solutions for climate change adaptation: weaving traditional ecological knowledge and STEAM,” led by Janelle Knox-Hayes, the Lister Brothers Associate Professor of Economic Geography and Planning and head of the Environmental Policy and Planning Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and Miho Mazereeuw, associate professor of architecture and urbanism in the Department of Architecture and director of the Urban Risk Lab (a research lead on a Climate Grand Challenges flagship project) More

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      in Environment

      Given what we know, how do we live now?

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      To truly engage the climate crisis, as so many at MIT are doing, can be daunting and draining. But it need not be lonely. Building collective insight and companionship for this undertaking is the aim of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future (CUHF), an international network launched at Clark University in 2014 and active at MIT since 2020.

      Gathering together in council circles of 8-12 people, MIT community members make space to examine — and even to transform — their questions and concerns about climate change. Through a practice of intentional conversation in small groups, the council calls participants to reflect on our human interdependence with each other and the natural world, and on where we are in both social and planetary terms. It urges exploration of how we got here and what that means, and culminates by asking: Given what we know, how do we live now?

      Origins

      CUHF developed gradually in conversations between co-founders Sarah Buie and Diana Chapman Walsh, who met when they were, respectively, the director of Clark’s Higgins School of Humanities and the president of Wellesley College. Buie asked Walsh to keynote a Ford-funded Difficult Dialogues initiative in 2006. In the years and conversations that followed, they concluded that the most difficult dialogue wasn’t happening: an honest engagement with the realities and implications of a rapidly heating planet Earth.

      With social scientist Susi Moser, they chose the practice of council, a blend of both modern and traditional dialogic forms, and began with a cohort of 12 environmental leaders willing to examine the gravest implications of climate change in a supportive setting — what Walsh calls “a kind of container for a deep dive into dark waters.” That original circle met in three long weekends over 2014 and continues today as the original CUHF Steady Council.

      Taking root at MIT

      Since then, the Council on the Uncertain Human Future has grown into an international network, with circles at universities, research centers, and other communities across the United States and in Scotland and Kathmandu. The practice took root at MIT (where Walsh is a life member emerita of the MIT Corporation) in 2020.

      Leadership and communications teams in the MIT School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (SHASS) Office of the Dean and the Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI) recognized the need the council could meet on a campus buzzing with research and initiatives aimed at improving the health of the planet. Joining forces with the council leadership, the two MIT groups collaborated to launch the program at MIT, inviting participants from across the institute, and sharing information on the MIT Climate Portal. Intentional conversations

      “The council gives the MIT community the kind of deep discourse that is so necessary to face climate change and a rapidly changing world,” says ESI director and professor of architecture John Fernández. “These conversations open an opportunity to create a new kind of breakthrough of mindsets. It’s a rare chance to pause and ask: Are we doing the things we should be doing, given MIT’s mission to the nation and the world, and given the challenges facing us?”

      As the CUHF practice spreads, agendas expand to acknowledge changing times; the group produces films and collections of readings, curates an online resource site, and convenes international Zoom events for members on a range of topics, many of which interact with climate, including racism and Covid-19. But its core activity remains the same: an intentional, probing conversation over time. There are no preconceived objectives, only a few simple guidelines: speak briefly, authentically, and spontaneously, moving around the circle; listen with attention and receptivity; observe confidentiality. “Through this process of honest speaking and listening, insight arises and trustworthy community is built,” says Buie.

      While these meetings were held in person before 2020, the full council experience pivoted to Zoom at the start of the pandemic with two-hour discussions forming an arc over a period of five weeks. Sessions begin with a call for participants to slow down and breathe, grounding themselves for the conversation. The convener offers a series of questions that elicit spontaneous responses, concerns, and observations; later, they invite visioning of new possibilities. Inviting emergent possibility

      While the process may yield tangible outcomes — for example, a curriculum initiative at Clark called A New Earth Conversation — its greatest value, according to Buie, “is the collective listening, acknowledgment, and emergent possibility it invites. Given the profound cultural misunderstandings and misalignments behind it, climate breakdown defies normative approaches to ‘problem-solving.’ The Council enables us to live into the uncertainty with more awareness, humility, curiosity, and compassion. Participants feel the change; they return to their work and lives differently, and less alone.”

      Roughly 60 faculty and staff from across MIT, all engaged in climate-related work, have participated so far in council circles. The 2021 edition of the Institute’s Climate Action Plan provides for the expansion of councils at MIT to deepen humanistic understanding of the climate crisis. The conversations are also a space for engaging with how the climate crisis is related to what the plan calls “the imperative of justice” and “the intertwined problems of equity and economic transition.”

      Reflecting on the growth of the council’s humanistic practice at MIT, Agustín Rayo, professor of philosophy and the Kenan Sahin Dean of MIT SHASS, says: “The council conversations about the future of our species and the planet are an invaluable contribution to MIT’s ‘whole-campus’ focus on the climate crisis.”

      Growing the council at MIT means broadening participation. Postdocs will join a new circle this fall, with opportunities for student involvement soon to follow. More than a third of MIT’s prior council participants have continued with monthly Steady Council meetings, which sometimes reference recent events while deepening the council practice at MIT. The session in December 2021, for example, began with reports from MIT community members who had attended the COP26 UN climate change conference in Glasgow, then broke into council circles to engage the questions raised.

      Cognitive leaps

      The MIT Steady Council is organized by Curt Newton, director of MIT OpenCourseWare and an early contributor to the online platform that became the Institute’s Climate Portal. Newton sees a productive tension between MIT’s culture of problem-solving and the council’s call for participants to slow down and question the paradigms in which they operate. “It can feel wrong, or at least unfamiliar, to put ourselves in a mode where we’re not trying to create an agenda and an action plan,” he says. “To get us to step back from that and think together about the biggest picture before we allow ourselves to be pulled into that solution mindset  — it’s a necessary experiment for places like MIT.”

      Over the past decade, Newton says, he has searched for ways to direct his energies toward environmental issues “with one foot firmly planted at MIT and one foot out in the world.” The silo-busting personal connections he’s made with colleagues through the council have empowered him “to show up with my full climate self at work.”

      Walsh finds it especially promising to see CUHF taking root at MIT, “a place of intensity, collaboration, and high ideals, where the most stunning breakthroughs occur when someone takes a step back, stops the action, changes the trajectory for a time and begins asking new questions that challenge received wisdom.” She sees council as a communal practice that encourages those cognitive leaps. “If ever there were a moment in history that cried out for a paradigm shift,” she says, “surely this is it.”

      Funding for the Council on the Uncertain Human Future comes from the Christopher Reynolds Foundation and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

      Prepared by MIT SHASS CommunicationsEditorial team: Nicole Estvanik Taylor and Emily Hiestand More

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      in Environment

      Scientists and musicians tackle climate change together

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      Audiences may travel long distances to see their favorite musical acts in concert or to attend large music festivals, which can add to their personal carbon footprint of emissions that are steadily warming the planet. But these same audiences, and the performers they follow, are often quite aware of the dangers of climate change and eager to contribute to ways of curbing those emissions.

      How should the industry reconcile these two perspectives, and how should it harness the enormous influence that musicians have on their fans to help promote action on climate change?

      That was the focus of a wide-ranging discussion on Monday hosted by MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative, titled “Artists and scientists together on climate solutions.” The event, which was held live at the Media Lab’s Bartos Theater and streamed online, featured John Fernandez, director of ESI; Dava Newman, director of the Media Lab; Tony McGuinness, a musician with the group Above and Beyond; and Anna Johnson, the sustainability and environment officer at Involved Group, an organization dedicated to embedding sustainability in business operations in the arts and culture fields.

      Fernandez pointed out in opening the discussion that when it comes to influencing people’s attitudes and behavior, changes tend to come about not just through information from a particular field, but rather from a whole culture. “We started thinking about how we might work with artists, how to have scientists and engineers, inventors, and designers working with artists on the challenges that we really need to face,” he said.

      Dealing with the climate change issue, he said, “is not about 2050 or 2100. This is about 2030. This is about this decade. This is about the next two or three years, really shifting that curve” to lowering the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. “It’s not going to be done just with science and engineering,” he added. “It’s got to be done with artists and business and everyone else. It’s not only ‘all of the above’ solutions, it’s ‘all of the above’ people, coming together to solve this problem.”

      Newman, who is also a professor in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and has served as a NASA deputy administrator, said that while scientists and engineers can produce vast amounts of useful data that clearly demonstrate the dramatic changes the Earth’s climate is undergoing, communicating that information effectively is often a challenge for these specialists. “That data is just the data, but that doesn’t change the hearts and minds,” she said.

      “As scientists, having the data from our satellites, looking down, but also flying airplanes into the atmosphere, … we have the sensors, and then what can we do with it all? … How do we change human behavior? That’s the part I don’t know how to do,” Newman said. “I can have the technology, I can get precision measurements, I can study it, but really at the end of the day, we have to change human behavior, and that is so hard.”

      And that’s where the world of art and music can play a part, she said. “The best way that I know how to do it is with artistic experiences. You can have one moving experience and when you wake up tomorrow, maybe you’re going to do something a little different.” To help generate the compassion and empathy needed to affect behavior positively, she said, “that’s where we turn to the storytellers. We turn to the visionaries.”

      McGuinness, whose electronic music trio has performed for millions of people around the world, said that his own awareness of the urgency of the climate issue came from his passion for scuba diving, and the dramatic changes he has seen over the last two decades. In diving at a coral reef off Palau in the South Pacific, he returned to what had been a lush, brightly colored ecosystem, and found that “immediately when you put your face under the water, you’re looking at the surface of the moon. It was a horrible shock to see this.”

      After this and other similar diving experiences, he said, “I just came away shocked and stunned,” and realizing the kinds of underwater experiences he had enjoyed would no longer exist for his children. After reading more on the subject of global warming,  “that really sort of tipped me over the edge. And I was like, this is probably the most important thing for living beings now. And that’s sort of where I’ve remained ever since.”

      While his group Above and Beyond has performed one song specifically related to global warming, he doesn’t expect that to be the most impactful way of using their influence. Rather, they’re trying to lead by example, he said, by paying more attention to everything from the supply chains of the merchandise sold at concerts to the emissions generated by travel to the concerts. They’re also being selective about concert venues and making an effort to find performance spaces that are making a significant effort to curb their emissions.

      “If people start voting with their wallets,” McGuinness said, “and there are companies that are doing better than others and are doing the right thing, maybe it’ll catch on. I guess that’s what we can hope for.”

      Understanding these kinds of issues, involving supply chains, transportation, and facilities associated within the music industry, has been the focus of much of Johnson’s work, through the organization Involved Group, which has entered into a collaboration with MIT through the Environmental Solutions Initiative. “It’s these kinds of novel partnerships that have so much potential to catalyze the change that we need to see at an incredible pace,” she said. Already, her group has worked with MIT on mapping out where emissions occur throughout the various aspects of the music industry.

      At a recent music festival in London, she said, the group interviewed hundreds of participants, including audience members, band members, and the crew. “We explored people’s level of awareness of the issues around climate change and environmental degradation,” she said. “And what was really interesting was that there was clearly a lot of awareness of the issue across those different stakeholders, and what felt like a real, genuine level of concern and also of motivation, to want to deepen their understanding of what their contribution on a personal level really meant.”

      Working together across the boundaries of different disciplines and areas of expertise could be crucial to winning the battle against global warming, Newman said. “That’s usually how breakthroughs work,” she said. “If we’re really looking to have impact, it’s going to be from teams of people who are trained across the disciplines.” She pointed out that 90 percent of MIT students are also musicians: “It does go together!” she said. “I think going forward, we have to create new academia, new opportunities that are truly multidisciplinary.” More