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      in Environment

      Smart irrigation technology covers “more crop per drop”

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      In agriculture today, robots and drones can monitor fields, temperature and moisture sensors can be automated to meet crop needs, and a host of other systems and devices make farms more efficient, resource-conscious, and profitable. The use of precision agriculture, as these technologies are collectively known, offers significant advantages. However, because the technology can be costly, it remains out of reach for the majority of the world’s farmers.

      “Many of the poor around the world are small, subsistence farmers,” says Susan Amrose, research scientist with the Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) Lab at MIT. “With intensification of food production needs, worsening soil, water scarcity, and smaller plots, these farmers can’t continue with their current practices.”

      By some estimates, the global demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by as much as 40 percent by the end of the decade. Nearly 80 percent of the world’s 570 million farms are classed as smallholder farms, with many located in under-resourced and water-stressed regions. With rapid population growth and climate change driving up demand for food, and with more strain on natural resources, increasing the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices among smallholder farmers is vital. 

      Amrose, who helps lead desalination, drip irrigation, water, and sanitation projects for GEAR Lab, says these small farmers need to move to more mechanized practices. “We’re trying to make it much, much more affordable for farmers to utilize solar-powered irrigation, and to have access to tools that, right now, they’re priced out of,” she says. “More crop per drop, more crop per area, that’s our goal.”

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      No Drop to Spare: MIT creates affordable, user-driven smart irrigation technology | MIT Mechanical Engineering

      Drip irrigation systems release water and nutrients in controlled volumes directly to the root zone of the crop through a network of pipes and emitters. These systems can reduce water consumption by 20 to 60 percent when compared to conventional flood irrigation methods.

      “Agriculture uses 70 percent of the fresh water that’s in use across the globe. Large-scale adoption and correct management of drip irrigation could help to reduce consumption of fresh water, which is especially critical for regions experiencing water shortages or groundwater depletion,” says Carolyn Sheline SM ’19, a PhD student and member of the GEAR Lab’s Drip Irrigation team. “A lot of irrigation technology is developed for larger farms that can put more money into it — but inexpensive doesn’t need to mean ‘not technologically advanced.’”

      GEAR Lab has created several drip irrigation technology solutions to date, including a low-pressure drip emitter that has been shown to reduce pumping energy by more than 50 percent when compared to existing emitters; a systems-level optimization model that analyzes factors like local weather conditions and crop layouts, to cut overall system operation costs by up to 30 percent; and a low-cost precision irrigation controller that optimizes system energy and water use, enabling farmers to operate the system on an ideal schedule given their specific resources, needs, and preferences. The controller has recently been shown to reduce water consumption by over 40 percent when compared to traditional practices.

      To build these new, affordable technologies, the team tapped into a critical knowledge source — the farmers themselves.

      “We didn’t just create technology in isolation — we also advanced our understanding of how people would interact with and value this technology, and we did that before the technology had come to fruition,” says Amos Winter SM ’05, PhD ’11, associate professor of mechanical engineering and MIT GEAR Lab principal investigator. “Getting affirmations that farmers would value what the technology would do before we finished it was incredibly important.”

      The team held “Farmer Field Days” and conducted interviews with more than 200 farmers, suppliers, and industry professionals in Kenya, Morocco, and Jordan, the regions selected to host field pilot test sites. These specific sites were selected for a variety of reasons, including solar availability and water scarcity, and because all were great candidate markets for eventual adoption of the technology.

      “People usually understand their own problems really well, and they’re very good at coming up with solutions to them,” says Fiona Grant ’17, SM ’19, also a PhD candidate with the GEAR Lab Drip Irrigation team. “As designers, our role really is to provide a different set of expertise and another avenue for them to get the tools or the resources that they need.”

      The controller, for example, takes in weather information, like relative humidity, temperature, wind speed values, and precipitation. Then, using artificial intelligence, it calculates and predicts the area’s solar exposure for the day and the exact irrigation needs for the farmer, and sends information to their smartphone. How much, or how little, automation an individual site uses remains up to the farmer. In its first season of operation on a Moroccan test site, GEAR Lab technology reduced water consumption by 44 percent and energy by 38 percent when compared to a neighboring farm using traditional drip irrigation practice.

      “The way you’re going to operate a system is going to have a big impact on the way you design it,” says Grant. “We gained a sense of what farmers would be willing to change, or not, regarding interactions with the system. We found that what we might change, and what would be acceptable to change, were not necessarily the same thing.”

      GEAR Lab alumna Georgia Van de Zande ’15, SM ’18, PhD ’23, concurs. “It’s about more than just delivering a lower-cost system, it’s also about creating something they’re going to want to use and want to trust.”

      In Jordan, researchers at a full-scale test farm are operating a solar-powered drip system with a prototype of the controller and are receiving smartphone commands on when to open and close the manual valves. In Morocco, the controller is operating at a research farm with a fully automated hydraulic system; researchers are monitoring the irrigation and conducting additional agronomic tasks. In Kenya, where precision agriculture and smart irrigation haven’t yet seen very much adoption, a simpler version of the controller serves to provide educational and training information in addition to offering scheduling and control capabilities.

      Knowledge is power for the farmers, and for designers and engineers, too. If an engineer can know a user’s requirements, Winter says, they’re much more likely to create a successful solution.

      “The most powerful tool a designer can have is perspective. I have one perspective — the math and science and tech innovation side — but I don’t know a thing about what it’s like to live every day as a farmer in Jordan or Morocco,” says Winter. “I don’t know what clogs the filters, or who shuts off the water. If you can see the world through the eyes of stakeholders, you’re going to spot requirements and constraints that you wouldn’t have picked up on otherwise.”

      Winter says the technology his team is building is exciting for a lot of reasons.

      “To be in a situation where the world is saying, ‘we need to deal with water stress, we need to deal with climate adaptation, and we need to particularly do this in resource-constrained countries,’ and to be in a position where we can do something about it and produce something of tremendous value and efficacy is incredible,” says Winter. “Solving the right problem at the right time, on a massive scale, is thrilling.” More

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      in Energy

      Printing a new approach to fusion power plant materials

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      When Alexander O’Brien sent in his application for graduate school at MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, he had a germ of a research idea already brewing. So when he received a phone call from Professor Mingda Li, he shared it: The student from Arkansas wanted to explore the design of materials that could hold nuclear reactors together.

      Li listened to him patiently and then said, “I think you’d be a really good fit for Professor Ju Li,” O’Brien remembers. Ju Li, the Battelle Energy Alliance Professor in Nuclear Engineering, had wanted to explore 3D printing for nuclear reactors and O’Brien seemed like the right candidate. “At that moment I decided to go to MIT if they accepted me,” O’Brien remembers.

      And they did.

      Under the advisement of Ju Li, the fourth-year doctoral student now explores 3D printing of ceramic-metal composites, materials that can be used to construct fusion power plants.

      An early interest in the sciences

      Growing up in Springdale, Arkansas as a self-described “band nerd,” O’Brien was particularly interested in chemistry and physics. It was one thing to mix baking soda and vinegar to make a “volcano” and quite another to understand why that was happening. “I just enjoyed understanding things on a deeper level and being able to figure out how the world works,” he says.

      At the same time, it was difficult to ignore the economics of energy playing out in his own backyard. When Arkansas, a place that had hardly ever seen earthquakes, started registering them in the wake of fracking in neighboring Oklahoma, it was “like a lightbulb moment” for O’Brien. “I knew this was going to create problems down the line, I knew there’s got to be a better way to do [energy],” he says.

      With the idea of energy alternatives simmering on the back burner, O’Brien enrolled for undergraduate studies at the University of Arkansas. He participated in the school’s marching band — “you show up a week before everyone else and there’s 400 people who automatically become your friends” — and enjoyed the social environment that a large state school could offer.

      O’Brien double-majored in chemical engineering and physics and appreciated “the ability to get your hands dirty on machinery to make things work.” Deciding to begin exploring his interest in energy alternatives, O’Brien researched transition metal dichalcogenides, coatings of which could catalyze the hydrogen evolution reaction and more easily create hydrogen gas, a green energy alternative.

      It was shortly after his sophomore year, however, that O’Brien really found his way in the field of energy alternatives — in nuclear engineering. The American Chemical Society was soliciting student applications for summer study of nuclear chemistry in San Jose, California. O’Brien applied and got accepted. “After years of knowing I wanted to work in green energy but not knowing what that looked like, I very quickly fell in love with [nuclear engineering],” he says. That summer also cemented O’Brien’s decision to attend graduate school. “I came away with this idea of ‘I need to go to grad school because I need to know more about this,’” he says.

      O’Brien especially appreciated an independent project, assigned as part of the summer program: He chose to research nuclear-powered spacecraft. In digging deeper, O’Brien discovered the challenges of powering spacecraft — nuclear was the most viable alternative, but it had to work around extraneous radiation sources in space. Getting to explore national laboratories near San Jose sealed the deal. “I got to visit the National Ignition Facility, which is the big fusion center up there, and just seeing that massive facility entirely designed around this one idea of fusion was kind of mind-blowing to me,” O’Brien says.

      A fresh blueprint for fusion power plants

      O’Brien’s current research at MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) is equally mind-blowing.

      As the design of new fusion devices kicks into gear, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the materials we have been using just don’t hold up to the higher temperatures and radiation levels in operating environments, O’Brien says. Additive manufacturing, another term for 3D printing, “opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for what you can do with metals, which is exactly what you’re going to need [to build the next generation of fusion power plants],” he says.

      Metals and ceramics by themselves might not do the job of withstanding high temperatures (750 degrees Celsius is the target) and stresses and radiation, but together they might get there. Although such metal matrix composites have been around for decades, they have been impractical for use in reactors because they’re “difficult to make with any kind of uniformity and really limited in size scale,” O’Brien says. That’s because when you try to place ceramic nanoparticles into a pool of molten metal, they’re going to fall out in whichever direction they want. “3D printing quickly changes that story entirely, to the point where if you want to add these nanoparticles in very specific regions, you have the capability to do that,” O’Brien says.

      O’Brien’s work, which forms the basis of his doctoral thesis and a research paper in the journal Additive Manufacturing, involves implanting metals with ceramic nanoparticles. The net result is a metal matrix composite that is an ideal candidate for fusion devices, especially for the vacuum vessel component, which must be able to withstand high temperatures, extremely corrosive molten salts, and internal helium gas from nuclear transmutation.

      O’Brien’s work focuses on nickel superalloys like Inconel 718, which are especially robust candidates because they can withstand higher operating temperatures while retaining strength. Helium embrittlement, where bubbles of helium caused by fusion neutrons lead to weakness and failure, is a problem with Inconel 718, but composites exhibit potential to overcome this challenge.

      To create the composites, first a mechanical milling process coats the ceramic onto the metal particles. The ceramic nanoparticles act as reinforcing strength agents, especially at high temperatures, and make materials last longer. The nanoparticles also absorb helium and radiation defects when uniformly dispersed, which prevent these damage agents from all getting to the grain boundaries.

      The composite then goes through a 3D printing process called powder bed fusion (non-nuclear fusion), where a laser passes over a bed of this powder melting it into desired shapes. “By coating these particles with the ceramic and then only melting very specific regions, we keep the ceramics in the areas that we want, and then you can build up and have a uniform structure,” O’Brien says.

      Printing an exciting future

      The 3D printing of nuclear materials exhibits such promise that O’Brien is looking at pursuing the prospect after his doctoral studies. “The concept of these metal matrix composites and how they can enhance material property is really interesting,” he says. Scaling it up commercially through a startup company is on his radar.

      For now, O’Brien is enjoying research and catching an occasional Broadway show with his wife. While the band nerd doesn’t pick up his saxophone much anymore, he does enjoy driving up to New Hampshire and going backpacking. “That’s my newfound hobby,” O’Brien says, “since I started grad school.” More

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      in Environment

      A reciprocal relationship with the land in Hawaiʻi

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      Aja Grande grew up on the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu, between the Kona and ʻEwa districts, nurtured by her community and the natural environment. Her family has lived in Hawaiʻi for generations; while she is not “Kanaka ʻŌiwi,” of native Hawaiian descent, she is proud to trace her family’s history to the time of the Hawaiian Kingdom in the 19th century. Grande is now a PhD candidate in MIT’s HASTS (History, Anthropology, Science, Technology and Society) program, and part of her dissertation tracks how Hawaiian culture and people’s relationship with the land has evolved throughout time.

      “The fondest memories I have are camping on the north shore every summer with my friends,” says Grande. “I loved being in ‘ke kai’ (the sea) and ‘ma uka,’ (inland, in the mountains) with my friends when I was younger. It was just pure fun exploring ‘ʻāina’ like that.” “‘Āina” in the Hawaiian language is often defined as “land,” but is understood to the people of Hawaiʻi as “that which feeds.”

      “Now that I’m older,” Grande adds, “I’m connecting the dots and realizing how much knowledge about the complex systems of ‘ahupuaʻa’ [traditional Hawaiian divisions of land that extend from the mountains to the sea], I actually gained through these experiences.”

      Grande recently completed a year of fieldwork in Hawaiʻi where she volunteered with land-based, or ‘āina-based organizations. In the movement to restore ‘āina to “momona,” or  “fertile and abundant lands,” the land and the people who serve as its stewards are of equal importance.

      “I’m looking at how people who are not Kanaka ‘Ōiwi, or native Hawaiian, by descent can participate in this kind of restoration, and what it means for both Kanaka ‘Ōiwi and non-Kanaka ‘Ōiwi to participate in it,” says Grande, who herself descends from immigrants of other island nations. “Some of my ancestors were born and raised in Hawaiʻi before the U.S. subjected Hawaiʻi as a state and territory, meaning that some of them were Hawaiian Kingdom subjects. While, I am not Kanaka ʻŌiwi by lineage, some of my ‘ohana nui (extended family), from these same ancestors, are Kanaka ʻŌiwi. I’m writing about how being Hawaiian, from a Hawaiian sovereignty standpoint, is not just about race and ethnicity. When Hawaiʻi was a sovereign nation, Hawaiian citizenship was never afforded on the basis of race alone. It was also based on your lifelong commitment to ‘āina and the people of Hawaiʻi.”

      The project is personal to Grande, who describes both the content and the process of writing it as part of her healing journey. She hopes to lay the groundwork for others who are “hoaʻāina,” or “those who actively care for ʻāina,” in Hawaiʻi, but not Kanaka ʻŌiwi to better articulate their identities and foster a deeper connection with the ʻāina and the “kaiāulu,” or “community,” they love and actively care for.

      Returning home

      Grande has spent her academic career on the East Coast, first at Brown University, where she received a degree in science, technology, and society, and now at MIT in the HASTS program. She swam competitively through her second year of college, and had earlier represented Hawaiʻi at the 2012 Oceania Games in New Caledonia. Once she stopped swimming, Grande first used her newfound time to travel the world. Tired of this transient lifestyle, she realized she was more interested in exploring her connection to land in a more rooted way.

      “Moving around, especially as a college student, it’s very hard to grow things,” says Grande. “People are a lot like plants. You really just need to let plants do their thing in place. We do really well and we thrive when we can be connected to place.”

      Grande started by founding the Ethnobotany Society at Brown to explore the relationship people have to plants. With the group she organized nature walks, collaborated with local farms, and connected it to the history she was learning in class.

      Still, the East Coast never quite felt like home to Grande. When she started planning for the fieldwork portion of her program, she envisioned spending half the year in New England and half in Hawaiʻi. But she soon realized how important it was for both her research and herself to dedicate everything to Hawai’i.

      “When I came back, it just felt so right to be back home,” says Grande. “The feeling in your naʻau — your ‘gut’ — of knowing that you have to contribute to Hawaiʻi is very powerful, and I think a lot of people here understand what that means. It’s kind of like a calling.”

      Hoaʻāina, community, family

      Once Grande made the decision to return home for her field work, she says everything fell into place.

      “I knew that I wanted to do something close to my heart. It’s a huge privilege because I was able to come home and learn more about myself and my family and how we are connected to Hawaiʻi,” she says.

      During her year of fieldwork, Grande learned how hoaʻāina cultivate spaces where the community can can work alongside one another to plant traditional food and medicinal crops, control invasive species, and more. She wasn’t just an observer, either. As much as Grande learned from an academic perspective, her personal growth has been intertwined with the entire process.

      “The most interesting part was that all the hoaʻāina I volunteered with helped me to understand my place back home,” says Grande. “They were my informants but also — this usually happens with anthropologists — people become your friends. The hoaʻāina I volunteered with treated me like family. They also got to know some of my family members, who joined me to volunteer at different sites. It’s sometimes hard to drop a hard line between what fieldwork is and what your personal life is because when you’re in the field, there’s so many events that are connected to your work. It was so fun and meaningful to write about the ʻāina and people I consider my community and family.”

      The movement doesn’t start or end with Grande’s dissertation. Pursuing this project has given her the language to articulate her own relationship with ‘āina, and she hopes it will empower others to reexamine how they exist in relation to land.

      After completing her program, Grande intends to stay in Hawaiʻi and continue philanthropy work while contributing to the movement of ʻāina momona.

      “We want the land to live and to keep a relationship with the land. That’s the emotional part. I have a ‘kuleana,’ (duty and responsibility) to everything that I learned while growing up, including the ʻāina and ‘kaiāulu,’ (community) who raised me. The more you learn, there’s so much that you want to protect about the culture and this ‘āina.” More

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      in Energy

      Jackson Jewett wants to design buildings that use less concrete

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      After three years leading biking tours through U.S. National Parks, Jackson Jewett decided it was time for a change.

      “It was a lot of fun, but I realized I missed buildings,” says Jewett. “I really wanted to be a part of that industry, learn more about it, and reconnect with my roots in the built environment.”

      Jewett grew up in California in what he describes as a “very creative household.”

      “I remember making very elaborate Halloween costumes with my parents, making fun dioramas for school projects, and building forts in the backyard, that kind of thing,” Jewett explains.

      Both of his parents have backgrounds in design; his mother studied art in college and his father is a practicing architect. From a young age, Jewett was interested in following in his father’s footsteps. But when he arrived at the University of California at Berkeley in the midst of the 2009 housing crash, it didn’t seem like the right time. Jewett graduated with a degree in cognitive science and a minor in history of architecture. And even as he led tours through Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and other parks, buildings were in the back of his mind.

      It wasn’t just the built environment that Jewett was missing. He also longed for the rigor and structure of an academic environment.

      Jewett arrived at MIT in 2017, initially only planning on completing the master’s program in civil and environmental engineering. It was then that he first met Josephine Carstensen, a newly hired lecturer in the department. Jewett was interested in Carstensen’s work on “topology optimization,” which uses algorithms to design structures that can achieve their performance requirements while using only a limited amount of material. He was particularly interested in applying this approach to concrete design, and he collaborated with Carstensen to help demonstrate its viability.

      After earning his master’s, Jewett spent a year and a half as a structural engineer in New York City. But when Carstensen was hired as a professor, she reached out to Jewett about joining her lab as a PhD student. He was ready for another change.

      Now in the third year of his PhD program, Jewett’s dissertation work builds upon his master’s thesis to further refine algorithms that can design building-scale concrete structures that use less material, which would help lower carbon emissions from the construction industry. It is estimated that the concrete industry alone is responsible for 8 percent of global carbon emissions, so any efforts to reduce that number could help in the fight against climate change.

      Implementing new ideas

      Topology optimization is a small field, with the bulk of the prior work being computational without any experimental verification. The work Jewett completed for his master’s thesis was just the start of a long learning process.

      “I do feel like I’m just getting to the part where I can start implementing my own ideas without as much support as I’ve needed in the past,” says Jewett. “In the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a reinforced concrete optimization algorithm that I hope will be the cornerstone of my thesis.”

      The process of fine-tuning a generative algorithm is slow going, particularly when tackling a multifaceted problem.

      “It can take days or usually weeks to take a step toward making it work as an entire integrated system,” says Jewett. “The days when that breakthrough happens and I can see the algorithm converging on a solution that makes sense — those are really exciting moments.”

      By harnessing computational power, Jewett is searching for materially efficient components that can be used to make up structures such as bridges or buildings. These are other constraints to consider as well, particularly ensuring that the cost of manufacturing isn’t too high. Having worked in the industry before starting the PhD program, Jewett has an eye toward doing work that can be feasibly implemented.

      Inspiring others

      When Jewett first visited MIT campus, he was drawn in by the collaborative environment of the institute and the students’ drive to learn. Now, he’s a part of that process as a teaching assistant and a supervisor in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.  

      Working as a teaching assistant isn’t a requirement for Jewett’s program, but it’s been one of his favorite parts of his time at MIT.

      “The MIT undergrads are so gifted and just constantly impress me,” says Jewett. “Being able to teach, especially in the context of what MIT values is a lot of fun. And I learn, too. My coding practices have gotten so much better since working with undergrads here.”

      Jewett’s experiences have inspired him to pursue a career in academia after the completion of his program, which he expects to complete in the spring of 2025. But he’s making sure to take care of himself along the way. He still finds time to plan cycling trips with his friends and has gotten into running ever since moving to Boston. So far, he’s completed two marathons.

      “It’s so inspiring to be in a place where so many good ideas are just bouncing back and forth all over campus,” says Jewett. “And on most days, I remember that and it inspires me. But it’s also the case that academics is hard, PhD programs are hard, and MIT — there’s pressure being here, and sometimes that pressure can feel like it’s working against you.”

      Jewett is grateful for the mental health resources that MIT provides students. While he says it can be imperfect, it’s been a crucial part of his journey.

      “My PhD thesis will be done in 2025, but the work won’t be done. The time horizon of when these things need to be implemented is relatively short if we want to make an impact before global temperatures have already risen too high. My PhD research will be developing a framework for how that could be done with concrete construction, but I’d like to keep thinking about other materials and construction methods even after this project is finished.” More

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      in Environment

      Uncovering how biomes respond to climate change

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      Before Leila Mirzagholi arrived at MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) to begin her postdoc appointment, she had spent most of her time in academia building cosmological models to detect properties of gravitational waves in the cosmos.

      But as a member of Assistant Professor César Terrer’s lab in CEE, Mirzagholi uses her physics and mathematical background to improve our understanding of the different factors that influence how much carbon land ecosystems can store under climate change.

      “What was always important to me was thinking about how to solve a problem and putting all the pieces together and building something from scratch,” Mirzagholi says, adding this was one of the reasons that it was possible for her to switch fields — and what drives her today as a climate scientist.

      Growing up in Iran, Mirzagholi knew she wanted to be a scientist from an early age. As a kid, she became captivated by physics, spending most of her free time in a local cultural center that hosted science events. “I remember in that center there was an observatory that held observational tours and it drew me into science,” says Mirzgholi. She also remembers a time when she was a kid watching the science fiction film “Contact” that introduces a female scientist character who finds evidence of extraterrestrial life and builds a spaceship to make first contact: “After that movie my mind was set on pursuing astrophysics.”

      With the encouragement of her parents to develop a strong mathematical background before pursuing physics, she earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Tehran University. Then she completed a one-year master class in mathematics at Utrecht University before completing her PhD in theoretical physics at Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Munich. There, Mirzgholi’s thesis focused on developing cosmological models with a focus on phenomenological aspects like propagation of gravitational waves on the cosmic microwave background.

      Midway through her PhD, Mirzgholi became discouraged with building models to explain the dynamics of the early universe because there is little new data. “It starts to get personal and becomes a game of: ‘Is it my model or your model?’” she explains. She grew frustrated not knowing when the models she’d built would ever be tested.

      It was at this time that Mirzgholi started reading more about the topics of climate change and climate science. “I was really motivated by the problems and the nature of the problems, especially to make global terrestrial ecology more quantitative,” she says. She also liked the idea of contributing to a global problem that we are all facing. She started to think, “maybe I can do my part, I can work on research beneficial for society and the planet.”

      She made the switch following her PhD and started as a postdoc in the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich, working on understanding the effects of environmental changes on global vegetation activity. After a stint at ETH, where her colleagues collaborated on projects with the Terrer Lab, she relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to join the lab and CEE.

      Her latest article in Science, which was published in July and co-authored by researchers from ETH, shows how global warming affects the timing of autumn leaf senescence. “It’s important to understand the length of the growing season, and how much the forest or other biomes will have the capacity to take in carbon from the atmosphere.” Using remote sensing data, she was able to understand when the growing season will end under a warming climate. “We distinguish two dates — when autumn is onsetting and the leaves are starting to turn yellow, versus when the leaves are 50 percent yellow — to represent the progression of leaf senescence,” she says.

      In the context of rising temperature, when the warming is happening plays a crucial role. If warming temperatures happen before the summer solstice, it triggers trees to begin their seasonal cycles faster, leading to reduced photosynthesis, ending in an earlier autumn. On the other hand, if the warming happens after the summer solstice, it delays the discoloration process, making autumn last longer. “For every degree Celsius of pre-solstice warming, the onset of leaf senescence advances by 1.9 days, while each degree Celsius of post-solstice warming delays the senescence process by 2.6 days,” she explains. Understanding the timing of autumn leaf senescence is essential in efforts to predict carbon storage capacity when modeling global carbon cycles.

      Another problem she’s working on in the Terrer Lab is discovering how deforestation is changing our local climate. How much is it cooling or warming the temperature, and how is the hydrological cycle changing because of deforestation? Investigating these questions will give insight into how much we can depend on natural solutions for carbon uptake to help mitigate climate change. “Quantitatively, we want to put a number to the amount of carbon uptake from various natural solutions, as opposed to other solutions,” she says.

      With year-and-a-half left in her postdoc appointment, Mirzagholi has begun considering her next career steps. She likes the idea of applying to climate scientist jobs in industry or national labs, as well as tenure track faculty positions. Whether she pursues a career in academia or industry, Mirzagholi aims to continue conducting fundamental climate science research. Her multidisciplinary background in physics, mathematics, and climate science has given her a multifaceted perspective, which she applies to every research problem.

      “Looking back, I’m grateful for all my educational experiences from spending time in the cultural center as a kid, my background in physics, the support from colleagues at the Crowther lab at ETH who facilitated my transition from physics to ecology, and now working at MIT alongside Professor Terrer, because it’s shaped my career path and the researcher I am today.” More

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      in Energy

      Ms. Nuclear Energy is winning over nuclear skeptics

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      First-year MIT nuclear science and engineering (NSE) doctoral student Kaylee Cunningham is not the first person to notice that nuclear energy has a public relations problem. But her commitment to dispel myths about the alternative power source has earned her the moniker “Ms. Nuclear Energy” on TikTok and a devoted fan base on the social media platform.

      Cunningham’s activism kicked into place shortly after a week-long trip to Iceland to study geothermal energy. During a discussion about how the country was going to achieve its net zero energy goals, a representative from the University of Reykjavik balked at Cunnigham’s suggestion of including a nuclear option in the alternative energy mix. “The response I got was that we’re a peace-loving nation, we don’t do that,” Cunningham remembers. “I was appalled by the reaction, I mean we’re talking energy not weapons here, right?” she asks. Incredulous, Cunningham made a TikTok that targeted misinformation. Overnight she garnered 10,000 followers and “Ms. Nuclear Energy” was off to the races. Ms. Nuclear Energy is now Cunningham’s TikTok handle.

      Kaylee Cunningham: Dispelling myths and winning over skeptics

      A theater and science nerd

      TikTok is a fitting platform for a theater nerd like Cunningham. Born in Melrose, Massachusetts, Cunningham’s childhood was punctuated by moves to places where her roofer father’s work took the family. She moved to North Carolina shortly after fifth grade and fell in love with theater. “I was doing theater classes, the spring musical, it was my entire world,” Cunningham remembers. When she moved again, this time to Florida halfway through her first year of high school, she found the spring musical had already been cast. But she could help behind the scenes. Through that work, Cunningham gained her first real exposure to hands-on tech. She was hooked.

      Soon Cunningham was part of a team that represented her high school at the student Astronaut Challenge, an aerospace competition run by Florida State University. Statewide winners got to fly a space shuttle simulator at the Kennedy Space Center and participate in additional engineering challenges. Cunningham’s team was involved in creating a proposal to help NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission, designed to help the agency gather a large boulder from a near-earth asteroid. The task was Cunningham’s induction into an understanding of radiation and “anything nuclear.” Her high school engineering teacher, Nirmala Arunachalam, encouraged Cunningham’s interest in the subject.

      The Astronaut Challenge might just have been the end of Cunningham’s path in nuclear engineering had it not been for her mother. In high school, Cunningham had also enrolled in computer science classes and her love of the subject earned her a scholarship at Norwich University in Vermont where she had pursued a camp in cybersecurity. Cunningham had already laid down the college deposit for Norwich.

      But Cunningham’s mother persuaded her daughter to pay another visit to the University of Florida, where she had expressed interest in pursuing nuclear engineering. To her pleasant surprise, the department chair, Professor James Baciak, pulled out all the stops, bringing mother and daughter on a tour of the on-campus nuclear reactor and promising Cunningham a paid research position. Cunningham was sold and Backiak has been a mentor throughout her research career.

      Merging nuclear engineering and computer science

      Undergraduate research internships, including one at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she could combine her two loves, nuclear engineering and computer science, convinced Cunningham she wanted to pursue a similar path in graduate school.

      Cunningham’s undergraduate application to MIT had been rejected but that didn’t deter her from applying to NSE for graduate school. Having spent her early years in an elementary school barely 20 minutes from campus, she had grown up hearing that “the smartest people in the world go to MIT.” Cunningham figured that if she got into MIT, it would be “like going back home to Massachusetts” and that she could fit right in.

      Under the advisement of Professor Michael Short, Cunningham is looking to pursue her passions in both computer science and nuclear engineering in her doctoral studies.

      The activism continues

      Simultaneously, Cunningham is determined to keep her activism going.

      Her ability to digest “complex topics into something understandable to people who have no connection to academia” has helped Cunningham on TikTok. “It’s been something I’ve been doing all my life with my parents and siblings and extended family,” she says.

      Punctuating her video snippets with humor — a Simpsons reference is par for the course — helps Cunningham break through to her audience who love her goofy and tongue-in-cheek approach to the subject matter without compromising accuracy. “Sometimes I do stupid dances and make a total fool of myself, but I’ve really found my niche by being willing to engage and entertain people and educate them at the same time.”

      Such education needs to be an important part of an industry that’s received its share of misunderstandings, Cunningham says. “Technical people trying to communicate in a way that the general people don’t understand is such a concerning thing,” she adds. Case in point: the response in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident, which prevented massive contamination leaks. It was a perfect example of how well our safety regulations actually work, Cunningham says, “but you’d never guess from the PR fallout from it all.”

      As Ms. Nuclear Energy, Cunningham receives her share of skepticism. One viewer questioned the safety of nuclear reactors if “tons of pollution” was spewing out from them. Cunningham produced a TikTok that addressed this misconception. Pointing to the “pollution” in a photo, Cunningham clarifies that it’s just water vapor. The TikTok has garnered over a million views. “It really goes to show how starving for accurate information the public really is,” Cunningham says, “ in this age of having all the information we could ever want at our fingertips, it’s hard to sift through and decide what’s real and accurate and what isn’t.”

      Another reason for her advocacy: doing her part to encourage young people toward a nuclear science or engineering career. “If we’re going to start putting up tons of small modular reactors around the country, we need people to build them, people to run them, and we need regulatory bodies to inspect and keep them safe,” Cunningham points out. “ And we don’t have enough people entering the workforce in comparison to those that are retiring from the workforce,” she adds. “I’m able to engage those younger audiences and put nuclear engineering on their radar,” Cunningham says. The advocacy has been paying off: Cunningham regularly receives — and responds to — inquiries from high school junior girls looking for advice on pursuing nuclear engineering.

      All the activism is in service toward a clear end goal. “At the end of the day, the fight is to save the planet,” Cunningham says, “I honestly believe that nuclear power is the best chance we’ve got to fight climate change and keep our planet alive.” More

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      in Energy

      Q&A: Three Tata Fellows on the program’s impact on themselves and the world

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      The Tata Fellowship at MIT gives graduate students the opportunity to pursue interdisciplinary research and work with real-world applications in developing countries. Part of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design, this fellowship contributes to the center’s goal of designing appropriate, practical solutions for resource-constrained communities. Three Tata Fellows — Serena Patel, Rameen Hayat Malik, and Ethan Harrison — discuss the impact of this program on their research, perspectives, and time at MIT.

      Serena Patel

      Serena Patel graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in energy engineering and a minor in energy and resources. She is currently pursuing her SM in technology and policy at MIT and is a Tata Fellow focusing on decarbonization in India using techno-economic modeling. Her interest in the intersection of technology, policy, economics, and social justice led her to attend COP27, where she experienced decision-maker and activist interactions firsthand.

      Q: How did you become interested in the Tata Fellowship, and how has it influenced your time at MIT?

      A: The Tata Center appealed to my interest in searching for creative, sustainable energy technologies that center collaboration with local-leading organizations. It has also shaped my understanding of the role of technology in sustainable development planning. Our current energy system disproportionately impacts marginalized communities, and new energy systems have the potential to perpetuate and/or create inequities. I am broadly interested in how we can put people at the core of our technological solutions and support equitable energy transitions. I specifically work on techno-economic modeling to analyze the potential for an early retirement of India’s large coal fleet and conversion to long-duration thermal energy storage. This could mitigate job losses from rapid transitions, support India’s energy system decarbonization plan, and provide a cost-effective way to retire stranded assets.

      Q: Why is interdisciplinary study important to real-world solutions for global communities, and how has working at the intersection of technology and policy influenced your research?

      A: Technology and policy work together in mediating and regulating the world around us. Technological solutions can be disruptive in all the good ways, but they can also do a lot of harm and perpetuate existing inequities. Interdisciplinary studies are important to mitigate these interrelated issues so innovative ideas in the ivory towers of Western academia do not negatively impact marginalized communities. For real-world solutions to positively impact individuals, marginalized communities need to be centered within the research design process. I think the research community’s perspective on real-world, global solutions is shifting to achieve these goals, but much work remains for resources to reach the right communities.

      The energy space is especially fascinating because it impacts everyone’s quality of life in overt or nuanced ways. I’ve had the privilege of taking classes that sit at the intersection of energy technology and policy, involving land-use law, geographic representation, energy regulation, and technology policy. In general, working at the intersection of technology and policy has shaped my perspective on how regulation influences widespread technology adoption and the overall research directions and assumptions in our energy models.

      Q: How has your experience at COP27 influenced your approach to your research?

      A: Attending COP27 at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, last November influenced my understanding of the role of science, research, and activism in climate negotiations and action. Science and research are often promoted as necessary for sharing knowledge at the higher levels, but they were also used as a delay tactic by negotiators. I heard how institutional bodies meant to support fair science and research often did not reach intended stakeholders. Lofty goals or financial commitments to ensure global climate stability and resilience still lacked implementation and coordination with deep technology transfer and support. On the face of it, these agreements have impact and influence, but I heard many frustrations over the lack of tangible, local support. This has driven my research to be as context-specific as possible, to provide actionable insights and leverage different disciplines.

      I also observed the role of activism in the negotiations. Decision-makers are accountable to their country, and activists are spreading awareness and bringing transparency to the COP process. As a U.S. citizen, I suddenly became more aware of how political engagement and awareness in the country could push the boundaries of international climate agreements if the government were more aligned on climate action.

      Rameen Hayat Malik

      Rameen Hayat Malik graduated from the University of Sydney with a bachelor’s degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering and a Bachelor of Laws. She is currently pursuing her SM in technology and policy and is a Tata Fellow researching the impacts of electric vehicle (EV) battery production in Indonesia. Originally from Australia, she first became interested in the geopolitical landscape of resources trade and its implications for the clean energy transition while working in her native country’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

      Q: How did you become interested in the Tata Fellowship, and how has it influenced your time at MIT?

      A: I came across the Tata Fellowship while looking for research opportunities that aligned with my interest in understanding how a just energy transition will occur in a global context, with a particular focus on emerging economies. My research explores the techno-economic, social, and environmental impacts of nickel mining in Indonesia as it seeks to establish itself as a major producer of EV batteries. The fellowship’s focus on community-driven research has given me the freedom to guide the scope of my research. It has allowed me to integrate a community voice into my work that seeks to understand the impact of this mining on forest-dependent communities, Indigenous communities, and workforce development.

      Q: Battery technology and production are highly discussed in the energy sector. How does your research on Indonesia’s battery production contribute to the current discussion around batteries, and what drew you to this topic?

      A: Indonesia is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal, while also having one of the largest nickel reserves in the world — a key mineral for EV battery production. This presents an exciting opportunity for Indonesia to be a leader in the energy transition, as it both seeks to phase out coal production and establish itself as a key supplier of critical minerals. It is also an opportunity to actually apply principles of a just transition to the region, which seeks to repurpose and re-skill existing coal workforces, to bring Indigenous communities into the conversation around the future of their lands, and to explore whether it is actually possible to sustainably and ethically produce nickel for EV battery production.

      I’ve always seen battery technologies and EVs as products that, at least today, are accessible to a small, privileged customer base that can afford such technologies. I’m interested in understanding how we can make such products more widely affordable and provide our lowest-income communities with the opportunities to actively participate in the transition — especially since access to transportation is a key driver of social mobility. With nickel prices impacting EV prices in such a dramatic way, unlocking more nickel supply chains presents an opportunity to make EV batteries more accessible and affordable.

      Q: What advice would you give to new students who want to be a part of real-world solutions to the climate crisis?

      A: Bring your whole self with you when engaging these issues. Quite often we get caught up with the technology or modeling aspect of addressing the climate crisis and forget to bring people and their experiences into our work. Think about your positionality: Who is your community, what are the avenues you have to bring that community along, and what privileges do you hold to empower and amplify voices that need to be heard? Find a piece of this complex puzzle that excites you, and find opportunities to talk and listen to people who are directly impacted by the solutions you are looking to explore. It can get quite overwhelming working in this space, which carries a sense of urgency, politicization, and polarization with it. Stay optimistic, keep advocating, and remember to take care of yourself while doing this important work.

      Ethan Harrison

      After earning his degree in economics and applied science from the College of William and Mary, Ethan Harrison worked at the United Nations Development Program in its Crisis Bureau as a research officer focused on conflict prevention and predictive analysis. He is currently pursuing his SM in technology and policy at MIT. In his Tata Fellowship, he focuses on the impacts of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on global vulnerability and the global energy market.

      Q: How did you become interested in the Tata Fellowship, and how has it influenced your time at MIT?

      A: Coming to MIT, one of my chief interests was figuring out how we can leverage gains from technology to improve outcomes and build pro-poor solutions in developing and crisis contexts. The Tata Fellowship aligned with many of the conclusions I drew while working in crisis contexts and some of the outstanding questions that I was hoping to answer during my time at MIT, specifically: How can we leverage technology to build sustainable, participatory, and ethically grounded interventions in these contexts?

      My research currently examines the secondary impacts of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on low- and middle-income countries — especially fragile states — with a focus on shocks in the global energy market. This includes the development of a novel framework that systematically identifies factors of vulnerability — such as in energy, food systems, and trade dependence — and quantitatively ranks countries by their level of vulnerability. By identifying the specific mechanisms by which these countries are vulnerable, we can develop a map of global vulnerability and identify key policy solutions that can insulate countries from current and future shocks.

      Q: I understand that your research deals with the relationship between oil and gas price fluctuation and political stability. What has been the most surprising aspect of this relationship, and what are its implications for global decarbonization?

      A: One surprising aspect is the degree to which citizen grievances regarding price fluctuations can quickly expand to broader democratic demands and destabilization. In Sri Lanka last year and in Egypt during the Arab spring, initial protests around fuel prices and power outages eventually led to broader demands and the loss of power by heads of state. Another surprising aspect is the popularity of fuel subsidies despite the fact that they are economically regressive: They often comprise a large proportion of GDP in poor countries, disproportionately benefit higher-income populations, and leave countries vulnerable to fiscal stress during price spikes.

      Regarding implications for global decarbonization, one project we are pursuing examines the implications of directing financing from fuel subsidies toward investments in renewable energy. Countries that rely on fossil fuels for electricity have been hit especially hard 
by price spikes from the Ukraine-Russia conflict, especially since many were carrying costly fuel subsidies to keep the price of fuel and energy artificially low. Much of the international community is advocating for low-income countries to invest in renewables and reduce their fossil fuel burden, but it’s important to explore how global decarbonization can align with efforts to end energy poverty and other Sustainable Development Goals.

      Q: How does your research impact the Tata Center’s goal of transforming policy research into real-world solutions, and why is this important?

      A: The crisis in Ukraine has shifted the international community’s focus away from other countries in crisis, such as Yemen and Lebanon. By developing a global map of vulnerability, we’re building a large evidence base on which countries have been most impacted by this crisis. Most importantly, by identifying individual channels of vulnerability for each country, we can also identify the most effective policy solutions to insulate vulnerable populations from shocks. Whether that’s advocating for short-term social protection programs or identifying more medium-term policy solutions — like fuel banks or investment in renewables — we hope providing a detailed map of sources of vulnerability can help inform the global response to shocks imposed by the Russia-Ukraine conflict and post-Covid recovery. More

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      in Environment

      Dyanna Jaye: Bringing the urgency of organizing to climate policy

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      Growing up in the Tidewater region of Virginia, Dyanna Jaye had a front row seat to the climate crisis. She recalls beach stabilization efforts that pumped sand from the bottom of the ocean to the shore in response to rising sea levels. And every hurricane season, the streets would flood.

      “I was thinking at a younger age about some pretty big questions,” says Jaye. “Can I call this place home for the rest of my life? Probably not. The changes that we will endure because of climate change will probably make the place where I grew up unlivable in my lifetime.”

      Jaye attended the University of Virginia, where she studied environmental science and global development studies. She also started to get involved in organizing efforts around climate policy. The first campaign she was a part of aimed to retire UVA’s coal plant and move to more renewable energy.

      “We didn’t really win, but I learned a lot in that first campaign,” she says.

      Jaye went on to co-found the Sunrise Movement, which helped launch the Green New Deal as a framework for ambitious, holistic climate policy across the country.

      Now pursuing a master’s in city planning at MIT, Jaye is seeking a deeper understanding of how to implement climate-conscious policy across all levels of government. She hopes to bring the lessons learned back to her home state.

      “My goal is to make it back to Virginia and have a better of an idea of how to plan a multidecade transition that decarbonizes our economy while also building good jobs and protecting the fundamental things that we need in our life,” says Jaye. “Virginia was this place where I felt like I could see both ends of the climate crisis, and realized you need a holistic solution to address all aspects of this.”

      A foundation in organizing

      After graduating from the University of Virginia, Jaye led a delegation of young people from the U.S. to the United Nations to campaign for a global commitment to phase out fossil fuels and fund equitable climate solutions. At the time, the Paris climate agreement was being negotiated. Witnessing that process firsthand was eye-opening.

      Jaye realized to push the U.S. forward in the fight against climate change, she needed to help build a nationwide movement that could push the federal government to enact ambitious policy. Along with six like-minded friends, Jaye co-founded the Sunrise Movement.

      “It feels silly to say this now, but part of Sunrise was just to get climate change to be a more urgent issue, because at the time it was politically unpopular to even talk about it,” Jaye says. “The vision that became the Green New Deal was this plan to decarbonize our society within 10 years and bring all the benefits we can to build a stronger, more connected, and healthier society.”

      Jaye describes her five years with Sunrise as a “wild whirlwind.” As the national organizing director, she worked on engagement strategies to recruit new people to the movement. Following a few key wins at the polls, Sunrise grew from a handful of chapters concentrated in swing states to over 500 chapters across the nation.

      On the other side, crafting policy

      Though she is no longer directly involved with the Sunrise Movement, Jaye has moved onto a different stage of the fight. For the final year of her master’s, she will be writing her thesis while working with the Massachusetts Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience. The office is newly established as of this year, evidence of the federal funding wins that Sunrise helped make possible.

      “Transparently, we wanted to win a lot more,” says Jaye. “We had huge goals, but we did win a lot of things at the federal level. So, the time is now to get federal funding and move it through state implementation and planning, and it’s urgent.”

      The flexibility of the city planning program allows students to study theory while also putting that theory in practice in local government. Jaye’s thesis will focus on the best planning approach for full government strategy, informed by her work in the climate office. While previous climate policy focused purely on the environmental sector, effectively addressing climate change will take a multipronged approach touching every sector, from transportation to housing to energy distribution to food production.

      “What’s really cool about being in the government right now in Massachusetts is getting to see a model as they’re trying to take climate from being an environmental priority to a number one, whole-of-government challenge,” says Jaye. “It’s an issue that’s embedded into every department and level of our government.”

      As she finishes her master’s, Jaye is still keeping an eye toward home. While she isn’t in a rush to leave Massachusetts, she is always thinking about the lessons she’s learning can apply to Virginia. And by building skills in both planning and organizing, Jaye will be well-equipped to make an impact wherever she lands.

      “I still feel very committed to community organizing. We’re living in a divided time where our democracy is being challenged, and organizing is what we need to do to respond to that,” says Jaye. “We also need a lot more people diving in on the work of policy and governance to determine how we transition our economy and our energy system, how are we going to go about doing something like that. Right now, I’m feeling excited to be on that side of the work.” More