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    MIT students turn vision to reality

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

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      The MIT-Portugal Program enters Phase 4

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      Since its founding 19 years ago as a pioneering collaboration with Portuguese universities, research institutions and corporations, the MIT-Portugal Program (MPP) has achieved a slew of successes — from enabling 47 entrepreneurial spinoffs and funding over 220 joint projects between MIT and Portuguese researchers to training a generation of exceptional researchers on both sides of the Atlantic.In March, with nearly two decades of collaboration under their belts, MIT and the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) signed an agreement that officially launches the program’s next chapter. Running through 2030, MPP’s Phase 4 will support continued exploration of innovative ideas and solutions in fields ranging from artificial intelligence and nanotechnology to climate change — both on the MIT campus and with partners throughout Portugal.  “One of the advantages of having a program that has gone on so long is that we are pretty well familiar with each other at this point. Over the years, we’ve learned each other’s systems, strengths and weaknesses and we’ve been able to create a synergy that would not have existed if we worked together for a short period of time,” says Douglas Hart, MIT mechanical engineering professor and MPP co-director.Hart and John Hansman, the T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and MPP co-director, are eager to take the program’s existing research projects further, while adding new areas of focus identified by MIT and FCT. Known as the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia in Portugal, FCT is the national public agency supporting research in science, technology and innovation under Portugal’s Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation.“Over the past two decades, the partnership with MIT has built a foundation of trust that has fostered collaboration among researchers and the development of projects with significant scientific impact and contributions to the Portuguese economy,” Fernando Alexandre, Portugal’s minister for education, science, and innovation, says. “In this new phase of the partnership, running from 2025 to 2030, we expect even greater ambition and impact — raising Portuguese science and its capacity to transform the economy and improve our society to even higher levels, while helping to address the challenges we face in areas such as climate change and the oceans, digitalization, and space.”“International collaborations like the MIT-Portugal Program are absolutely vital to MIT’s mission of research, education and service. I’m thrilled to see the program move into its next phase,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “MPP offers our faculty and students opportunities to work in unique research environments where they not only make new findings and learn new methods but also contribute to solving urgent local and global problems. MPP’s work in the realm of ocean science and climate is a prime example of how international partnerships like this can help solve important human problems.”Sharing MIT’s commitment to academic independence and excellence, Kornbluth adds, “the institutions and researchers we partner with through MPP enhance MIT’s ability to achieve its mission, enabling us to pursue the exacting standards of intellectual and creative distinction that make MIT a cradle of innovation and world leader in scientific discovery.”The epitome of an effective international collaboration, MPP has stayed true to its mission and continued to deliver results here in the U.S. and in Portugal for nearly two decades — prevailing amid myriad shifts in the political, social, and economic landscape. The multifaceted program encompasses an annual research conference and educational summits such as an Innovation Workshop at MIT each June and a Marine Robotics Summer School in the Azores in July, as well as student and faculty exchanges that facilitate collaborative research. During the third phase of the program alone, 59 MIT students and 53 faculty and researchers visited Portugal, and MIT hosted 131 students and 49 faculty and researchers from Portuguese universities and other institutions.In each roughly five-year phase, MPP researchers focus on a handful of core research areas. For Phase 3, MPP advanced cutting-edge research in four strategic areas: climate science and climate change; Earth systems: oceans to near space; digital transformation in manufacturing; and sustainable cities. Within these broad areas, MIT and FCT researchers worked together on numerous small-scale projects and several large “flagship” ones, including development of Portugal’s CubeSat satellite, a collaboration between MPP and several Portuguese universities and companies that marked the country’s second satellite launch and the first in 30 years.While work in the Phase 3 fields will continue during Phase 4, researchers will also turn their attention to four more areas: chips/nanotechnology, energy (a previous focus in Phase 2), artificial intelligence, and space.“We are opening up the aperture for additional collaboration areas,” Hansman says.In addition to focusing on distinct subject areas, each phase has emphasized the various parts of MPP’s mission to differing degrees. While Phase 3 accentuated collaborative research more than educational exchanges and entrepreneurship, those two aspects will be given more weight under the Phase 4 agreement, Hart said.“We have approval in Phase 4 to bring a number of Portuguese students over, and our principal investigators will benefit from close collaborations with Portuguese researchers,” he says.The longevity of MPP and the recent launch of Phase 4 are evidence of the program’s value. The program has played a role in the educational, technological and economic progress Portugal has achieved over the past two decades, as well.  “The Portugal of today is remarkably stronger than the Portugal of 20 years ago, and many of the places where they are stronger have been impacted by the program,” says Hansman, pointing to sustainable cities and “green” energy, in particular. “We can’t take direct credit, but we’ve been part of Portugal’s journey forward.”Since MPP began, Hart adds, “Portugal has become much more entrepreneurial. Many, many, many more start-up companies are coming out of Portuguese universities than there used to be.”  A recent analysis of MPP and FCT’s other U.S. collaborations highlighted a number of positive outcomes. The report noted that collaborations with MIT and other US universities have enhanced Portuguese research capacities and promoted organizational upgrades in the national R&D ecosystem, while providing Portuguese universities and companies with opportunities to engage in complex projects that would have been difficult to undertake on their own.Regarding MIT in particular, the report found that MPP’s long-term collaboration has spawned the establishment of sustained doctoral programs and pointed to a marked shift within Portugal’s educational ecosystem toward globally aligned standards. MPP, it reported, has facilitated the education of 198 Portuguese PhDs.Portugal’s universities, students and companies are not alone in benefitting from the research, networks, and economic activity MPP has spawned. MPP also delivers unique value to MIT, as well as to the broader US science and research community. Among the program’s consistent themes over the years, for example, is “joint interest in the Atlantic,” Hansman says.This summer, Faial Island in the Azores will host MPP’s fifth annual Marine Robotics Summer School, a two-week course open to 12 Portuguese Master’s and first year PhD students and 12 MIT upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. The course, which includes lectures by MIT and Portuguese faculty and other researchers, workshops, labs and hands-on experiences, “is always my favorite,” said Hart.“I get to work with some of the best researchers in the world there, and some of the top students coming out of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, MIT, and Portugal,” he says, adding that some of his previous Marine Robotics Summer School students have come to study at MIT and then gone on to become professors in ocean science.“So, it’s been exciting to see the growth of students coming out of that program, certainly a positive impact,” Hart says.MPP provides one-of-a-kind opportunities for ocean research due to the unique marine facilities available in Portugal, including not only open ocean off the Azores but also Lisbon’s deep-water port and a Portuguese Naval facility just south of Lisbon that is available for collaborative research by international scientists. Like MIT, Portuguese universities are also strongly invested in climate change research — a field of study keenly related to ocean systems.“The international collaboration has allowed us to test and further develop our research prototypes in different aquaculture environments both in the US and in Portugal, while building on the unique expertise of our Portuguese faculty collaborator Dr. Ricardo Calado from the University of Aveiro and our industry collaborators,” says Stefanie Mueller, the TIBCO Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering and leader of the Human-Computer Interaction Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.Mueller points to the work of MIT mechanical engineering PhD student Charlene Xia, a Marine Robotics Summer School participant, whose research is aimed at developing an economical system to monitor the microbiome of seaweed farms and halt the spread of harmful bacteria associated with ocean warming. In addition to participating in the summer school as a student, Xia returned to the Azores for two subsequent years as a teaching assistant.“The MIT-Portugal Program has been a key enabler of our research on monitoring the aquatic microbiome for potential disease outbreaks,” Mueller says.As MPP enters its next phase, Hart and Hansman are optimistic about the program’s continuing success on both sides of the Atlantic and envision broadening its impact going forward.“I think, at this point, the research is going really well, and we’ve got a lot of connections. I think one of our goals is to expand not the science of the program necessarily, but the groups involved,” Hart says, noting that MPP could have a bigger presence in technical fields such as AI and micro-nano manufacturing, as well as in social sciences and humanities.“We’d like to involve many more people and new people here at MIT, as well as in Portugal,” he says, “so that we can reach a larger slice of the population.”  More

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      in Environment

      MIT Solve announces 2025 Global Challenges

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      MIT Solve has launched its 2025 Global Challenges, calling on innovators worldwide to submit transformative, tech-driven solutions to some of the planet’s most pressing and persistent problems. With over $1 million in funding available, selected innovators have a unique opportunity to scale their solutions and gain an influential network.”In an era where technology is transforming our world at breakneck speed, we’re seeing a profound shift in how innovators approach global problems,” says Hala Hanna, executive director of MIT Solve. “The unprecedented convergence of technological capabilities and social consciousness sets our current moment apart. Our Solver teams aren’t just creating solutions — they’re rewriting the rules of what’s possible in social innovation. With their solutions now reaching over 280 million lives worldwide, they’re demonstrating that human-centered technology can scale impact in ways we never imagined possible.”Over 30 winning solutions will be announced at Solve Challenge Finals during Climate Week and the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. Selected innovators join the 2025 Solver Class, gaining access to a comprehensive nine-month support program that includes connections to MIT’s innovation ecosystem, specialized mentorship, extensive pro-bono resources, and substantial funding from Solve’s growing community of supporters.2025 funding opportunities for selected Solvers exceed $1 million and include:Health Innovation Award (supported by Johnson & Johnson Foundation): All Solver teams selected for Solve’s Global Health Challenge will receive an additional prize from Global Health Anchor Supporter, Johnson & Johnson FoundationThe Seeding the Future Food Systems Prize (supported by the Seeding The Future Foundation)The GM Prize (supported by General Motors)The AI for Humanity Prize (supported by The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation)The Crescent Enterprises “AI for Social Innovation” Prize (supported by Crescent Enterprises)The Citizens Workforce Innovation Prize (supported by Citizens)The E Ink Innovation Prize (supported by E Ink)Since 2015, supporters of MIT Solve have catalyzed more than 800 partnerships and deployed more than $70 million, touching the lives of 280 million people worldwide. More

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      in Environment

      J-WAFS: Supporting food and water research across MIT

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      MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) has transformed the landscape of water and food research at MIT, driving faculty engagement and catalyzing new research and innovation in these critical areas. With philanthropic, corporate, and government support, J-WAFS’ strategic approach spans the entire research life cycle, from support for early-stage research to commercialization grants for more advanced projects.Over the past decade, J-WAFS has invested approximately $25 million in direct research funding to support MIT faculty pursuing transformative research with the potential for significant impact. “Since awarding our first cohort of seed grants in 2015, it’s remarkable to look back and see that over 10 percent of the MIT faculty have benefited from J-WAFS funding,” observes J-WAFS Executive Director Renee J. Robins ’83. “Many of these professors hadn’t worked on water or food challenges before their first J-WAFS grant.” By fostering interdisciplinary collaborations and supporting high-risk, high-reward projects, J-WAFS has amplified the capacity of MIT faculty to pursue groundbreaking research that addresses some of the world’s most pressing challenges facing our water and food systems.Drawing MIT faculty to water and food researchJ-WAFS open calls for proposals enable faculty to explore bold ideas and develop impactful approaches to tackling critical water and food system challenges. Professor Patrick Doyle’s work in water purification exemplifies this impact. “Without J-WAFS, I would have never ventured into the field of water purification,” Doyle reflects. While previously focused on pharmaceutical manufacturing and drug delivery, exposure to J-WAFS-funded peers led him to apply his expertise in soft materials to water purification. “Both the funding and the J-WAFS community led me to be deeply engaged in understanding some of the key challenges in water purification and water security,” he explains.Similarly, Professor Otto Cordero of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) leveraged J-WAFS funding to pivot his research into aquaculture. Cordero explains that his first J-WAFS seed grant “has been extremely influential for my lab because it allowed me to take a step in a new direction, with no preliminary data in hand.” Cordero’s expertise is in microbial communities. He was previous unfamiliar with aquaculture, but he saw the relevance of microbial communities the health of farmed aquatic organisms.Supporting early-career facultyNew assistant professors at MIT have particularly benefited from J-WAFS funding and support. J-WAFS has played a transformative role in shaping the careers and research trajectories of many new faculty members by encouraging them to explore novel research areas, and in many instances providing their first MIT research grant.Professor Ariel Furst reflects on how pivotal J-WAFS’ investment has been in advancing her research. “This was one of the first grants I received after starting at MIT, and it has truly shaped the development of my group’s research program,” Furst explains. With J-WAFS’ backing, her lab has achieved breakthroughs in chemical detection and remediation technologies for water. “The support of J-WAFS has enabled us to develop the platform funded through this work beyond the initial applications to the general detection of environmental contaminants and degradation of those contaminants,” she elaborates. Karthish Manthiram, now a professor of chemical engineering and chemistry at Caltech, explains how J-WAFS’ early investment enabled him and other young faculty to pursue ambitious ideas. “J-WAFS took a big risk on us,” Manthiram reflects. His research on breaking the nitrogen triple bond to make ammonia for fertilizer was initially met with skepticism. However, J-WAFS’ seed funding allowed his lab to lay the groundwork for breakthroughs that later attracted significant National Science Foundation (NSF) support. “That early funding from J-WAFS has been pivotal to our long-term success,” he notes. These stories underscore the broad impact of J-WAFS’ support for early-career faculty, and its commitment to empowering them to address critical global challenges and innovate boldly.Fueling follow-on funding J-WAFS seed grants enable faculty to explore nascent research areas, but external funding for continued work is usually necessary to achieve the full potential of these novel ideas. “It’s often hard to get funding for early stage or out-of-the-box ideas,” notes J-WAFS Director Professor John H. Lienhard V. “My hope, when I founded J-WAFS in 2014, was that seed grants would allow PIs [principal investigators] to prove out novel ideas so that they would be attractive for follow-on funding. And after 10 years, J-WAFS-funded research projects have brought more than $21 million in subsequent awards to MIT.”Professor Retsef Levi led a seed study on how agricultural supply chains affect food safety, with a team of faculty spanning the MIT schools Engineering and Science as well as the MIT Sloan School of Management. The team parlayed their seed grant research into a multi-million-dollar follow-on initiative. Levi reflects, “The J-WAFS seed funding allowed us to establish the initial credibility of our team, which was key to our success in obtaining large funding from several other agencies.”Dave Des Marais was an assistant professor in the Department of CEE when he received his first J-WAFS seed grant. The funding supported his research on how plant growth and physiology are controlled by genes and interact with the environment. The seed grant helped launch his lab’s work addressing enhancing climate change resilience in agricultural systems. The work led to his Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the NSF, a prestigious honor for junior faculty members. Now an associate professor, Des Marais’ ongoing project to further investigate the mechanisms and consequences of genomic and environmental interactions is supported by the five-year, $1,490,000 NSF grant. “J-WAFS providing essential funding to get my new research underway,” comments Des Marais.Stimulating interdisciplinary collaborationDes Marais’ seed grant was also key to developing new collaborations. He explains, “the J-WAFS grant supported me to develop a collaboration with Professor Caroline Uhler in EECS/IDSS [the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science/Institute for Data, Systems, and Society] that really shaped how I think about framing and testing hypotheses. One of the best things about J-WAFS is facilitating unexpected connections among MIT faculty with diverse yet complementary skill sets.”Professors A. John Hart of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Benedetto Marelli of CEE also launched a new interdisciplinary collaboration with J-WAFS funding. They partnered to join expertise in biomaterials, microfabrication, and manufacturing, to create printed silk-based colorimetric sensors that detect food spoilage. “The J-WAFS Seed Grant provided a unique opportunity for multidisciplinary collaboration,” Hart notes.Professors Stephen Graves in the MIT Sloan School of Management and Bishwapriya Sanyal in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) partnered to pursue new research on agricultural supply chains. With field work in Senegal, their J-WAFS-supported project brought together international development specialists and operations management experts to study how small firms and government agencies influence access to and uptake of irrigation technology by poorer farmers. “We used J-WAFS to spur a collaboration that would have been improbable without this grant,” they explain. Being part of the J-WAFS community also introduced them to researchers in Professor Amos Winter’s lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering working on irrigation technologies for low-resource settings. DUSP doctoral candidate Mark Brennan notes, “We got to share our understanding of how irrigation markets and irrigation supply chains work in developing economies, and then we got to contrast that with their understanding of how irrigation system models work.”Timothy Swager, professor of chemistry, and Rohit Karnik, professor of mechanical engineering and J-WAFS associate director, collaborated on a sponsored research project supported by Xylem, Inc. through the J-WAFS Research Affiliate program. The cross-disciplinary research, which targeted the development of ultra-sensitive sensors for toxic PFAS chemicals, was conceived following a series of workshops hosted by J-WAFS. Swager and Karnik were two of the participants, and their involvement led to the collaborative proposal that Xylem funded. “J-WAFS funding allowed us to combine Swager lab’s expertise in sensing with my lab’s expertise in microfluidics to develop a cartridge for field-portable detection of PFAS,” says Karnik. “J-WAFS has enriched my research program in so many ways,” adds Swager, who is now working to commercialize the technology.Driving global collaboration and impactJ-WAFS has also helped MIT faculty establish and advance international collaboration and impactful global research. By funding and supporting projects that connect MIT researchers with international partners, J-WAFS has not only advanced technological solutions, but also strengthened cross-cultural understanding and engagement.Professor Matthew Shoulders leads the inaugural J-WAFS Grand Challenge project. In response to the first J-WAFS call for “Grand Challenge” proposals, Shoulders assembled an interdisciplinary team based at MIT to enhance and provide climate resilience to agriculture by improving the most inefficient aspect of photosynthesis, the notoriously-inefficient carbon dioxide-fixing plant enzyme RuBisCO. J-WAFS funded this high-risk/high-reward project following a competitive process that engaged external reviewers through a several rounds of iterative proposal development. The technical feedback to the team led them to researchers with complementary expertise from the Australian National University. “Our collaborative team of biochemists and synthetic biologists, computational biologists, and chemists is deeply integrated with plant biologists and field trial experts, yielding a robust feedback loop for enzyme engineering,” Shoulders says. “Together, this team will be able to make a concerted effort using the most modern, state-of-the-art techniques to engineer crop RuBisCO with an eye to helping make meaningful gains in securing a stable crop supply, hopefully with accompanying improvements in both food and water security.”Professor Leon Glicksman and Research Engineer Eric Verploegen’s team designed a low-cost cooling chamber to preserve fruits and vegetables harvested by smallholder farmers with no access to cold chain storage. J-WAFS’ guidance motivated the team to prioritize practical considerations informed by local collaborators, ensuring market competitiveness. “As our new idea for a forced-air evaporative cooling chamber was taking shape, we continually checked that our solution was evolving in a direction that would be competitive in terms of cost, performance, and usability to existing commercial alternatives,” explains Verploegen. Following the team’s initial seed grant, the team secured a J-WAFS Solutions commercialization grant, which Verploegen say “further motivated us to establish partnerships with local organizations capable of commercializing the technology earlier in the project than we might have done otherwise.” The team has since shared an open-source design as part of its commercialization strategy to maximize accessibility and impact.Bringing corporate sponsored research opportunities to MIT facultyJ-WAFS also plays a role in driving private partnerships, enabling collaborations that bridge industry and academia. Through its Research Affiliate Program, for example, J-WAFS provides opportunities for faculty to collaborate with industry on sponsored research, helping to convert scientific discoveries into licensable intellectual property (IP) that companies can turn into commercial products and services.J-WAFS introduced professor of mechanical engineering Alex Slocum to a challenge presented by its research affiliate company, Xylem: how to design a more energy-efficient pump for fluctuating flows. With centrifugal pumps consuming an estimated 6 percent of U.S. electricity annually, Slocum and his then-graduate student Hilary Johnson SM ’18, PhD ’22 developed an innovative variable volute mechanism that reduces energy usage. “Xylem envisions this as the first in a new category of adaptive pump geometry,” comments Johnson. The research produced a pump prototype and related IP that Xylem is working on commercializing. Johnson notes that these outcomes “would not have been possible without J-WAFS support and facilitation of the Xylem industry partnership.” Slocum adds, “J-WAFS enabled Hilary to begin her work on pumps, and Xylem sponsored the research to bring her to this point … where she has an opportunity to do far more than the original project called for.”Swager speaks highly of the impact of corporate research sponsorship through J-WAFS on his research and technology translation efforts. His PFAS project with Karnik described above was also supported by Xylem. “Xylem was an excellent sponsor of our research. Their engagement and feedback were instrumental in advancing our PFAS detection technology, now on the path to commercialization,” Swager says.Looking forwardWhat J-WAFS has accomplished is more than a collection of research projects; a decade of impact demonstrates how J-WAFS’ approach has been transformative for many MIT faculty members. As Professor Mathias Kolle puts it, his engagement with J-WAFS “had a significant influence on how we think about our research and its broader impacts.” He adds that it “opened my eyes to the challenges in the field of water and food systems and the many different creative ideas that are explored by MIT.” This thriving ecosystem of innovation, collaboration, and academic growth around water and food research has not only helped faculty build interdisciplinary and international partnerships, but has also led to the commercialization of transformative technologies with real-world applications. C. Cem Taşan, the POSCO Associate Professor of Metallurgy who is leading a J-WAFS Solutions commercialization team that is about to launch a startup company, sums it up by noting, “Without J-WAFS, we wouldn’t be here at all.”  As J-WAFS looks to the future, its continued commitment — supported by the generosity of its donors and partners — builds on a decade of success enabling MIT faculty to advance water and food research that addresses some of the world’s most pressing challenges. More

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      in Energy

      3 Questions: What the laws of physics tell us about CO2 removal

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      Human activities continue to pump billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, raising global temperatures and driving extreme weather events. As countries grapple with climate impacts and ways to significantly reduce carbon emissions, there have been various efforts to advance carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies that directly remove carbon dioxide from the air and sequester it for long periods of time.Unlike carbon capture and storage technologies, which are designed to remove carbon dioxide at point sources such as fossil-fuel plants, CDR aims to remove carbon dioxide molecules that are already circulating in the atmosphere.A new report by the American Physical Society and led by an MIT physicist provides an overview of the major experimental CDR approaches and determines their fundamental physical limits. The report focuses on methods that have the biggest potential for removing carbon dioxide, at the scale of gigatons per year, which is the magnitude that would be required to have a climate-stabilizing impact.The new report was commissioned by the American Physical Society’s Panel on Public Affairs, and appeared last week in the journal PRX. The report was chaired by MIT professor of physics Washington Taylor, who spoke with MIT News about CDR’s physical limitations and why it’s worth pursuing in tandem with global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.Q: What motivated you to look at carbon dioxide removal systems from a physical science perspective?A: The number one thing driving climate change is the fact that we’re taking carbon that has been stuck in the ground for 100 million years, and putting it in the atmosphere, and that’s causing warming. In the last few years there’s been a lot of interest both by the government and private entities in finding technologies to directly remove the CO2 from the air.How to manage atmospheric carbon is the critical question in dealing with our impact on Earth’s climate. So, it’s very important for us to understand whether we can affect the carbon levels not just by changing our emissions profile but also by directly taking carbon out of the atmosphere. Physics has a lot to say about this because the possibilities are very strongly constrained by thermodynamics, mass issues, and things like that.Q: What carbon dioxide removal methods did you evaluate?A: They’re all at an early stage. It’s kind of the Wild West out there in terms of the different ways in which companies are proposing to remove carbon from the atmosphere. In this report, we break down CDR processes into two classes: cyclic and once-through.Imagine we are in a boat that has a hole in the hull and is rapidly taking on water. Of course, we want to plug the hole as quickly as we can. But even once we have fixed the hole, we need to get the water out so we aren’t in danger of sinking or getting swamped. And this is particularly urgent if we haven’t completely fixed the hole so we still have a slow leak. Now, imagine we have a couple of options for how to get the water out so we don’t sink.The first is a sponge that we can use to absorb water, that we can then squeeze out and reuse. That’s a cyclic process in the sense that we have some material that we’re using over and over. There are cyclic CDR processes like chemical “direct air capture” (DAC), which acts basically like a sponge. You set up a big system with fans that blow air past some material that captures carbon dioxide. When the material is saturated, you close off the system and then use energy to essentially squeeze out the carbon and store it in a deep repository. Then you can reuse the material, in a cyclic process.The second class of approaches is what we call “once-through.” In the boat analogy, it would be as if you try to fix the leak using cartons of paper towels. You let them saturate and then throw them overboard, and you use each roll once.There are once-through CDR approaches, like enhanced rock weathering, that are designed to accelerate a natural process, by which certain rocks, when exposed to air, will absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Worldwide, this natural rock weathering is estimated to remove about 1 gigaton of carbon each year. “Enhanced rock weathering” is a CDR approach where you would dig up a lot of this rock, grind it up really small, to less than the width of a human hair, to get the process to happen much faster. The idea is, you dig up something, spread it out, and absorb CO2 in one go.The key difference between these two processes is that the cyclic process is subject to the second law of thermodynamics and there’s an energy constraint. You can set an actual limit from physics, saying any cyclic process is going to take a certain amount of energy, and that cannot be avoided. For example, we find that for cyclic direct-air-capture (DAC) plants, based on second law limits, the absolute minimum amount of energy you would need to capture a gigaton of carbon is comparable to the total yearly electric energy consumption of the state of Virginia. Systems currently under development use at least three to 10 times this much energy on a per ton basis (and capture tens of thousands, not billions, of tons). Such systems also need to move a lot of air; the air that would need to pass through a DAC system to capture a gigaton of CO2 is comparable to the amount of air that passes through all the air cooling systems on the planet.On the other hand, if you have a once-through process, you could in some respects avoid the energy constraint, but now you’ve got a materials constraint due to the central laws of chemistry. For once-through processes like enhanced rock weathering, that means that if you want to capture a gigaton of CO2, roughly speaking, you’re going to need a billion tons of rock.So, to capture gigatons of carbon through engineered methods requires tremendous amounts of physical material, air movement, and energy. On the other hand, everything we’re doing to put that CO2 in the atmosphere is extensive too, so large-scale emissions reductions face comparable challenges.Q: What does the report conclude, in terms of whether and how to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere?A: Our initial prejudice was, CDR is just going to take so much energy, and there’s no way around that because of the second law of thermodynamics, regardless of the method.But as we discussed, there is this nuance about cyclic versus once-through systems. And there are two points of view that we ended up threading a needle between. One is the view that CDR is a silver bullet, and we’ll just do CDR and not worry about emissions — we’ll just suck it all out of the atmosphere. And that’s not the case. It will be really expensive, and will take a lot of energy and materials to do large-scale CDR. But there’s another view, where people say, don’t even think about CDR. Even thinking about CDR will compromise our efforts toward emissions reductions. The report comes down somewhere in the middle, saying that CDR is not a magic bullet, but also not a no-go.If we are serious about managing climate change, we will likely want substantial CDR in addition to aggressive emissions reductions. The report concludes that research and development on CDR methods should be selectively and prudently pursued despite the expected cost and energy and material requirements.At a policy level, the main message is that we need an economic and policy framework that incentivizes emissions reductions and CDR in a common framework; this would naturally allow the market to optimize climate solutions. Since in many cases it is much easier and cheaper to cut emissions than it will likely ever be to remove atmospheric carbon, clearly understanding the challenges of CDR should help motivate rapid emissions reductions.For me, I’m optimistic in the sense that scientifically we understand what it will take to reduce emissions and to use CDR to bring CO2 levels down to a slightly lower level. Now, it’s really a societal and economic problem. I think humanity has the potential to solve these problems. I hope that we can find common ground so that we can take actions as a society that will benefit both humanity and the broader ecosystems on the planet, before we end up having bigger problems than we already have.  More

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      Surface-based sonar system could rapidly map the ocean floor at high resolution

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      On June 18, 2023, the Titan submersible was about an hour-and-a-half into its two-hour descent to the Titanic wreckage at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean when it lost contact with its support ship. This cease in communication set off a frantic search for the tourist submersible and five passengers onboard, located about two miles below the ocean’s surface.Deep-ocean search and recovery is one of the many missions of military services like the U.S. Coast Guard Office of Search and Rescue and the U.S. Navy Supervisor of Salvage and Diving. For this mission, the longest delays come from transporting search-and-rescue equipment via ship to the area of interest and comprehensively surveying that area. A search operation on the scale of that for Titan — which was conducted 420 nautical miles from the nearest port and covered 13,000 square kilometers, an area roughly twice the size of Connecticut — could take weeks to complete. The search area for Titan is considered relatively small, focused on the immediate vicinity of the Titanic. When the area is less known, operations could take months. (A remotely operated underwater vehicle deployed by a Canadian vessel ended up finding the debris field of Titan on the seafloor, four days after the submersible had gone missing.)A research team from MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering’s Ocean Science and Engineering lab is developing a surface-based sonar system that could accelerate the timeline for small- and large-scale search operations to days. Called the Autonomous Sparse-Aperture Multibeam Echo Sounder, the system scans at surface-ship rates while providing sufficient resolution to find objects and features in the deep ocean, without the time and expense of deploying underwater vehicles. The echo sounder — which features a large sonar array using a small set of autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) that can be deployed via aircraft into the ocean — holds the potential to map the seabed at 50 times the coverage rate of an underwater vehicle and 100 times the resolution of a surface vessel.

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      Autonomous Sparse-Aperture Multibeam Echo SounderVideo: MIT Lincoln Laboratory

      “Our array provides the best of both worlds: the high resolution of underwater vehicles and the high coverage rate of surface ships,” says co–principal investigator Andrew March, assistant leader of the laboratory’s Advanced Undersea Systems and Technology Group. “Though large surface-based sonar systems at low frequency have the potential to determine the materials and profiles of the seabed, they typically do so at the expense of resolution, particularly with increasing ocean depth. Our array can likely determine this information, too, but at significantly enhanced resolution in the deep ocean.”Underwater unknownOceans cover 71 percent of Earth’s surface, yet more than 80 percent of this underwater realm remains undiscovered and unexplored. Humans know more about the surface of other planets and the moon than the bottom of our oceans. High-resolution seabed maps would not only be useful to find missing objects like ships or aircraft, but also to support a host of other scientific applications: understanding Earth’s geology, improving forecasting of ocean currents and corresponding weather and climate impacts, uncovering archaeological sites, monitoring marine ecosystems and habitats, and identifying locations containing natural resources such as mineral and oil deposits.Scientists and governments worldwide recognize the importance of creating a high-resolution global map of the seafloor; the problem is that no existing technology can achieve meter-scale resolution from the ocean surface. The average depth of our oceans is approximately 3,700 meters. However, today’s technologies capable of finding human-made objects on the seabed or identifying person-sized natural features — these technologies include sonar, lidar, cameras, and gravitational field mapping — have a maximum range of less than 1,000 meters through water.Ships with large sonar arrays mounted on their hull map the deep ocean by emitting low-frequency sound waves that bounce off the seafloor and return as echoes to the surface. Operation at low frequencies is necessary because water readily absorbs high-frequency sound waves, especially with increasing depth; however, such operation yields low-resolution images, with each image pixel representing a football field in size. Resolution is also restricted because sonar arrays installed on large mapping ships are already using all of the available hull space, thereby capping the sonar beam’s aperture size. By contrast, sonars on autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that operate at higher frequencies within a few hundred meters of the seafloor generate maps with each pixel representing one square meter or less, resulting in 10,000 times more pixels in that same football field–sized area. However, this higher resolution comes with trade-offs: AUVs are time-consuming and expensive to deploy in the deep ocean, limiting the amount of seafloor that can be mapped; they have a maximum range of about 1,000 meters before their high-frequency sound gets absorbed; and they move at slow speeds to conserve power. The area-coverage rate of AUVs performing high-resolution mapping is about 8 square kilometers per hour; surface vessels map the deep ocean at more than 50 times that rate.A solution surfacesThe Autonomous Sparse-Aperture Multibeam Echo Sounder could offer a cost-effective approach to high-resolution, rapid mapping of the deep seafloor from the ocean’s surface. A collaborative fleet of about 20 ASVs, each hosting a small sonar array, effectively forms a single sonar array 100 times the size of a large sonar array installed on a ship. The large aperture achieved by the array (hundreds of meters) produces a narrow beam, which enables sound to be precisely steered to generate high-resolution maps at low frequency. Because very few sonars are installed relative to the array’s overall size (i.e., a sparse aperture), the cost is tractable.However, this collaborative and sparse setup introduces some operational challenges. First, for coherent 3D imaging, the relative position of each ASV’s sonar subarray must be accurately tracked through dynamic ocean-induced motions. Second, because sonar elements are not placed directly next to each other without any gaps, the array suffers from a lower signal-to-noise ratio and is less able to reject noise coming from unintended or undesired directions. To mitigate these challenges, the team has been developing a low-cost precision-relative navigation system and leveraging acoustic signal processing tools and new ocean-field estimation algorithms. The MIT campus collaborators are developing algorithms for data processing and image formation, especially to estimate depth-integrated water-column parameters. These enabling technologies will help account for complex ocean physics, spanning physical properties like temperature, dynamic processes like currents and waves, and acoustic propagation factors like sound speed.Processing for all required control and calculations could be completed either remotely or onboard the ASVs. For example, ASVs deployed from a ship or flying boat could be controlled and guided remotely from land via a satellite link or from a nearby support ship (with direct communications or a satellite link), and left to map the seabed for weeks or months at a time until maintenance is needed. Sonar-return health checks and coarse seabed mapping would be conducted on board, while full, high-resolution reconstruction of the seabed would require a supercomputing infrastructure on land or on a support ship.”Deploying vehicles in an area and letting them map for extended periods of time without the need for a ship to return home to replenish supplies and rotate crews would significantly simplify logistics and operating costs,” says co–principal investigator Paul Ryu, a researcher in the Advanced Undersea Systems and Technology Group.Since beginning their research in 2018, the team has turned their concept into a prototype. Initially, the scientists built a scale model of a sparse-aperture sonar array and tested it in a water tank at the laboratory’s Autonomous Systems Development Facility. Then, they prototyped an ASV-sized sonar subarray and demonstrated its functionality in Gloucester, Massachusetts. In follow-on sea tests in Boston Harbor, they deployed an 8-meter array containing multiple subarrays equivalent to 25 ASVs locked together; with this array, they generated 3D reconstructions of the seafloor and a shipwreck. Most recently, the team fabricated, in collaboration with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a first-generation, 12-foot-long, all-electric ASV prototype carrying a sonar array underneath. With this prototype, they conducted preliminary relative navigation testing in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and Newport, Rhode Island. Their full deep-ocean concept calls for approximately 20 such ASVs of a similar size, likely powered by wave or solar energy.This work was funded through Lincoln Laboratory’s internally administered R&D portfolio on autonomous systems. The team is now seeking external sponsorship to continue development of their ocean floor–mapping technology, which was recognized with a 2024 R&D 100 Award.  More

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      MIT delegation mainstreams biodiversity conservation at the UN Biodiversity Convention, COP16

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      For the first time, MIT sent an organized engagement to the global Conference of the Parties for the Convention on Biological Diversity, which this year was held Oct. 21 to Nov. 1 in Cali, Colombia.The 10 delegates to COP16 included faculty, researchers, and students from the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), and the Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy.In previous years, MIT faculty had participated sporadically in the discussions. This organized engagement, led by the ESI, is significant because it brought representatives from many of the groups working on biodiversity across the Institute; showcased the breadth of MIT’s research in more than 15 events including panels, roundtables, and keynote presentations across the Blue and Green Zones of the conference (with the Blue Zone representing the primary venue for the official negotiations and discussions and the Green Zone representing public events); and created an experiential learning opportunity for students who followed specific topics in the negotiations and throughout side events.The conference also gathered attendees from governments, nongovernmental organizations, businesses, other academic institutions, and practitioners focused on stopping global biodiversity loss and advancing the 23 goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), an international agreement adopted in 2022 to guide global efforts to protect and restore biodiversity through 2030.MIT’s involvement was particularly pronounced when addressing goals related to building coalitions of sub-national governments (targets 11, 12, 14); technology and AI for biodiversity conservation (targets 20 and 21); shaping equitable markets (targets 3, 11, and 19); and informing an action plan for Afro-descendant communities (targets 3, 10, and 22).Building coalitions of sub-national governmentsThe ESI’s Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) Program was able to support two separate coalitions of Latin American cities, namely the Coalition of Cities Against Illicit Economies in the Biogeographic Chocó Region and the Colombian Amazonian Cities coalition, who successfully signed declarations to advance specific targets of the KMGBF (the aforementioned targets 11, 12, 14).This was accomplished through roundtables and discussions where team members — including Marcela Angel, research program director at the MIT ESI; Angelica Mayolo, ESI Martin Luther King Fellow 2023-25; and Silvia Duque and Hannah Leung, MIT Master’s in City Planning students — presented a set of multi-scale actions including transnational strategies, recommendations to strengthen local and regional institutions, and community-based actions to promote the conservation of the Biogeographic Chocó as an ecological corridor.“There is an urgent need to deepen the relationship between academia and local governments of cities located in biodiversity hotspots,” said Angel. “Given the scale and unique conditions of Amazonian cities, pilot research projects present an opportunity to test and generate a proof of concept. These could generate catalytic information needed to scale up climate adaptation and conservation efforts in socially and ecologically sensitive contexts.”ESI’s research also provided key inputs for the creation of the Fund for the Biogeographic Chocó Region, a multi-donor fund launched within the framework of COP16 by a coalition composed of Colombia, Ecuador, Panamá, and Costa Rica. The fund aims to support biodiversity conservation, ecosystem restoration, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and sustainable development efforts across the region.Technology and AI for biodiversity conservationData, technology, and artificial intelligence are playing an increasing role in how we understand biodiversity and ecosystem change globally. Professor Sara Beery’s research group at MIT focuses on this intersection, developing AI methods that enable species and environmental monitoring at previously unprecedented spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scales.During the International Union of Biological Diversity Science-Policy Forum, the high-level COP16 segment focused on outlining recommendations from scientific and academic community, Beery spoke on a panel alongside María Cecilia Londoño, scientific information manager of the Humboldt Institute and co-chair of the Global Biodiversity Observations Network, and Josh Tewksbury, director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, among others, about how these technological advancements will help humanity achieve our biodiversity targets. The panel emphasized that AI innovation was needed, but with emphasis on direct human-AI partnership, AI capacity building, and the need for data and AI policy to ensure equity of access and benefit from these technologies.As a direct outcome of the session, for the first time, AI was emphasized in the statement on behalf of science and academia delivered by Hernando Garcia, director of the Humboldt Institute, and David Skorton, secretary general of the Smithsonian Institute, to the high-level segment of the COP16.That statement read, “To effectively address current and future challenges, urgent action is required in equity, governance, valuation, infrastructure, decolonization and policy frameworks around biodiversity data and artificial intelligence.”Beery also organized a panel at the GEOBON pavilion in the Blue Zone on Scaling Biodiversity Monitoring with AI, which brought together global leaders from AI research, infrastructure development, capacity and community building, and policy and regulation. The panel was initiated and experts selected from the participants at the recent Aspen Global Change Institute Workshop on Overcoming Barriers to Impact in AI for Biodiversity, co-organized by Beery.Shaping equitable marketsIn a side event co-hosted by the ESI with CAF-Development Bank of Latin America, researchers from ESI’s Natural Climate Solutions Program — including Marcela Angel; Angelica Mayolo; Jimena Muzio, ESI research associate; and Martin Perez Lara, ESI research affiliate and director for Forest Climate Solutions Impact and Monitoring at World Wide Fund for Nature of the U.S. — presented results of a study titled “Voluntary Carbon Markets for Social Impact: Comprehensive Assessment of the Role of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC) in Carbon Forestry Projects in Colombia.” The report highlighted the structural barriers that hinder effective participation of IPLC, and proposed a conceptual framework to assess IPLC engagement in voluntary carbon markets.Communicating these findings is important because the global carbon market has experienced a credibility crisis since 2023, influenced by critical assessments in academic literature, journalism questioning the quality of mitigation results, and persistent concerns about the engagement of private actors with IPLC. Nonetheless, carbon forestry projects have expanded rapidly in Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local communities’ territories, and there is a need to assess the relationships between private actors and IPLC and to propose pathways for equitable participation. 

      Panelists pose at the equitable markets side event at the Latin American Pavilion in the Blue Zone.

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      The research presentation and subsequent panel with representatives of the association for Carbon Project Developers in Colombia Asocarbono, Fondo Acción, and CAF further discussed recommendations for all actors in the value chain of carbon certificates — including those focused on promoting equitable benefit-sharing and safeguarding compliance, increased accountability, enhanced governance structures, strengthened institutionality, and regulatory frameworks  — necessary to create an inclusive and transparent market.Informing an action plan for Afro-descendant communitiesThe Afro-Interamerican Forum on Climate Change (AIFCC), an international network working to highlight the critical role of Afro-descendant peoples in global climate action, was also present at COP16.At the Afro Summit, Mayolo presented key recommendations prepared collectively by the members of AIFCC to the technical secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The recommendations emphasize:creating financial tools for conservation and supporting Afro-descendant land rights;including a credit guarantee fund for countries that recognize Afro-descendant collective land titling and research on their contributions to biodiversity conservation;calling for increased representation of Afro-descendant communities in international policy forums;capacity-building for local governments; andstrategies for inclusive growth in green business and energy transition.These actions aim to promote inclusive and sustainable development for Afro-descendant populations.“Attending COP16 with a large group from MIT contributing knowledge and informed perspectives at 15 separate events was a privilege and honor,” says MIT ESI Director John E. Fernández. “This demonstrates the value of the ESI as a powerful research and convening body at MIT. Science is telling us unequivocally that climate change and biodiversity loss are the two greatest challenges that we face as a species and a planet. MIT has the capacity, expertise, and passion to address not only the former, but also the latter, and the ESI is committed to facilitating the very best contributions across the institute for the critical years that are ahead of us.”A fuller overview of the conference is available via The MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative’s Primer of COP16. More

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      Q&A: Transforming research through global collaborations

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      The MIT Global Seed Funds (GSF) program fosters global research collaborations with MIT faculty and their peers abroad — creating partnerships that tackle complex global issues, from climate change to health-care challenges and beyond. Administered by the MIT Center for International Studies (CIS), the GSF program has awarded more than $26 million to over 1,200 faculty research projects since its inception in 2008. Through its unique funding structure — comprising a general fund for unrestricted geographical use and several specific funds within individual countries, regions, and universities — GSF supports a wide range of projects. The current call for proposals from MIT faculty and researchers with principal investigator status is open until Dec. 10. CIS recently sat down with faculty recipients Josephine Carstensen and David McGee to discuss the value and impact GSF added to their research. Carstensen, the Gilbert W. Winslow Career Development Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, generates computational designs for large-scale structures with the intent of designing novel low-carbon solutions. McGee, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), reconstructs the patterns, pace, and magnitudes of past hydro-climate changes.Q: How did the Global Seed Funds program connect you with global partnerships related to your research?Carstensen: One of the projects my lab is working on is to unlock the potential of complex cast-glass structures. Through our GSF partnership with researchers at TUDelft (Netherlands), my group was able to leverage our expertise in generative design algorithms alongside the TUDelft team, who are experts in the physical casting and fabrication of glass structures. Our initial connection to TUDelft was actually through one of my graduate students who was at a conference and met TUDelft researchers. He was inspired by their work and felt there could be synergy between our labs. The question then became: How do we connect with TUDelft? And that was what led us to the Global Seed Funds program. McGee: Our research is based in fieldwork conducted in partnership with experts who have a rich understanding of local environments. These locations range from lake basins in Chile and Argentina to caves in northern Mexico, Vietnam, and Madagascar. GSF has been invaluable for helping foster partnerships with collaborators and universities in these different locations, enabling the pilot work and relationship-building necessary to establish longer-term, externally funded projects.Q: Tell us more about your GSF-funded work.Carstensen: In my research group at MIT, we live mainly in a computational regime, and we do very little proof-of-concept testing. To that point, we do not even have the facilities nor experience to physically build large-scale structures, or even specialized structures. GSF has enabled us to connect with the researchers at TUDelft who do much more experimental testing than we do. Being able to work with the experts at TUDelft within their physical realm provided valuable insights into their way of approaching problems. And, likewise, the researchers at TUDelft benefited from our expertise. It has been fruitful in ways we couldn’t have imagined within our lab at MIT.McGee: The collaborative work supported by the GSF has focused on reconstructing how past climate changes impacted rainfall patterns around the world, using natural archives like lake sediments and cave formations. One particularly successful project has been our work in caves in northeastern Mexico, which has been conducted in partnership with researchers from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a local caving group. This project has involved several MIT undergraduate and graduate students, sponsored a research symposium in Mexico City, and helped us obtain funding from the National Science Foundation for a longer-term project.Q: You both mentioned the involvement of your graduate students. How exactly has the GSF augmented the research experience of your students?Carstensen: The collaboration has especially benefited the graduate students from both the MIT and TUDelft teams. The opportunity presented through this project to engage in research at an international peer institution has been extremely beneficial for their academic growth and maturity. It has facilitated training in new and complementary technical areas that they would not have had otherwise and allowed them to engage with leading world experts. An example of this aspect of the project’s success is that the collaboration has inspired one of my graduate students to actively pursue postdoc opportunities in Europe (including at TU Delft) after his graduation.McGee: MIT students have traveled to caves in northeastern Mexico and to lake basins in northern Chile to conduct fieldwork and build connections with local collaborators. Samples enabled by GSF-supported projects became the focus of two graduate students’ PhD theses, two EAPS undergraduate senior theses, and multiple UROP [Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program] projects.Q: Were there any unexpected benefits to the work funded by GSF?Carstensen: The success of this project would not have been possible without this specific international collaboration. Both the Delft and MIT teams bring highly different essential expertise that has been necessary for the successful project outcome. It allowed both the Delft and MIT teams to gain an in-depth understanding of the expertise areas and resources of the other collaborators. Both teams have been deeply inspired. This partnership has fueled conversations about potential future projects and provided multiple outcomes, including a plan to publish two journal papers on the project outcome. The first invited publication is being finalized now.McGee: GSF’s focus on reciprocal exchange has enabled external collaborators to spend time at MIT, sharing their work and exchanging ideas. Other funding is often focused on sending MIT researchers and students out, but GSF has helped us bring collaborators here, making the relationship more equal. A GSF-supported visit by Argentinian researchers last year made it possible for them to interact not just with my group, but with students and faculty across EAPS. More

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      in Energy

      Catherine Wolfram: High-energy scholar

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      In the mid 2000s, Catherine Wolfram PhD ’96 reached what she calls “an inflection point” in her career. After about a decade of studying U.S. electricity markets, she had come to recognize that “you couldn’t study the energy industries without thinking about climate mitigation,” as she puts it.At the same time, Wolfram understood that the trajectory of energy use in the developing world was a massively important part of the climate picture. To get a comprehensive grasp on global dynamics, she says, “I realized I needed to start thinking about the rest of the world.”An accomplished scholar and policy expert, Wolfram has been on the faculty at Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley — and now MIT, where she is the William Barton Rogers Professor in Energy. She has also served as deputy assistant secretary for climate and energy economics at the U.S. Treasury.Yet even leading experts want to keep learning. So, when she hit that inflection point, Wolfram started carving out a new phase of her research career.“One of the things I love about being an academic is, I could just decide to do that,” Wolfram says. “I didn’t need to check with a boss. I could just pivot my career to being more focused to thinking about energy in the developing world.”Over the last decade, Wolfram has published a wide array of original studies about energy consumption in the developing world. From Kenya to Mexico to South Asia, she has shed light on the dynamics of economics growth and energy consumption — while spending some of that time serving the government too. Last year, Wolfram joined the faculty of the MIT Sloan School of Management, where her work bolsters the Institute’s growing effort to combat climate change.Studying at MITWolfram largely grew up in Minnesota, where her father was a legal scholar, although he moved to Cornell University around the time she started high school. As an undergraduate, she majored in economics at Harvard University, and after graduation she worked first for a consultant, then for the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, the agency regulating energy rates. In the latter job, Wolfram kept noticing that people were often citing the research of an MIT scholar named Paul Joskow (who is now the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics Emeritus in MIT’s Department of Economics) and Richard Schmalensee (a former dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management and now the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Management Emeritus). Seeing how consequential economics research could be for policymaking, Wolfram decided to get a PhD in the field and was accepted into MIT’s doctoral program.“I went into graduate school with an unusually specific view of what I wanted to do,” Wolfram says. “I wanted to work with Paul Joskow and Dick Schmalensee on electricity markets, and that’s how I wound up here.”At MIT, Wolfram also ended up working extensively with Nancy Rose, the Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics and a former head of the Department of Economics, who helped oversee Wolfram’s thesis; Rose has extensively studied market regulation as well.Wolfram’s dissertation research largely focused on price-setting behavior in the U.K.’s newly deregulated electricity markets, which, it turned out, applied handily to the U.S., where a similar process was taking place. “I was fortunate because this was around the time California was thinking about restructuring, as it was known,” Wolfram says. She spent four years on the faculty at Harvard, then moved to UC Berkeley. Wolfram’s studies have shown that deregulation has had some medium-term benefits, for instance in making power plants operate more efficiently.Turning on the ACBy around 2010, though, Wolfram began shifting her scholarly focus in earnest, conducting innovative studies about energy in the developing world. One strand of her research has centered on Kenya, to better understand how more energy access for people without electricity might fit into growth in the developing world.In this case, Wolfram’s perhaps surprising conclusion is that electrification itself is not a magic ticket to prosperity; people without electricity are more eager to adopt it when they have a practical economic need for it. Meanwhile, they have other essential needs that are not necessarily being addressed.“The 800 million people in the world who don’t have electricity also don’t have access to good health care or running water,” Wolfram says. “Giving them better housing infrastructure is important, and harder to tackle. It’s not clear that bringing people electricity alone is the single most useful thing from a development perspective. Although electricity is a super-important component of modern living.”Wolfram has even delved into topics such as air conditioner use in the developing world — an important driver of energy use. As her research shows, many countries, with a combined population far bigger than the U.S., are among the fastest-growing adopters of air conditioners and have an even greater need for them, based on their climates. Adoption of air conditioning within those countries also is characterized by marked economic inequality.From early 2021 until late 2022, Wolfram also served in the administration of President Joe Biden, where her work also centered on global energy issues. Among other things, Wolfram was part of the team working out a price-cap policy for Russian oil exports, a concept that she thinks could be applied to many other products globally. Although, she notes, working with countries heavily dependent on exporting energy materials will always require careful engagement.“We need to be mindful of that dependence and importance as we go through this massive effort to decarbonize the energy sector and shift it to a whole new paradigm,” Wolfram says.At MIT againStill, she notes, the world does need a whole new energy paradigm, and fast. Her arrival at MIT overlaps with the emergence of a new Institute-wide effort, the Climate Project at MIT, that aims to accelerate and scale climate solutions and good climate policy, including through the new Climate Policy Center at MIT Sloan. That kind of effort, Wolfram says, matters to her.“It’s part of why I’ve come to MIT,” Wolfram says. “Technology will be one part of the climate solution, but I do think an innovative mindset, how can we think about doing things better, can be productively applied to climate policy.” On being at MIT, she adds: “It’s great, it’s awesome. One of the things that pleasantly surprised me is how tight-knit and friendly the MIT faculty all are, and how many interactions I’ve had with people from other departments.”Wolfram has also been enjoying her teaching at MIT, and will be offering a large class in spring 2025, 15.016 (Climate and Energy in the Global Economy), that she debuted this past academic year.“It’s super fun to have students from around the world, who have personal stories and knowledge of energy systems in their countries and can contribute to our discussions,” she says.When it comes to tackling climate change, many things seem daunting. But there is still a world of knowledge to be acquired while we try to keep the planet from overheating, and Wolfram has a can-do attitude about learning more and applying those lessons.“We’ve made a lot of progress,” Wolfram says. “But we still have a lot more to do.” More