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      in Energy

      High energy and hungry for the hardest problems

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      A high school track star and valedictorian, Anne White has always relished moving fast and clearing high hurdles. Since joining the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) in 2009 she has produced path-breaking fusion research, helped attract a more diverse cohort of students and scholars into the discipline, and, during a worldwide pandemic, assumed the role of department head as well as co-lead of an Institute-wide initiative to address climate change. For her exceptional leadership, innovation, and accomplishments in education and research, White was named the School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Engineering in July 2020.

      But White declares little interest in recognition or promotions. “I don’t care about all that stuff,” she says. She’s in the race for much bigger stakes. “I want to find ways to save the world with nuclear,” she says.

      Tackling turbulence

      It was this goal that drew White to MIT. Her research, honed during graduate studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, involved developing a detailed understanding of conditions inside fusion devices, and resolving issues critical to realizing the vision of fusion energy — a carbon-free, nearly limitless source of power generated by 150-million-degree plasma.

      Harnessing this superheated, gaseous form of matter requires a special donut-shaped device called a tokamak, which contains the plasma within magnetic fields. When White entered fusion around the turn of the millennium, models of plasma behavior in tokamaks didn’t reliably match observed or experimental conditions. She was determined to change that picture, working with MIT’s state-of-the-art research tokamak, Alcator C-Mod.

      Play video

      Alcator C-Mod Tokamak Tour

      White believed solving the fusion puzzle meant getting a handle on plasma turbulence — the process by which charged atomic particles, breaking out of magnetic confinement, transport heat from the core to the cool edges of the tokamak. Although researchers knew that fusion energy depends on containing and controlling the heat of plasma reactions, White recalls that when she began grad school, “it was not widely accepted that turbulence was important, and that it was central to heat transport. She “felt it was critical to compare experimental measurements to first principles physics models, so we could demonstrate the significance of turbulence and give tokamak models better predictive ability.”

      In a series of groundbreaking studies, White’s team created the tools for measuring turbulence in different conditions, and developed computational models that could account for variations in turbulence, all validated by experiments. She was one of the first fusion scientists both to perform experiments and conduct simulations. “We lived in the domain between these two worlds,” she says.

      White’s turbulence models opened up approaches for managing turbulence and maximizing tokamak performance, paving the way for net-energy fusion energy devices, including ITER, the world’s largest fusion experiment, and SPARC, a compact, high-magnetic-field tokamak, a collaboration between MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

      Laser-focused on turbulence

      Growing up in the desert city of Yuma, Arizona, White spent her free time outdoors, hiking and camping. “I was always in the space of protecting the environment,” she says. The daughter of two lawyers who taught her “to argue quickly and efficiently,” she excelled in math and physics in high school. Awarded a full ride at the University of Arizona, she was intent on a path in science, one where she could tackle problems like global warming, as it was known then. Physics seemed like the natural concentration for her.

      But there was unexpected pushback. The physics advisor believed her physics grades were lackluster. “I said, ‘Who cares what this guy thinks; I’ll take physics classes anyway,’” recalls White. Being tenacious and “thick skinned,” says White, turned out to be life-altering. “I took nuclear physics, which opened my eyes to fission, which then set me off on a path of understanding nuclear power and advanced nuclear systems,” she says. Math classes introduced her to chaotic systems, and she decided she wanted to study turbulence. Then, at a Society of Physics Students meeting White says she attended for the free food, she learned about fusion.

      “I realized this was what I wanted to do,” says White. “I became totally laser focused on turbulence and tokamaks.”

      At UCLA, she began to develop instruments and methods for measuring and modeling plasma turbulence, working on three different fusion research reactors, and earning fellowships from the Department of Energy (DOE) during her graduate and post-graduate years in fusion energy science. At MIT, she received a DOE Early Career Award that enabled her to build a research team that she now considers her “legacy.”

      As she expanded her research portfolio, White was also intent on incorporating fusion into the NSE curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate level, and more broadly, on making NSE a destination for students concerned about climate change. In recognition of her efforts, she received the 2014 Junior Bose Teaching Award. She also helped design the EdX course, Nuclear Engineering: Science, Systems and Society, introducing thousands of online learners to the potential of the field. “I have to be in the classroom,” she says. “I have to be with students, interacting, and sharing knowledge and lines of inquiry with them.”

      But even as she deepened her engagement with teaching and with her fusion research, which was helping spur development of new fusion energy technologies, White could not resist leaping into a consequential new undertaking: chairing the department. “It sounds cheesy, but I did it for my kid,” she says. “I can be helpful working on fusion, but I thought, what if I can help more by enabling other people across all areas of nuclear? This department gave me so much, I wanted to give back.”

      Although the pandemic struck just months after she stepped into the role in 2019, White propelled the department toward a new strategic plan. “It captures all the urgency and passion of the faculty, and is attractive to new students, with more undergraduates enrolling and more graduate students applying,” she says. White sees the department advancing the broader goals of the field, “articulating why nuclear is fundamentally important across many dimensions for carbon-free electricity and generation.” This means getting students involved in advanced fission technologies such as nuclear batteries and small modular reactors, as well as giving them an education in fusion that will help catalyze a nascent energy industry.

      Restless for a challenge

      White feels she’s still growing into the leadership role. “I’m really enthusiastic and sometimes too intense for people, so I have to dial it back during challenging conversations,” she says. She recently completed a Harvard Business School course on leadership.

      As the recently named co-chair of MIT’s Climate Nucleus (along with Professor Noelle Selin), charged with overseeing MIT’s campus initiatives around climate change, White says she draws on a repertoire of skills that come naturally to her: listening carefully, building consensus, and seeing value in the diversity of opinion. She is optimistic about mobilizing the Institute around goals to lower MIT’s carbon footprint, “using the entire campus as a research lab,” she says.

      In the midst of this push, White continues to advance projects of concern to her, such as making nuclear physics education more accessible. She developed an in-class module involving a simple particle detector for measuring background radiation. “Any high school or university student could build this experiment in 10 minutes and see alpha particle clusters and muons,” she says.

      White is also planning to host “Rising Stars,” an international conference intended to help underrepresented groups break barriers to entry in the field of nuclear science and engineering. “Grand intellectual challenges like saving the world appeal to all genders and backgrounds,” she says.

      These projects, her departmental and institutional duties, and most recently a new job chairing DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee leave her precious little time for a life outside work. But she makes time for walks and backpacking with her husband and toddler son, and reading the latest books by female faculty colleagues, such as “The New Breed,” by Media Lab robotics researcher Kate Darling, and “When People Want Punishment,” by Lily Tsai, Ford Professor of Political Science. “There are so many things I don’t know and want to understand,” says White.

      Yet even at leisure, White doesn’t slow down. “It’s restlessness: I love to learn, and anytime someone says a problem is hard, or impossible, I want to tackle it,” she says. There’s no time off, she believes, when the goal is “solving climate change and amplifying the work of other people trying to solve it.” More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Environment

      High-energy and hungry for the hardest problems

      by

      A high school track star and valedictorian, Anne White has always relished moving fast and clearing high hurdles. Since joining the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) in 2009 she has produced path-breaking fusion research, helped attract a more diverse cohort of students and scholars into the discipline, and, during a worldwide pandemic, assumed the role of department head as well as co-lead of an Institute-wide initiative to address climate change. For her exceptional leadership, innovation, and accomplishments in education and research, White was named the School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Engineering in July 2020.

      But White declares little interest in recognition or promotions. “I don’t care about all that stuff,” she says. She’s in the race for much bigger stakes. “I want to find ways to save the world with nuclear,” she says.

      Tackling turbulence

      It was this goal that drew White to MIT. Her research, honed during graduate studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, involved developing a detailed understanding of conditions inside fusion devices, and resolving issues critical to realizing the vision of fusion energy — a carbon-free, nearly limitless source of power generated by 150-million-degree plasma.

      Harnessing this superheated, gaseous form of matter requires a special donut-shaped device called a tokamak, which contains the plasma within magnetic fields. When White entered fusion around the turn of the millennium, models of plasma behavior in tokamaks didn’t reliably match observed or experimental conditions. She was determined to change that picture, working with MIT’s state-of-the-art research tokamak, Alcator C-Mod.

      Play video

      Alcator C-Mod Tokamak Tour

      White believed solving the fusion puzzle meant getting a handle on plasma turbulence — the process by which charged atomic particles, breaking out of magnetic confinement, transport heat from the core to the cool edges of the tokamak. Although researchers knew that fusion energy depends on containing and controlling the heat of plasma reactions, White recalls that when she began grad school, “it was not widely accepted that turbulence was important, and that it was central to heat transport. She “felt it was critical to compare experimental measurements to first principles physics models, so we could demonstrate the significance of turbulence and give tokamak models better predictive ability.”

      In a series of groundbreaking studies, White’s team created the tools for measuring turbulence in different conditions, and developed computational models that could account for variations in turbulence, all validated by experiments. She was one of the first fusion scientists both to perform experiments and conduct simulations. “We lived in the domain between these two worlds,” she says.

      White’s turbulence models opened up approaches for managing turbulence and maximizing tokamak performance, paving the way for net-energy fusion energy devices, including ITER, the world’s largest fusion experiment, and SPARC, a compact, high-magnetic-field tokamak, a collaboration between MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

      Laser-focused on turbulence

      Growing up in the desert city of Yuma, Arizona, White spent her free time outdoors, hiking and camping. “I was always in the space of protecting the environment,” she says. The daughter of two lawyers who taught her “to argue quickly and efficiently,” she excelled in math and physics in high school. Awarded a full ride at the University of Arizona, she was intent on a path in science, one where she could tackle problems like global warming, as it was known then. Physics seemed like the natural concentration for her.

      But there was unexpected pushback. The physics advisor believed her physics grades were lackluster. “I said, ‘Who cares what this guy thinks; I’ll take physics classes anyway,’” recalls White. Being tenacious and “thick skinned,” says White, turned out to be life-altering. “I took nuclear physics, which opened my eyes to fission, which then set me off on a path of understanding nuclear power and advanced nuclear systems,” she says. Math classes introduced her to chaotic systems, and she decided she wanted to study turbulence. Then, at a Society of Physics Students meeting White says she attended for the free food, she learned about fusion.

      “I realized this was what I wanted to do,” says White. “I became totally laser focused on turbulence and tokamaks.”

      At UCLA, she began to develop instruments and methods for measuring and modeling plasma turbulence, working on three different fusion research reactors, and earning fellowships from the Department of Energy (DOE) during her graduate and post-graduate years in fusion energy science. At MIT, she received a DOE Early Career Award that enabled her to build a research team that she now considers her “legacy.”

      As she expanded her research portfolio, White was also intent on incorporating fusion into the NSE curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate level, and more broadly, on making NSE a destination for students concerned about climate change. In recognition of her efforts, she received the 2014 Junior Bose Teaching Award. She also helped design the EdX course, Nuclear Engineering: Science, Systems and Society, introducing thousands of online learners to the potential of the field. “I have to be in the classroom,” she says. “I have to be with students, interacting, and sharing knowledge and lines of inquiry with them.”

      But even as she deepened her engagement with teaching and with her fusion research, which was helping spur development of new fusion energy technologies, White could not resist leaping into a consequential new undertaking: chairing the department. “It sounds cheesy, but I did it for my kid,” she says. “I can be helpful working on fusion, but I thought, what if I can help more by enabling other people across all areas of nuclear? This department gave me so much, I wanted to give back.”

      Although the pandemic struck just months after she stepped into the role in 2019, White propelled the department toward a new strategic plan. “It captures all the urgency and passion of the faculty, and is attractive to new students, with more undergraduates enrolling and more graduate students applying,” she says. White sees the department advancing the broader goals of the field, “articulating why nuclear is fundamentally important across many dimensions for carbon-free electricity and generation.” This means getting students involved in advanced fission technologies such as nuclear batteries and small modular reactors, as well as giving them an education in fusion that will help catalyze a nascent energy industry.

      Restless for a challenge

      White feels she’s still growing into the leadership role. “I’m really enthusiastic and sometimes too intense for people, so I have to dial it back during challenging conversations,” she says. She recently completed a Harvard Business School course on leadership.

      As the recently named co-chair of MIT’s Climate Nucleus (along with Professor Noelle Selin), charged with overseeing MIT’s campus initiatives around climate change, White says she draws on a repertoire of skills that come naturally to her: listening carefully, building consensus, and seeing value in the diversity of opinion. She is optimistic about mobilizing the Institute around goals to lower MIT’s carbon footprint, “using the entire campus as a research lab,” she says.

      In the midst of this push, White continues to advance projects of concern to her, such as making nuclear physics education more accessible. She developed an in-class module involving a simple particle detector for measuring background radiation. “Any high school or university student could build this experiment in 10 minutes and see alpha particle clusters and muons,” she says.

      White is also planning to host “Rising Stars,” an international conference intended to help underrepresented groups break barriers to entry in the field of nuclear science and engineering. “Grand intellectual challenges like saving the world appeal to all genders and backgrounds,” she says.

      These projects, her departmental and institutional duties, and most recently a new job chairing DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee leave her precious little time for a life outside work. But she makes time for walks and backpacking with her husband and toddler son, and reading the latest books by female faculty colleagues, such as “The New Breed,” by Media Lab robotics researcher Kate Darling, and “When People Want Punishment,” by Lily Tsai, Ford Professor of Political Science. “There are so many things I don’t know and want to understand,” says White.

      Yet even at leisure, White doesn’t slow down. “It’s restlessness: I love to learn, and anytime someone says a problem is hard, or impossible, I want to tackle it,” she says. There’s no time off, she believes, when the goal is “solving climate change and amplifying the work of other people trying to solve it.” More

    • 50 Shares169 Views

      in Environment

      Power, laws, and planning

      by

      Think about almost any locale where people live: Why does it have its current built form? Why do people reside where they do? No doubt there are quirks of geography or history involved. But places are also shaped by money, politics, and the law — in short, by power.

      Studying those issues is the work of Justin Steil, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Steil’s research largely focuses on cities, drawing out the ways that politics and the law sustain social divisions on the ground.

      Or, as Steil says, “The biggest theme that runs through my work is: How is power exercised through control of space, and access to particular places? What are the spatial and social and legal processes of inclusion and exclusion that generate or can address inequality, generally?”

      Those mechanisms can be found all around. Wealthy suburbs with large minimum lot sizes restrict growth and access to high-ranking school districts; gated communities take that process of separation even more literally; and many U.S. metro areas have island-like jurisdictions that have seceded from larger surrounding cities. City residential geography often displays the legacies of redlining (discrimination laws) and even century-old mob violence incidents used to curb integration.

      “I really like to try to get down to pinpoint what are the precise laws, ordinances, and policies, and specific social processes, which continue to generate inequality,” says Steil. “And ask: How can we change that to generate greater access to resources and opportunities?”

      While investigating questions that range widely across the theme of power and space, Steil has published many research articles and book chapters while helping edit volumes on the subject. For his research and teaching, Steil was awarded tenure at MIT earlier this year.

      Combining law and urban planning

      Steil grew up in New York City, where his surroundings helped him realize how much urban policy and laws matters. He attended Harvard University as an undergraduate, majored in African American Studies, and spent a summer as a student in South Africa in 1998, just as the country was launching its new democracy.

      “That had a big impact,” Steil says. “Both seeing the power of grassroots organizing and social movements, to overthrow this white supremacist government, but also to understand how the apartheid system had worked, the role of law and of space — how the landscape and built environment had been consciously designed to keep people separate and unequal.”

      Between graduating from college and finishing his PhD, Steil embarked on an odyssey of jobs in the nonprofit sector and graduate work on multiple academic disciplines, touching on pressing social topics. Steil worked at the City School in Boston, a youth leadership program; the Food Project, a Massachusetts agricultural program; two nonprofits in Juarez, Mexico, focused on preventing domestic violence and on environmental justice; and the New Economy Project in New York, studying predatory lending. In the midst of this, Steil took time to earn a master’s in city design and social science from the London School of Economics.

      “I learned so much from studying city design, and really enjoyed it,” Steil says of that program. “But I also realized that my personal strengths are not in design. … I was more interested and more capable in the social science realm.”

      With that in mind, Steil was accepted into a joint PhD and JD program at Columbia University, combining a law degree with doctoral studies in urban planning.

      “So much of urban planning is determined by law, by property law and constitutional law,” Steil says. “I felt that if I wanted to research and teach these things, I needed to understand the law.”

      After finishing his law school and doctoral courses, Steil’s dissertation, written under the guidance of the late Peter Marcuse, examined the policy responses of two sets of paired towns — two in Nebraska, two in Pennsylvania — to immigration. In each of the states, one town was far more receptive to immigrants than the other. Steil concluded that the immigration-receptive towns had more local organizations and civic connections that reached across economic classes; instead of being more atomized, they were more cohesive socially, and willing to create more economic opportunities for those willing to work for them.

      Without such ties, Steil notes, people can end up “seeing things as a zero-sum game, instead of seeing the possibilities for new residents to enliven and enrich and contribute to a community.”

      By contrast, he adds, “sustained collaboration across what people might have seen as differences toward a shared goal created opportunities for a dialogue about immigration, its challenges and benefits, to imagine a future that could include these new neighbors. There was an emphasis in some of those towns on being communities where people were proud of working hard, and respected other people who did that.”

      From PhD to EMT

      Steil joined the MIT faculty after completing his PhD in 2015, and has continued to produce work on an array of issues about policy, law, and inclusion. Some of that work bears directly on contemporary housing policy. With Nicholas Kelly PhD ’21, Lawrence Vale, the Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning at MIT, and Maia Woluchem MCP ’19, he co-edited the volume “Furthering Fair Housing” (Temple University Press, 2021), which analyzes recent political clashes over federal fair-housing policy.

      Some of Steil’s other work is more historically oriented. He has published multiple papers on race and housing in the early 20th century, when both violence against Blacks and race-based laws kept many cities segregated. As Steil notes, U.S. laws have been rewritten so as to be no longer explicitly race-based. However, he notes, “That legacy, entrenched into the built environment, is very durable.”

      There are also significant effects stemming from the local, property-tax-based system of funding education in the U.S., another policy approach that effectively leaves many Americans living in very different realms of metro areas.

      “By fragmenting [funding] at the local level and then having resources redistributed within these small jurisdictions, it creates powerful incentives for wealthy households and individuals to use land-use law and other law to exclude people,” Steil says. “That’s partly why we have this tremendous crisis of housing affordability today, as well as deep inequalities in educational opportunities.”

      Since arriving at MIT, Steil has also taught on these topics extensively. The undergraduate classes he teaches include an introduction to housing and community development, a course on land use and civil rights law, another course on land use and environmental law, and one on environmental justice.

      “What an amazing privilege it is to be here at MIT, and learn every day, from our students, our undergraduate and graduate students, and from my colleagues,” Steil says. “It makes it fun to be here.”

      As if Steil didn’t have enough on his plate, he takes part in still another MIT-based activity: For the last few years, he has worked as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) for MIT’s volunteer corps, having received his training from MIT’s EMT students since arriving on campus.

      As Steil describes it, his volunteer work has been a process of “starting out at the bottom of the totem pole as a beginning EMT and being trained by other students and progressing with my classmates.”

      It is “amazing,” he adds, to work with students and see “their dedication to this service and to MIT and to Cambridge and Boston, how hard they work and how capable they are, and what a strong community gets formed through that.” More

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      in Energy

      Solving a longstanding conundrum in heat transfer

      by

      It is a problem that has beguiled scientists for a century. But, buoyed by a $625,000 Distinguished Early Career Award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), Matteo Bucci, an associate professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), hopes to be close to an answer.

      Tackling the boiling crisis

      Whether you’re heating a pot of water for pasta or are designing nuclear reactors, one phenomenon — boiling — is vital for efficient execution of both processes.

      “Boiling is a very effective heat transfer mechanism; it’s the way to remove large amounts of heat from the surface, which is why it is used in many high-power density applications,” Bucci says. An example use case: nuclear reactors.

      To the layperson, boiling appears simple — bubbles form and burst, removing heat. But what if so many bubbles form and coalesce that they form a band of vapor that prevents further heat transfer? Such a problem is a known entity and is labeled the boiling crisis. It would lead to runaway heat, and a failure of fuel rods in nuclear reactors. So “understanding and determining under which conditions the boiling crisis is likely to happen is critical to designing more efficient and cost-competitive nuclear reactors,” Bucci says.

      Early work on the boiling crisis dates back nearly a century ago, to 1926. And while much work has been done, “it is clear that we haven’t found an answer,” Bucci says. The boiling crisis remains a challenge because while models abound, the measurement of related phenomena to prove or disprove these models has been difficult. “[Boiling] is a process that happens on a very, very small length scale and over very, very short times,” Bucci says. “We are not able to observe it at the level of detail necessary to understand what really happens and validate hypotheses.”

      But, over the past few years, Bucci and his team have been developing diagnostics that can measure the phenomena related to boiling and thereby provide much-needed answers to a classic problem. Diagnostics are anchored in infrared thermometry and a technique using visible light. “By combining these two techniques I think we’re going to be ready to answer standing questions related to heat transfer, we can make our way out of the rabbit hole,” Bucci says. The grant award from the U.S. DoE for Nuclear Energy Projects will aid in this and Bucci’s other research efforts.

      An idyllic Italian childhood

      Tackling difficult problems is not new territory for Bucci, who grew up in the small town of Città di Castello near Florence, Italy. Bucci’s mother was an elementary school teacher. His father used to have a machine shop, which helped develop Bucci’s scientific bent. “I liked LEGOs a lot when I was a kid. It was a passion,” he adds.

      Despite Italy going through a severe pullback from nuclear engineering during his formative years, the subject fascinated Bucci. Job opportunities in the field were uncertain but Bucci decided to dig in. “If I have to do something for the rest of my life, it might as well be something I like,” he jokes. Bucci attended the University of Pisa for undergraduate and graduate studies in nuclear engineering.

      His interest in heat transfer mechanisms took root during his doctoral studies, a research subject he pursued in Paris at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). It was there that a colleague suggested work on the boiling water crisis. This time Bucci set his sights on NSE at MIT and reached out to Professor Jacopo Buongiorno to inquire about research at the institution. Bucci had to fundraise at CEA to conduct research at MIT. He arrived just a couple of days before the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 with a round-trip ticket. But Bucci has stayed ever since, moving on to become a research scientist and then associate professor at NSE.

      Bucci admits he struggled to adapt to the environment when he first arrived at MIT, but work and friendships with colleagues — he counts NSE’s Guanyu Su and Reza Azizian as among his best friends — helped conquer early worries.

      The integration of artificial intelligence

      In addition to diagnostics for boiling, Bucci and his team are working on ways of integrating artificial intelligence and experimental research. He is convinced that “the integration of advanced diagnostics, machine learning, and advanced modeling tools will blossom in a decade.”

      Bucci’s team is developing an autonomous laboratory for boiling heat transfer experiments. Running on machine learning, the setup decides which experiments to run based on a learning objective the team assigns. “We formulate a question and the machine will answer by optimizing the kinds of experiments that are necessary to answer those questions,” Bucci says, “I honestly think this is the next frontier for boiling,” he adds.

      “It’s when you climb a tree and you reach the top, that you realize that the horizon is much more vast and also more beautiful,” Bucci says of his zeal to pursue more research in the field.

      Even as he seeks new heights, Bucci has not forgotten his origins. Commemorating Italy’s hosting of the World Cup in 1990, a series of posters showcasing a soccer field fitted into the Roman Colosseum occupies pride of place in his home and office. Created by Alberto Burri, the posters are of sentimental value: The (now deceased) Italian artist also hailed from Bucci’s hometown — Città di Castello. More

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      in Environment

      Kerry Emanuel: A climate scientist and meteorologist in the eye of the storm

      by

      Kerry Emanuel once joked that whenever he retired, he would start a “hurricane safari” so other people could experience what it’s like to fly into the eye of a hurricane.

      “All of a sudden, the turbulence stops, the sun comes out, bright sunshine, and it’s amazingly calm. And you’re in this grand stadium [of clouds miles high],” he says. “It’s quite an experience.”

      While the hurricane safari is unlikely to come to fruition — “You can’t just conjure up a hurricane,” he explains — Emanuel, a world-leading expert on links between hurricanes and climate change, is retiring from teaching in the Department of Earth Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at MIT after a more than 40-year career.

      Best known for his foundational contributions to the science of tropical cyclones, climate, and links between them, Emanuel has also been a prominent voice in public debates on climate change, and what we should do about it.

      “Kerry has had an enormous effect on the world through the students and junior scientists he has trained,” says William Boos PhD ’08, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California at Berkeley. “He’s a brilliant enough scientist and theoretician that he didn’t need any of us to accomplish what he has, but he genuinely cares about educating new generations of scientists and helping to launch their careers.”

      In recognition of Emanuel’s teaching career and contributions to science, a symposium was held in his honor at MIT on June 21 and 22, organized by several of his former students and collaborators, including Boos. Research presented at the symposium focused on the many fields influenced by Emanuel’s more than 200 published research papers — on everything from forecasting the risks posed by tropical cyclones to understanding how rainfall is produced by continent-sized patterns of atmospheric circulation.

      Emanuel’s career observing perturbations of Earth’s atmosphere started earlier than he can remember. “According to my older brother, from the age of 2, I would crawl to the window whenever there was a thunderstorm,” he says. At first, those were the rolling thunderheads of the Midwest where he grew up, then it was the edges of hurricanes during a few teenage years in Florida. Eventually, he would find himself watching from the very eye of the storm, both physically and mathematically.

      Emanuel attended MIT both as an undergraduate studying Earth and planetary sciences, and for his PhD in meteorology, writing a dissertation on thunderstorms that form ahead of cold fronts. Within the department, he worked with some of the central figures of modern meteorology such as Jule Charney, Fred Sanders, and Edward Lorenz — the founder of chaos theory.

      After receiving his PhD in 1978, Emanuel joined the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles. During this period, he also took a semester sabbatical to film the wind speeds of tornadoes in Texas and Oklahoma. After three years, he returned to MIT and joined the Department of Meteorology in 1981. Two years later, the department merged with Earth and Planetary Sciences to form EAPS as it is known today, and where Emanuel has remained ever since.

      At MIT, he shifted scales. The thunderstorms and tornadoes that had been the focus of Emanuel’s research up to then were local atmospheric phenomena, or “mesoscale” in the language of meteorologists. The larger “synoptic scale” storms that are hurricanes blew into Emanuel’s research when as a young faculty member he was asked to teach a class in tropical meteorology; in prepping for the class, Emanuel found his notes on hurricanes from graduate school no longer made sense.

      “I realized I didn’t understand them because they couldn’t have been correct,” he says. “And so I set out to try to find a much better theoretical formulation for hurricanes.”

      He soon made two important contributions. In 1986, his paper “An Air-Sea Interaction Theory for Tropical Cyclones. Part 1: Steady-State Maintenance” developed a new theory for upper limits of hurricane intensity given atmospheric conditions. This work in turn led to even larger-scale questions to address. “That upper bound had to be dependent on climate, and it was likely to go up if we were to warm the climate,” Emanuel says — a phenomenon he explored in another paper, “The Dependence of Hurricane Intensity on Climate,” which showed how warming sea surface temperatures and changing atmospheric conditions from a warming climate would make hurricanes more destructive.

      “In my view, this is among the most remarkable achievements in theoretical geophysics,” says Adam Sobel PhD ’98, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University who got to know Emanuel after he graduated and became interested in tropical meteorology. “From first principles, using only pencil-and-paper analysis and physical reasoning, he derives a quantitative bound on hurricane intensity that has held up well over decades of comparison to observations” and underpins current methods of predicting hurricane intensity and how it changes with climate.

      This and diverse subsequent work led to numerous honors, including membership to the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

      Emanuel’s research was never confined to academic circles, however; when politicians and industry leaders voiced loud opposition to the idea that human-caused climate change posed a threat, he spoke up.

      “I felt kind of a duty to try to counter that,” says Emanuel. “I thought it was an interesting challenge to see if you could go out and convince what some people call climate deniers, skeptics, that this was a serious risk and we had to treat it as such.”

      In addition to many public lectures and media appearances discussing climate change, Emanuel penned a book for general audiences titled “What We Know About Climate Change,” in addition to a widely-read primer on climate change and risk assessment designed to influence business leaders.

      “Kerry has an unmatched physical understanding of tropical climate phenomena,” says Emanuel’s colleague, Susan Solomon, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies at EAPS. “But he’s also a great communicator and has generously given his time to public outreach. His book ‘What We Know About Climate Change’ is a beautiful piece of work that is readily understandable and has captivated many a non-expert reader.”

      Along with a number of other prominent climate scientists, Emanuel also began advocating for expanding nuclear power as the most rapid path to decarbonizing the world’s energy systems.

      “I think the impediment to nuclear is largely irrational in the United States,” he says. “So, I’ve been trying to fight that just like I’ve been trying to fight climate denial.”

      One lesson Emanuel has taken from his public work on climate change is that skeptical audiences often respond better to issues framed in positive terms than to doom and gloom; he’s found emphasizing the potential benefits rather than the sacrifices involved in the energy transition can engage otherwise wary audiences.

      “It’s really not opposition to science, per se,” he says. “It’s fear of the societal changes they think are required to do something about it.”

      He has also worked to raise awareness about how insurance companies significantly underestimate climate risks in their policies, in particular by basing hurricane risk on unreliable historical data. One recent practical result has been a project by the First Street Foundation to assess the true flood risk of every property in the United States using hurricane models Emanuel developed.

      “I think it’s transformative,” Emanuel says of the project with First Street. “That may prove to be the most substantive research I’ve done.”

      Though Emanuel is retiring from teaching, he has no plans to stop working. “When I say ‘retire’ it’s in quotes,” he says. In 2011, Emanuel and Professor of Geophysics Daniel Rothman founded the Lorenz Center, a climate research center at MIT in honor of Emanuel’s mentor and friend Edward Lorenz. Emanuel will continue to participate in work at the center, which aims to counter what Emanuel describes as a trend away from “curiosity-driven” work in climate science.

      “Even if there were no such thing as global warming, [climate science] would still be a really, really exciting field,” says Emanuel. “There’s so much to understand about climate, about the climates of the past, about the climates of other planets.”

      In addition to work with the Lorenz Center, he’s become interested once again in tornadoes and severe local storms, and understanding whether climate also controls such local phenomena. He’s also involved in two of MIT’s Climate Grand Challenges projects focused on translating climate hazards to explicit financial and health risks — what will bring the dangers of climate change home to people, he says, is for the public to understand more concrete risks, like agricultural failure, water shortages, electricity shortages, and severe weather events. Capturing that will drive the next few years of his work.

      “I’m going to be stepping up research in some respects,” he says, now living full-time at his home in Maine.

      Of course, “retiring” does mean a bit more free time for new pursuits, like learning a language or an instrument, and “rediscovering the art of sailing,” says Emanuel. He’s looking forward to those days on the water, whatever storms are to come. More

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      in Energy

      Donald Sadoway wins European Inventor Award for liquid metal batteries

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      MIT Professor Donald Sadoway has won the 2022 European Inventor Award, in the category for Non-European Patent Office Countries, for his work on liquid metal batteries that could enable the long-term storage of renewable energy.

      Sadoway is the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and a longtime supporter and friend of the Materials Research Laboratory.

      “By enabling the large-scale storage of renewable energy, Donald Sadoway’s invention is a huge step towards the deployment of carbon-free electricity generation,” says António Campinos, president of the European Patent Office. “He has spent his career studying electrochemistry and has transformed this expertise into an invention that represents a huge step forward in the transition to green energy.”

      Sadoway was honored at the 2022 European Inventor Award ceremony on June 21. The award is one of Europe’s most prestigious innovation prizes and is presented annually to outstanding inventors from Europe and beyond who have made an exceptional contribution to society, technological progress, and economic growth.

      When accepting the award in Munich, Sadoway told the audience:

      “I am astonished. When I look at all the patented technologies that are represented at this event I see an abundance of excellence, all of them solutions to pressing problems. I wonder if the judges are assessing not only degrees of excellence but degrees of urgency. The liquid metal battery addresses an existential threat to the health of our atmosphere which is related to climate change.

      “By hosting this event the EPO celebrates invention. The thread that connects all the inventors is their efforts to make the world a better place. In my judgment there is no nobler pursuit. So perhaps this is a celebration of nobility.”

      Sadoway’s liquid metal batteries consist of three liquid layers of different densities, which naturally separate in the same way as oil and vinegar do in a salad dressing. The top and bottom layers are made from molten metals, with a middle layer of molten liquid salt.

      To keep the metals liquid, the batteries need to operate at extremely high temperatures, so Sadoway designed a system that is self-heating and insulated, requiring no external heating or cooling. They have a lifespan of more than 20 years, can maintain 99 percent of their capacity over 5,000 charging cycles, and have no combustible materials, meaning there is no fire risk.

      In 2010, with a patent for his invention and support from Bill Gates, Sadoway co-founded Ambri, based in Marlborough, Massachusetts just outside Boston, to develop a commercial product. The company will soon install a unit on a 3,700-acre development for a data center in Nevada. This battery will store energy from a reported 500 megawatts of on-site renewable generation, the same output as a natural gas power plant.

      Born in 1950 into a family of Ukrainian immigrants in Canada, Sadoway studied chemical metallurgy specializing in what he calls “extreme electrochemistry” — chemical reactions in molten salts and liquid metals that have been heated to over 500 degrees Celsius. After earning his BASc, MASc, and PhD, all from the University of Toronto, he joined the faculty at MIT in 1978. More

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      in Environment

      “The world needs your smarts, your skills,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala tells MIT’s Class of 2022

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      On a clear warm day, the MIT graduating class of 2022 gathered in Killian Court for the first in-person commencement exercises in three years, after two years of online ceremonies due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

      Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala MCP ’78, PhD ’81, director-general of the World Trade Organization, delivered the Commencement address, stressing the global need for science-informed policy to address problems of climate change, pandemics, international security, and wealth disparities. She told the graduates: “In these uncertain times, in this complex world in which you are entering, you need not be so daunted, if you can search for the opportunities hidden in challenges.” She urged them to go “into the world to embrace the opportunities to serve.”

      An expert in global finance, economics, and international development, Okonjo-Iweala is the first woman and first African to lead the WTO. She earned a master’s degree in city planning from MIT in 1978, and a PhD in regional economics and development in 1981.

      Okonjo-Iweala began her address by paying tribute to MIT President L. Rafael Reif, who earlier this semester announced plans to end his decade-long tenure in that role. Calling this a “bittersweet day” because of his departure, she honored “his academic, institutional, and thought leadership of these past 10 years.”

      She spoke warmly of the way MIT had helped her while she was a graduate student struggling to pay the bills. She was assured that the Institute would do whatever was needed to make sure she could complete her studies, she recalled, saying, “They had my back.” Noting that this year’s graduating class had their own educational journeys challenged by the global pandemic, she described how her own early education was interrupted for three years by civil war in her home country of Nigeria. She also noted the recent tragic shootings in Uvalde, Texas, saying that “I feel grief as a mother and a grandmother.”

      “MIT has helped make me who I am today,” she said. “My parents made it clear to me that education was a privilege, and that with that privilege comes responsibility — the responsibility to use it for others, not just for yourself.”

      She said that what the world needs in this time of multiple global challenges, including Covid-19, climate change, public health, and international security, is an approach “combining science, social science, and public policy, to meet the challenges of our future.”

      Friday’s Commencement ceremony celebrated the 1,099 undergraduate and 2,590 graduate students receiving MIT diplomas this year.

      Photo: Gretchen Ertl

      MIT President L. Rafael Reif walked near the head of the procession to Killian Court, followed by Commencement speaker Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles, and others.

      Photo: Adam Glanzman

      Temiloluwa Omitoogun, president of the Class of 2022, told his classmates, “MIT is hard. MIT during an unprecedented pandemic is even harder, but we did it.”

      Photo: Adam Glanzman

      In a longstanding MIT Commencement ritual, graduates turn over their class ring, the “brass rat.” The ring’s image of the Boston skyline faces students until they graduate, and thereafter they will see the Cambridge skyline, in effect looking back at campus.

      Photo: Adam Glanzman

      Members of the Class of 2022 celebrated on Killian Court.

      Photo: Adam Glanzman

      Fifty years after their own graduation, members of the Class of 1972 attended the ceremony as special guests, wearing signature red jackets. Members of the Classes of ’70 and ’71 also joined the festivities.

      Photo: Gretchen Ertl

      Members of the Class of 2022 celebrated on Killian Court.

      Photo: Gretchen Ertl

      President Reif urged the assembled graduates to shout out a loud “thank you!” to all family, professors, friends, and others who helped them reach today’s milestone.

      Photo: Gretchen Ertl

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      Okonjo-Iweala, who was formerly head of the World Bank, said that “a common thread running through many of these challenges is the central role for science,” and she stressed the need for technological innovation to address the global problems facing humanity. “New inventions and new ways of doing things will have an impact, mainly to the extent they are scaled up across the dividing lines of income and geography,” she said.

      “We don’t just need vaccines,” she continued. “We need shots in arms across the world, to be safe. We need new renewable technologies diffused not just in rich countries to fight climate change, but also in poor ones. We need new agricultural technologies built to local conditions and culture, if we’re to fight hunger. In other words, we need innovation. But we also need access, equity, diffusion.”

      In the case of the global response to the pandemic, she noted that only 17 percent of people in Africa and 13 percent of people in low-income countries have been fully vaccinated, compared to 75 percent of people in high income countries. “Since we all know that no one is safe until everyone is safe, the risk of more dangerous variants and pathogens remains real because of this public policy lapse and the lack of timely international cooperation,” she said.

      As for climate change, she pointed out that the world somehow managed to come up with $14 trillion to address the Covid-19 pandemic but has not managed to fulfill the pledges nations made to provide $100 billion to help less-developed nations build renewable energy solutions.

      To address these global challenges, she told the new graduates, “the world needs your smarts, your skills, your adaptability, and the great training you have received here at MIT. The world needs you for innovation, for policymaking, for connecting the dots so that implementation can actually happen.”

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      President Reif, in his charge to the graduates, urged the assembled crowd to shout out a loud “thank you!” to all family, professors, friends, and other who helped them reach today’s milestone. He pointed out that research, including from MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, shows that “simply expressing gratitude does wonderful things to your brain. It gets different parts of your brain to act in a synchronized way. It lights up reward pathways!”

      “All of us could use a reliable device for feeling better. So now, thanks to brain science, Course 9, you have one! The Gratitude Amplifier is unbreakable. Its battery never dies, it will never try to sell you anything, you can use it every day, forever — and it’s free!”

      He recalled the example of the way students banded together to create a new space for relaxation on campus, now known as the Banana Lounge, a central location where students could relax with free coffee and bananas. “The students have done this all essentially themselves, applying their skills and the most delightful MIT values.” The project has already distributed a half-million bananas, he said, and produced a “wonderful, tropical, perfectly improbable new MIT institution.”

      He urged the graduating students to work to “make the world a little more like MIT. More daring and more passionate. More rigorous, inventive and ambitious. More humble, more respectful, more generous, more kind.” And, he added, “try always to share your bananas!”

      Adam Joseph “AJ” Miller, president of the Graduate Student Council, said, “Today marks the end of a chapter, the culmination of so many late nights, to forge lifelong friendships, to hold onto new experiences, to shape our dreams.” He added that “Something I heard a lot about when I first got here was all the doubt so many of us had in ourselves. I can say unequivocally today though, there are no impostors before me. Nobody sits where you sit by accident. You’re all now graduates of MIT, carrying on an incredibly impressive history.”

      Miller urged his fellow students to “stay confident in yourselves because of the challenges you’ve overcome. Be courageous in trying, because failure is learning and investing in each other.”

      Temiloluwa Omitoogun, president of the Class of 2022, told his classmates, “MIT is hard. MIT during an unprecedented pandemic is even harder, but we did it. Even if you don’t realize it, this is a huge accomplishment.” He added that “it’s sad that we’re all parting ways at the moment, but I’m even more excited than sad. I’m excited to see what more you all will accomplish. I look out and I don’t just see friends and classmates. I see future leaders, people who will change the world. I’m going to try my best to keep up and change the world too.”

      Later in the day, in a separate ceremony on Briggs Field, each of the members of the undergraduate Class of 2022 had a chance to hear their names read aloud as they walked across the stage to receive their diplomas. Right before this presentation, senior and physics and mathematics major Quinn Brodsky performed a heartful rendition of “Hypotheticals” by Lake Street Dive.

      Addressing the graduating seniors, Chancellor Melissa Nobles urged them to “absorb and relish this celebration of what you’ve achieved during your transformative time at MIT. How much you have grown, academically, professionally and personally!” She added that “the lifelong friends and mentors you found here are the people who I know will continue to be sources of encouragement, support, and inspiration as you make your way in the world.”

      Recalling the way the pandemic altered their academic careers, she said “you should know now that you can handle whatever life throws your way. Never forget that you are stronger and more resilient than you think you are.” She added, “hold on to the way this pandemic has put certain things into perspective. Time with people we care about is precious. So are our health and wellbeing, and the health and wellbeing of the ones we love. Looking out for others and feeling a sense of shared responsibility for the common good are paramount.”

      Nobles concluded that “your journey into the future holds countless possibilities, risks, joys, rewards, sometimes failures, and always surprises. … We wish you well on the road ahead.” 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