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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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      “Mens et manus” in Guatemala

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      In a new, well-equipped lab at the University del Valle de Guatemala (UVG) in June 2024, members of two Mayan farmers’ cooperatives watched closely as Rodrigo Aragón, professor of mechanical engineering at UVG, demonstrated the operation of an industrial ultrasound machine. Then he invited each of them to test the device.“For us, it is a dream to be able to interact with technology,” said Francisca Elizabeth Saloj Saloj, a member of the Ija´tz women’s collective, a group from Guatemala’s highlands.After a seven-hour bumpy bus ride, the farmers had arrived in Guatemala City with sacks full of rosemary, chamomile, and thyme. Their objective: to explore processes for extracting essential oils from their plants and to identify new products to manufacture with these oils. Currently, farmers sell their herbs in local markets for medicinal or culinary purposes. With new technology, says Aragón, they can add value to their harvest, using herb oils as the basis for perfumes, syrups, and tinctures that would reach broader markets. These goods could provide much-needed income to the farmers’ households.A strategy for transformationThis collaboration is just one part of a five-year, $15-million project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and managed by MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering in collaboration with UVG and the Guatemalan Export Association (AGEXPORT). Launched in 2021 and called ASPIRE — Achieving Sustainable Partnerships for Innovation, Research, and Entrepreneurship — the project aims to collaboratively strengthen UVG, and eventually other universities in Central America, as problem-solving powerhouses that research, design, and build solutions with and for the people most in need.“The vision of ASPIRE is that within a decade, UVG researchers are collaborating with community members on research that generates results that are relevant to addressing local development challenges — results that are picked up and used by policymakers and actors in the private sector,” says MIT Research Scientist Elizabeth Hoffecker, a co-principal investigator of ASPIRE at MIT, and leader of the Institute’s Local Innovation Group.UVG, one of Guatemala’s top universities, has embraced ASPIRE as part of its long-term strategic plan, and is now pursuing wide-ranging changes based on a playbook developed at MIT — including at MIT D-Lab, which deploys participatory design, co-creation, low-cost technologies, and capacity building to meet the complex challenges of poverty — and piloted at UVG. The ASPIRE team is working to extend the reach of its research innovation and entrepreneurship activities to its two regional campuses and to other regional universities. The overall program is informed by MIT’s approach to development of research-driven innovation ecosystems.Although lacking the resources (and PhD programs) of a typical U.S. university, UVG has big ambitions for itself, and for Guatemala.“We want to thrive and lead the country in research and teaching, and to accomplish this, we are creating an innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, based on best practices drawn from D-Lab and other MIT groups,” says Mónica Stein, vice-rector for research and outreach at UVG, who holds a doctorate from Stanford University in plant biology. “ASPIRE can really change the way that development work and local research is done so that it has more impact,” says Stein. “And in theory, if you have more impact, then you improve environmental outcomes, health outcomes, educational outcomes, and economic outcomes.”Local innovation and entrepreneurshipShifting gears at a university and launching novel development initiatives are complex challenges, but with training and workshops conducted by D-Lab-trained collaborators and MIT-based ASPIRE staff, UVG faculty, staff, and students are embracing the change. Programs underway should sound familiar to anyone who has set foot recently on the campus of a U.S. research university: hackathons, makerspaces, pitchapaloozas, entrepreneurship competitions, and spinouts. But at UVG, all of these serve a larger purpose: addressing sustainable development goals.ASPIRE principal investigator Daniel Frey, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, believes some of these programs are already paying off, particularly a UVG venture mentoring service (VMS), modeled after and facilitated by MIT’s own VMS program. “We’d like to see students building companies and improving their livelihoods and those of people from indigenous and marginalized communities,” says Frey.The ASPIRE project intends to enable the lowest-income communities to share more of Guatemala’s wealth, derived mainly from agricultural goods. In collaborating with AGEXPORT, which enables networking with companies across the country, the team zeroed in on creating or enhancing the value chain for several key crops.“Snow peas offer a great target for both research and innovation,” says Adilia Blandón, ASPIRE research project manager and professor of food engineering at UVG. Many farming communities grow snow peas, which they send along to companies for export to the U.S. Unless these peas are perfect in shape and color, Blandón explains, they don’t make it to market. Nearly a third of Guatemala’s crop is left at processing plants, turned into animal feed, or wasted.An ASPIRE snow pea team located farmers from two cooperatives who wanted to solve this problem. At a series of co-creation sessions, these growers and mechanical engineers at UVG developed a prototype for a low-tech cart for collecting snow peas, made from easily acquired local materials, which can navigate the steep and narrow paths on the hills where the plants grow. This method avoids crushing snow peas in a conventional harvest bag. In addition, the snow pea project has engaged women at a technical school to design a harvest apron for women snow pea farmers. “This could be a business opportunity for them,” Blandón says.Blandón vividly recalls her first ASPIRE workshop, focused on participatory design. “It opened my eyes as a researcher in so many ways,” she says. “I learned that instead of taking information from people, I can learn from them and create things with them that they are really excited about.” It completely changed how she approaches research, she says.Working with Mayan communities that produce snow peas, where malnourishment and illness are rampant, Blandón and ASPIRE researchers found that families don’t eat the protein-packed vegetable because they don’t find it palatable — even though so much of it is left over from harvest. Participatory design sessions with a group of mothers yielded an intriguing possibility: grinding snow peas into flour, which would then be incorporated into traditional bean- and corn-based dishes. The recipes born of this collaboration could land on WhatsApp or TikTok, mobile apps familiar to these families.Building value chainsAdditional research projects are teasing out novel ways of adding value to the products grown or made by Guatemalan hands.These include an educational toolkit developed with government farm extension workers to teach avocado producers how to improve their practices. The long-term goal is to grow and export larger and unblemished fruit for the lucrative U.S. market, currently dominated by Mexico. The kit, featuring simple graphics for growers who can’t read or don’t have the time, offers lessons on soil care, fertilizing, and protecting the fruit post-harvest.ASPIRE UVG Research Director Ana Lucia Solano is especially proud of “an immersive, animated, Monopoly-like game that shows farmers the impact of activities like buying fertilizer on their finances,” she says. “If small producers improve their practices, they will have better opportunities to sell their products at a better price, which may allow them to hire more people, teach others more easily, and offer better jobs and working conditions — and maybe this will help prevent farmworkers from having to leave the country.”Solano has just begun a similar program to educate cocoa producers. “The cocoa of Guatemala is wonderful, but the growers, who have great native knowledge, also need to learn new methods so they can transform their chocolate into the kind of high-quality product expected in European markets, with the help of AGEXPORT,” she says.At the UVG Altiplano campus, Mayan instructor Jeremías Morales, who runs the maker space, trained with Amy Smith, an MIT senior lecturer and founding director of the D-Lab, to facilitate creative capacity-building programs. He is working with nearby villages on a solution for the backbreaking labor of planting broccoli seedlings.“Here in Guatemala, small farm holders don’t have technology to do this task,” says Solano. Through design and prototyping workshops, the village and UVG professors have developed an inexpensive device that accomplishes this painful work. “After their next iteration of this technology, we can support the participants in starting a business,” says Solano.Opportunities to invent solutions to commonplace but vexing problems keep popping up. A small village of 100 families has to share two mills to grind corn for their tortillas. It’s a major household expense. With ASPIRE facilitators, a group of women designed a prototype corn mill for home use. “They were skeptical at first, especially when their initial prototypes didn’t work,” reports Solano, “but when they finally succeeded, there was so much excitement about the results, an energy and happiness that you could feel in the room.”Adopting an MIT mindsetThis feeling of empowerment, a pillar of sustainable development, has great meaning for UVG Professor Victor Hugo Ayerdi, an ASPIRE project manager and director of UVG’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.“In college and after I graduated, I thought since everything came from developed countries, and I was in a developing country, I couldn’t invent products.” With that mindset, he says, he went to work in manufacturing and sales for an international tire manufacturing company.But when he arrived at UVG in 2009, Ayerdi heard from mechanical engineering students who craved practical experience designing and building things. Determined to create maker spaces for the three UVG campuses, he took a field trip to MIT, whose motto is “mens et manus” or “mind and hand.”“The trip changed my life,” he says. “The MIT mindset is to believe in yourself, try things, and fail, but assume there has to be a way to do it.” As a result, he says, he realized UVG faculty and students could also use scientific and engineering knowledge to invent products, become entrepreneurs, spark economic growth; they had the capacity. He and other UVG colleagues were primed for change when the ASPIRE opportunity emerged.As some ASPIRE research projects wind down their initial phases, others are just gearing up, including an effort to fashion a water purification system from the shells of farmed shrimp. “We are only just starting to get results from our research,” says Stein. “But we are totally betting on the ASPIRE model because it works at MIT and other places.”The ASPIRE researchers acknowledge they are looking at long timelines to make significant inroads against environmental, health, educational, and economic challenges.“My greatest hope is that ASPIRE will have planted the seed of this innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem model, and that in a decade, UVG will have optimized the different programs, whether in training, entrepreneurship, or research, enough to actively transfer them to other Central American universities,” says Stein.“We would like to be the hub of this network and we want to stay connected, because, in theory, we can work together on problems that we have in common in our region. That would be really cool.” More

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      in Security

      Aspiring to sustainable development

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      In a first for both universities, MIT undergraduates are engaged in research projects at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG), while MIT scholars are collaborating with UVG undergraduates on in-depth field studies in Guatemala.These pilot projects are part of a larger enterprise, called ASPIRE (Achieving Sustainable Partnerships for Innovation, Research, and Entrepreneurship). Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, this five-year, $15-million initiative brings together MIT, UVG, and the Guatemalan Exporters Association to promote sustainable solutions to local development challenges.“This research is yielding insights into our understanding of how to design with and for marginalized people, specifically Indigenous people,” says Elizabeth Hoffecker, co-principal investigator of ASPIRE at MIT and director of the MIT Local Innovation Group.The students’ work is bearing fruit in the form of publications and new products — directly advancing ASPIRE’s goals to create an innovation ecosystem in Guatemala that can be replicated elsewhere in Central and Latin America.For the students, the project offers rewards both tangible and inspirational.“My experience allowed me to find my interest in local innovation and entrepreneurship,” says Ximena Sarmiento García, a fifth-year undergraduate at UVG majoring in anthropology. Supervised by Hoffecker, Sarmiento García says, “I learned how to inform myself, investigate, and find solutions — to become a researcher.”Sandra Youssef, a rising junior in mechanical engineering at MIT, collaborated with UVG researchers and Indigenous farmers to design a mobile cart to improve the harvest yield of snow peas. “It was perfect for me,” she says. “My goal was to use creative, new technologies and science to make a dent in difficult problems.”Remote and effectiveKendra Leith, co-principal investigator of ASPIRE, and associate director for research at MIT D-Lab, shaped the MIT-based undergraduate research opportunities (UROPs) in concert with UVG colleagues. “Although MIT students aren’t currently permitted to travel to Guatemala, I wanted them to have an opportunity to apply their experience and knowledge to address real-world challenges,” says Leith. “The Covid pandemic prepared them and their counterparts at UVG for effective remote collaboration — the UROPs completed remarkably productive research projects over Zoom and met our goals for them.”MIT students participated in some of UVG’s most ambitious ASPIRE research. For instance, Sydney Baller, a rising sophomore in mechanical engineering, joined a team of Indigenous farmers and UVG mechanical engineers investigating the manufacturing process and potential markets for essential oils extracted from thyme, rosemary, and chamomile plants.“Indigenous people have thousands of years working with plant extracts and ancient remedies,” says Baller. “There is promising history there that would be important to follow up with more modern research.”Sandra Youssef used computer-aided design and manufacturing to realize a design created in a hackathon by snow pea farmers. “Our cart had to hold 495 pounds of snow peas without collapsing or overturning, navigate narrow paths on hills, and be simple and inexpensive to assemble,” she says. The snow pea producers have tested two of Youssef’s designs, built by a team at UVG led by Rony Herrarte, a faculty member in the department of mechanical engineering.From waste to filterTwo MIT undergraduates joined one of UVG’s long-standing projects: addressing pollution in Guatemala’s water. The research seeks to use chitosan molecules, extracted from shrimp shells, for bioremediation of heavy metals and other water contaminants. These shells are available in abundance, left as waste by the country’s shrimp industry.Sophomores Ariana Hodlewsky, majoring in chemical engineering, and Paolo Mangiafico, majoring in brain and cognitive sciences, signed on to work with principal investigator and chemistry department instructor Allan Vásquez (UVG) on filtration systems utilizing chitosan.“The team wants to find a cost-effective product rural communities, most at risk from polluted water, can use in homes or in town water systems,” says Mangiafico. “So we have been investigating different technologies for water filtration, and analyzing the Guatemalan and U.S. markets to understand the regulations and opportunities that might affect introduction of a chitosan-based product.”“Our research into how different communities use water and into potential consumers and pitfalls sets the scene for prototypes UVG wants to produce,” says Hodlewsky.Lourdes Figueroa, UVG ASPIRE project manager for technology transfer, found their assistance invaluable.“Paolo and Ariana brought the MIT culture and mindset to the project,” she says. “They wanted to understand not only how the technology works, but the best ways of getting the technology out of the lab to make it useful.”This was an “Aha!” moment, says Figueroa. “The MIT students made a major contribution to both the engineering and marketing sides by emphasizing that you have to think about how to guarantee the market acceptance of the technology while it is still under development.”Innovation ecosystemsUVG’s three campuses have served as incubators for problem-solving innovation and entrepreneurship, in many cases driven by students from Indigenous communities and families. In 2022, Elizabeth Hoffecker, with eight UVG anthropology majors, set out to identify the most vibrant examples of these collaborative initiatives, which ASPIRE seeks to promote and replicate.Hoffecker’s “innovation ecosystem diagnostic” revealed a cluster of activity centered on UVG’s Altiplano campus in the central highlands, which serves Mayan communities. Hoffecker and two of the anthropology students focused on four examples for a series of case studies, which they are currently preparing for submission to a peer-reviewed journal.“The caliber of their work was so good that it became clear to me that we could collaborate on a paper,” says Hoffecker. “It was my first time publishing with undergraduates.”The researchers’ cases included novel production of traditional thread, and creation of a 3D phytoplankton kit that is being used to educate community members about water pollution in Lake Atitlán, a tourist destination that drives the local economy but is increasingly being affected by toxic algae blooms. Hoffecker singles out a project by Indigenous undergraduates who developed play-based teaching tools for introducing basic mathematical concepts.“These connect to local Mayan ways of understanding and offer a novel, hands-on way to strengthen the math teaching skills of local primary school teachers in Indigenous communities,” says Hoffecker. “They created something that addresses a very immediate need in the community — lack of training.Both of Hoffecker’s undergraduate collaborators are writing theses inspired by these case studies.“My time with Elizabeth allowed me to learn how to conduct research from scratch, ask for help, find solutions, and trust myself,” says Sarmiento García. She finds the ASPIRE approach profoundly appealing. “It is not only ethical, but also deeply committed to applying results to the real lives of the people involved.”“This experience has been incredibly positive, validating my own ability to generate knowledge through research, rather than relying only on established authors to back up my arguments,” says Camila del Cid, a fifth-year anthropology student. “This was empowering, especially as a Latin American researcher, because it emphasized that my perspective and contributions are important.”Hoffecker says this pilot run with UVG undergrads produced “high-quality research that can inform evidence-based decision-making on development issues of top regional priority” — a key goal for ASPIRE. Hoffecker plans to “develop a pathway that other UVG students can follow to conduct similar research.”MIT undergraduate research will continue. “Our students’ activities have been very valuable in Guatemala, so much so that the snow pea, chitosan, and essential oils teams would like to continue working with our students this year,” says Leith.  She anticipates a new round of MIT UROPs for next summer.Youssef, for one, is eager to get to work on refining the snow pea cart. “I like the idea of working outside my comfort zone, thinking about things that seem unsolvable and coming up with a solution to fix some aspect of the problem,” she says. More

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      in Environment

      Understanding the impacts of mining on local environments and communities

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      Hydrosocial displacement refers to the idea that resolving water conflict in one area can shift the conflict to a different area. The concept was coined by Scott Odell, a visiting researcher in MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI). As part of ESI’s Program on Mining and the Circular Economy, Odell researches the impacts of extractive industries on local environments and communities, especially in Latin America. He discovered that hydrosocial displacements are often in regions where the mining industry is vying for use of precious water sources that are already stressed due to climate change.

      Odell is working with John Fernández, ESI director and professor in the Department of Architecture, on a project that is examining the converging impacts of climate change, mining, and agriculture in Chile. The work is funded by a seed grant from MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS). Specifically, the project seeks to answer how the expansion of seawater desalination by the mining industry is affecting local populations, and how climate change and mining affect Andean glaciers and the agricultural communities dependent upon them.By working with communities in mining areas, Odell and Fernández are gaining a sense of the burden that mining minerals needed for the clean energy transition is placing on local populations, and the types of conflicts that arise when water sources become polluted or scarce. This work is of particular importance considering over 100 countries pledged a commitment to the clean energy transition at the recent United Nations climate change conference, known as COP28.

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      J-WAFS Community Spotlight on Scott Odell

      Water, humanity’s lifebloodAt the March 2023 United Nations (U.N.) Water Conference in New York, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned “water is in deep trouble. We are draining humanity’s lifeblood through vampiric overconsumption and unsustainable use and evaporating it through global heating.” A quarter of the world’s population already faces “extremely high water stress,” according to the World Resources Institute. In an effort to raise awareness of major water-related issues and inspire action for innovative solutions, the U.N. created World Water Day, observed every year on March 22. This year’s theme is “Water for Peace,” underscoring the fact that even though water is a basic human right and intrinsic to every aspect of life, it is increasingly fought over as supplies dwindle due to problems including drought, overuse, or mismanagement.  

      The “Water for Peace” theme is exemplified in Fernández and Odell’s J-WAFS project, where findings are intended to inform policies to reduce social and environmental harms inflicted on mining communities and their limited water sources.“Despite broad academic engagement with mining and climate change separately, there has been a lack of analysis of the societal implications of the interactions between mining and climate change,” says Odell. “This project is helping to fill the knowledge gap. Results will be summarized in Spanish and English and distributed to interested and relevant parties in Chile, ensuring that the results can be of benefit to those most impacted by these challenges,” he adds.

      The effects of mining for the clean energy transition

      Global climate change is understood to be the most pressing environmental issue facing humanity today. Mitigating climate change requires reducing carbon emissions by transitioning away from conventional energy derived from burning fossil fuels, to more sustainable energy sources like solar and wind power. Because copper is an excellent conductor of electricity, it will be a crucial element in the clean energy transition, in which more solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles will be manufactured. “We are going to see a major increase in demand for copper due to the clean energy transition,” says Odell.

      In 2021, Chile produced 26 percent of the world’s copper, more than twice as much as any other country, Odell explains. Much of Chile’s mining is concentrated in and around the Atacama Desert — the world’s driest desert. Unfortunately, mining requires large amounts of water for a variety of processes, including controlling dust at the extraction site, cooling machinery, and processing and transporting ore.

      Chile is also one of the world’s largest exporters of agricultural products. Farmland is typically situated in the valleys downstream of several mines in the high Andes region, meaning mines get first access to water. This can lead to water conflict between mining operations and agricultural communities. Compounding the problem of mining for greener energy materials to combat climate change, are the very effects of climate change. According to the Chilean government, the country has suffered 13 years of the worst drought in history. While this is detrimental to the mining industry, it is also concerning for those working in agriculture, including the Indigenous Atacameño communities that live closest to the Escondida mine, the largest copper mine in the world. “There was never a lot of water to go around, even before the mine,” Odell says. The addition of Escondida stresses an already strained water system, leaving Atacameño farmers and individuals vulnerable to severe water insecurity.

      What’s more, waste from mining, known as tailings, includes minerals and chemicals that can contaminate water in nearby communities if not properly handled and stored. Odell says the secure storage of tailings is a high priority in earthquake-prone Chile. “If an earthquake were to hit and damage a tailings dam, it could mean toxic materials flowing downstream and destroying farms and communities,” he says.

      Chile’s treasured glaciers are another piece of the mining, climate change, and agricultural puzzle. Caroline White-Nockleby, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society, is working with Odell and Fernández on the J-WAFS project and leading the research specifically on glaciers. “These may not be the picturesque bright blue glaciers that you might think of, but they are, nonetheless, an important source of water downstream,” says White-Nockleby. She goes on to explain that there are a few different ways that mines can impact glaciers.

      In some cases, mining companies have proposed to move or even destroy glaciers to get at the ore beneath. Other impacts include dust from mining that falls on glaciers. White-Nockleby says, “this makes the glaciers a darker color, so, instead of reflecting the sun’s rays away, [the glacier] may absorb the heat and melt faster.” This shows that even when not directly intervening with glaciers, mining activities can cause glacial decline, adding to the threat glaciers already face due to climate change. She also notes that “glaciers are an important water storage facility,” describing how, on an annual cycle, glaciers freeze and melt, allowing runoff that downstream agricultural communities can utilize. If glaciers suddenly melt too quickly, flooding of downstream communities can occur.

      Desalination offers a possible, but imperfect, solution

      Chile’s extensive coastline makes it uniquely positioned to utilize desalination — the removal of salts from seawater — to address water insecurity. Odell says that “over the last decade or so, there’s been billions of dollars of investments in desalination in Chile.”

      As part of his dissertation work at Clark University, Odell found broad optimism in Chile for solving water issues in the mining industry through desalination. Not only was the mining industry committed to building desalination plants, there was also political support, and support from some community members in highland communities near the mines. Yet, despite the optimism and investment, desalinated water was not replacing the use of continental water. He concluded that “desalination can’t solve water conflict if it doesn’t reduce demand for continental water supplies.”

      However, after publishing those results, Odell learned that new estimates at the national level showed that desalination operations had begun to replace the use of continental water after 2018. In two case studies that he currently focuses on — the Escondida and Los Pelambres copper mines — the mining companies have expanded their desalination objectives in order to reduce extraction from key continental sources. This seems to be due to a variety of factors. For one thing, in 2022, Chile’s water code was reformed to prioritize human water consumption and environmental protection of water during scarcity and in the allocation of future rights. It also shortened the granting of water rights from “in perpetuity” to 30 years. Under this new code, it is possible that the mining industry may have expanded its desalination efforts because it viewed continental water resources as less secure, Odell surmises.

      As part of the J-WAFS project, Odell has found that recent reactions have been mixed when it comes to the rapid increase in the use of desalination. He spent over two months doing fieldwork in Chile by conducting interviews with members of government, industry, and civil society at the Escondida, Los Pelambres, and Andina mining sites, as well as in Chile’s capital city, Santiago. He has spoken to local and national government officials, leaders of fishing unions, representatives of mining and desalination companies, and farmers. He observed that in the communities where the new desalination plants are being built, there have been concerns from community members as to whether they will get access to the desalinated water, or if it will belong solely to the mines.

      Interviews at the Escondida and Los Pelambres sites, in which desalination operations are already in place or under construction, indicate acceptance of the presence of desalination plants combined with apprehension about unknown long-term environmental impacts. At a third mining site, Andina, there have been active protests against a desalination project that would supply water to a neighboring mine, Los Bronces. In that community, there has been a blockade of the desalination operation by the fishing federation. “They were blockading that operation for three months because of concerns over what the desalination plant would do to their fishing grounds,” Odell says. And this is where the idea of hydrosocial displacement comes into the picture, he explains. Even though desalination operations are easing tensions with highland agricultural communities, new issues are arising for the communities on the coast. “We can’t just look to desalination to solve our problems if it’s going to create problems somewhere else” Odell advises.

      Within the process of hydrosocial displacement, interacting geographical, technical, economic, and political factors constrain the range of responses to address the water conflict. For example, communities that have more political and financial power tend to be better equipped to solve water conflict than less powerful communities. In addition, hydrosocial concerns usually follow the flow of water downstream, from the highlands to coastal regions. Odell says that this raises the need to look at water from a broader perspective.

      “We tend to address water concerns one by one and that can, in practice, end up being kind of like whack-a-mole,” says Odell. “When we think of the broader hydrological system, water is very much linked, and we need to look across the watershed. We can’t just be looking at the specific community affected now, but who else is affected downstream, and will be affected in the long term. If we do solve a water issue by moving it somewhere else, like moving a tailings dam somewhere else, or building a desalination plant, resources are needed in the receiving community to respond to that,” suggests Odell.

      The company building the desalination plant and the fishing federation ultimately reached an agreement and the desalination operation will be moving forward. But Odell notes, “the protest highlights concern about the impacts of the operation on local livelihoods and environments within the much larger context of industrial pollution in the area.”

      The power of communities

      The protest by the fishing federation is one example of communities coming together to have their voices heard. Recent proposals by mining companies that would affect glaciers and other water sources used by agriculture communities have led to other protests that resulted in new agreements to protect local water supplies and the withdrawal of some of the mining proposals.Odell observes that communities have also gone to the courts to raise their concerns. The Atacameño communities, for example, have drawn attention to over-extraction of water resources by the Escondida mine. “Community members are also pursuing education in these topics so that there’s not such a power imbalance between mining companies and local communities,” Odell remarks. This demonstrates the power local communities can have to protect continental water resources.The political and social landscape of Chile may also be changing in favor of local communities. Beginning with what is now referred to as the Estallido Social (social outburst) over inequality in 2019, Chile has undergone social upheaval that resulted in voters calling for a new constitution. Gabriel Boric, a progressive candidate, whose top priorities include social and environmental issues, was elected president during this period. These trends have brought major attention to issues of economic inequality, environmental harms of mining, and environmental justice, which is putting pressure on the mining industry to make a case for its operations in the country, and to justify the environmental costs of mining.

      What happens after the mine dries up?

      From his fieldwork interviews, Odell has learned that the development of mines within communities can offer benefits. Mining companies typically invest directly in communities through employment, road construction, and sometimes even by building or investing in schools, stadiums, or health clinics. Indirectly, mines can have spillover effects in the economy since miners might support local restaurants, hotels, or stores. But what happens when the mine closes? As one community member Odell interviewed stated: “When the mine is gone, what are we going to have left besides a big hole in the ground?”

      Odell suggests that a multi-pronged approach should be taken to address the future state of water and mining. First, he says we need to have broader conversations about the nature of our consumption and production at domestic and global scales. “Mining is driven indirectly by our consumption of energy and directly by our consumption of everything from our buildings to devices to cars,” Odell states. “We should be looking for ways to moderate our consumption and consume smarter through both policy and practice so that we don’t solve climate change while creating new environmental harms through mining.”One of the main ways we can do this is by advancing the circular economy by recycling metals already in the system, or even in landfills, to help build our new clean energy infrastructure. Even so, the clean energy transition will still require mining, but according to Odell, that mining can be done better. “Mining companies and government need to do a better job of consulting with communities. We need solid plans and financing for mine closures in place from the beginning of mining operations, so that when the mine dries up, there’s the money needed to secure tailings dams and protect the communities who will be there forever,” Odell concludes.Overall, it will take an engaged society — from the mining industry to government officials to individuals — to think critically about the role we each play in our quest for a more sustainable planet, and what that might mean for the most vulnerable populations among us. More

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      in Environment

      Q&A: Steven Gonzalez on Indigenous futurist science fiction

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      Steven Gonzalez is a PhD candidate in the MIT Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS), where he researches the environmental impacts of cloud computing and data centers in the United States, Iceland, and Puerto Rico. He is also an author. Writing under the name E.G. Condé, he recently published his first book, “Sordidez.” It’s described as an “Indigenous futurist science fiction novella set in Puerto Rico and the Yucatán.” Set in the near future, it follows the survivors of civil war and climate disaster led by protagonist Vero Diaz, as they reclaim their Indigenous heritage and heal their lands.

      In this Q&A, Gonzalez describes the book’s themes, its inspirations, and its connection to research, people, and classes at MIT.

      Q: Where did the inspiration for this story come from?

      A: I actually began my time at MIT in September of 2017 when Hurricane María struck. It was a really difficult time for me at the Institute, starting a PhD program. And it’s MIT, so there’s a lot of pressure. I was still kind of navigating the new institutional space and trying to understand my place in it. But I had a lot of people at the Institute who were extremely supportive during that time. I had family members in Puerto Rico who were stranded as a result of the hurricane, who I didn’t hear from for a very long time — who I feared dead. It was a very, very chaotic, confusing, and emotionally turbulent time for me, and also incredibly difficult to be trying to be present in a PhD program for the first semester. Karen Gardner, our administrator, was really incredibly supportive in that. Also the folks at the MIT Association of Puerto Ricans, who hosted fundraisers and linked students with counseling resources. But that trauma of the hurricane and the images that I saw of the aftermath of the hurricane, specifically in the town where my grandmother’s house was where I spent time living as a child during the summers, and to me, it was the greenest place that I have ever known. It looked like somebody had torched the entire landscape. It was traumatizing to see that image. But that kind of seeded the idea of, is there a way to burn without fire? There’s climate change, but there’s also climate terror. And so that was sort of one of the premises of the book explores, geoengineering, but also the flip side of geoengineering and terraforming is, of course, climate terror. And in a way, we could frame what’s been happening with the fossil fuel industry as a form of climate terror, as well. So for me, this all began right when I started at MIT, these dual tracks of thought.

      Q: What do you see as the core themes of your novella?

      A: One major theme is rebuilding. As I said, this story was very influenced by the trauma of Hurricane María and the incredibly inspiring accounts from family members, from people in Puerto Rico that I know, of regular people stepping up when the government — both federal and local — essentially abandoned them. There were so many failures of governance. But people stepped up and did what they could to help each other, to help neighbors. Neighbors cleared trees from roads. They banded together to do this. They pooled resources, to run generators so that everyone in the same street could have food that day. They would share medical supplies like insulin and things that were scarce. This was incredibly inspiring for me. And a huge theme of the book is rebuilding in the aftermath of a fictive hurricane, which I call Teddy, named after President Theodore Roosevelt, where Puerto Rico’s journey began as a U.S. commonwealth or a colony.

      Healing is also a huge theme. Healing in the sense of this story was also somewhat critical of Puerto Rican culture. And it’s refracted through my own experience as a queer person navigating the space of Puerto Rico as a very kind of religious and traditional place and a very complex place at that. The main character, Vero, is a trans man. This is a person who’s transitioned and has felt a lot of alienation and as a result of his gender transition, a lot of people don’t accept him and don’t accept his identity or who he is even though he’s incredibly helpful in this rebuilding effort to the point where he’s, in some ways, a leader, if not the leader. And it becomes, in a way, about healing from the trauma of rejection too. And of course, Vero, but other characters who have gone through various traumas that I think are very much shared across Latin America, the Latin American experiences of assimilation, for instance. Latin America is a very complex place. We have Spanish as our language, that is our kind of lingua franca. But there are many Indigenous languages that people speak that have been not valued or people who speak them or use them are actively punished. And there’s this deep trauma of losing language. And in the case of Puerto Rico, the Indigenous language of the Taínos has been destroyed by colonialism. The story is about rebuilding that language and healing and “becoming.” In some ways, it’s about re-indigenization. And then the last part, as I said, healing, reconstruction, but also transformation and metamorphosis. And becoming Taíno. Again, what does that mean? What does it mean to be an Indigenous Caribbean in the future? And so that’s one of the central themes of the story.

      Q: How does the novella intersect with the work you’re doing as a PhD candidate in HASTS?

      A: My research on cloud computing is very much about climate change. It’s pitched within the context of climate change and understanding how our digital ecosystem contributes to not only global warming, but things like desertification. As a social scientist, that’s what I study. My studies of infrastructure are also directly referenced in the book in a lot of ways. For instance, the now collapsed Arecibo Ionosphere Observatory, where some of my pandemic fieldwork occurred, is a setting in the book. And also, I am an anthropologist. I am Puerto Rican. I draw both from my personal experience and my anthropological lens to make a story that I think is very multicultural and multilingual. It’s set in Puerto Rico, but the other half is set in the Yucatán Peninsula in what we’ll call the former Maya world. And there’s a lot of intersections between the two settings. And that goes back to the deeper Indigenous history. Some people are calling this Indigenous futurism because it references the Taínos, who are the Indigenous people of Puerto Rico, but also the Mayas, and many different Maya groups that are throughout the Yucatán Peninsula, but also present-day Guatemala and Honduras. And the story is about exchange between these two worlds. As someone trained as an anthropologist, it’s a really difficult task to kind of pull that off. And I think that my training has really, really helped me achieve that.

      Q: Are there any examples of ways being among the MIT community while writing this book influenced and, in some ways, made this project possible?

      A: I relied on many of my colleagues for support. There’s some sign language in the book. In Puerto Rico, there’s a big tradition of sign language. There’s a version of American sign language called LSPR that’s only found in Puerto Rico. And that’s something I’ve been aware of ever since I was a kid. But I’m not fluent in sign language or deaf communities and their culture. I got a lot of help from Timothy Loh, who’s in the HASTS program, who was extremely helpful to steer me towards sensitivity readers in the deaf community in his networks. My advisor, Stefan Helmreich, is very much a science fiction person in a lot of ways. His research is on the ocean waves, the history and anthropology of biology. He’s done ethnography in deep-sea submersibles. He’s always kind of thinking in a science fictional lens. And he allowed me, for one of my qualifying exam lists, to mesh science fiction with social theory. And that was also a way that I felt very supported by the Institute. In my coursework, I also took a few science fiction courses in other departments. I worked with Shariann Lewitt, who actually read the first version of the story. I workshopped it in her 21W.759 (Writing Science Fiction) class, and got some really amazing feedback that led to what is now a publication and a dream fulfilled in so many ways. She took me under her wing and really believed in this book. More

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      in Environment

      Preparing Colombia’s cities for life amid changing forests

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      It was an uncharacteristically sunny morning as Marcela Angel MCP ’18, flanked by a drone pilot from the Boston engineering firm AirWorks and a data collection team from the Colombian regional environmental agency Corpoamazonia, climbed a hill in the Andes Mountains of southwest Colombia. The area’s usual mountain cloud cover — one of the major challenges to working with satellite imagery or flying UAVs (unpiloted aerial vehicles, or drones) in the Pacific highlands of the Amazon — would roll through in the hours to come. But for now, her team had chosen a good day to hike out for their first flight. Angel is used to long travel for her research. Raised in Bogotá, she maintained strong ties to Colombia throughout her master’s program in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). Her graduate thesis, examining Bogotá’s management of its public green space, took her regularly back to her hometown, exploring how the city could offer residents more equal access to the clean air, flood protection and day-to-day health and social benefits provided by parks and trees. But the hill she was hiking this morning, outside the remote city of Mocoa, had taken an especially long time to climb: five years building relationships with the community of Mocoa and the Colombian government, recruiting project partners, and navigating the bureaucracy of bringing UAVs into the country. Now, her team finally unwrapped their first, knee-high drone from its tarp and set it carefully in the grass. Under the gathering gray clouds, the buzz of its rotors joined the hum of insects in the trees, and the machine at last took to the skies.

      From Colombia to Cambridge

      “I actually grew up on the last street before the eastern mountains reserve,” Angel says of her childhood in Bogotá. “I’ve always been at that border between city and nature.” This idea, that urban areas are married to the ecosystems around them, would inform Angel’s whole education and career. Before coming to MIT, she studied architecture at Bogotá’s Los Andes University; for her graduation project she proposed a plan to resettle an informal neighborhood on Bogotá’s outskirts to minimize environmental risks to its residents. Among her projects at MIT was an initiative to spatially analyze Bogotá’s tree canopy, providing data for the city to plan a tree-planting program as a strategy to give vulnerable populations in the city more access to nature. And she was naturally intrigued when Colombia’s former minister of environment and sustainable development came to MIT in 2017 to give a guest presentation to the DUSP master’s program. The minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo (now the Colombian ambassador to the United States), introduced the students to the challenges triggered by a recent disaster in the city of Mocoa, on the border between the lowland Amazon and the Andes Mountains. Unprecedented rainstorms had destabilized the surrounding forests, and that April a devastating flood and landslide had killed hundreds of people and destroyed entire neighborhoods. And as climate change contributed to growing rainfall in the region, the risks of more landslide events were rising. Murillo provided useful insights into how city planning decisions had contributed to the crisis. But he also asked for MIT’s support addressing future landslide risks in the area. Angel and Juan Camilo Osorio, a PhD candidate at DUSP, decided to take up the challenge, and in January 2018 and 2019, a research delegation from MIT traveled to Colombia for a newly-created graduate course. Returning once again to Bogotá, Angel interviewed government agencies and nonprofits to understand the state of landslide monitoring and public policy. In Mocoa, further interviews and a series of workshops helped clarify what locals needed most and what MIT could provide: better information on where and when landslides might strike, and a process to increase risk awareness and involve traditionally marginalized groups in decision-making processes around that risk. Over the coming year, a core team formed to put the insights from this trip into action, including Angel, Osorio, postdoc Norhan Bayomi of the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI) and MIT Professor John Fernández, director of the ESI and one of Angel’s mentors at DUSP. After a second visit to Mocoa that brought into the fold Indigenous groups, environmental agencies, and the national army, a plan was formed: MIT would partner with Corpoamazonia and build a network of community researchers to deploy and test drone technology and machine learning models to monitor the mountain forests for both landslide risks and signs of forest health, while implementing a participatory planning process with residents. “What our projects aim to do is give the communities new tools to continue protecting and restoring the forest,” says Angel, “and support new and inclusive development models, even in the face of new challenges.”

      Lifelines for the climate

      The goal of tropical forest conservation is an urgent one. As forests are cut down, their trees and soils release carbon they have stored over millennia, adding huge amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Deforestation, mainly in the tropics, is now estimated to contribute more to climate change than any country besides the United States and China — and once lost, tropical forests are exceptionally hard to restore. “Tropical forests should be a natural way to slow and reverse climate change,” says Angel. “And they can be. But today, we are reaching critical tipping points where it is just the opposite.” This became the motivating force for Angel’s career after her graduation. In 2019, Fernández invited her to join the ESI and lead a new Natural Climate Solutions Program, with the Mocoa project as its first centerpiece. She quickly mobilized the partners to raise funding for the project from the Global Environmental Facility and the CAF Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, and recruited additional partners including MIT Lincoln Laboratories, AirWorks, and the Pratt Institute, where Osorio had become an assistant professor. She hired machine learning specialists from MIT to begin design on UAVs’ data processing, and helped assemble a local research network in Mocoa to increase risk awareness, promote community participation, and better understand what information city officials and community groups needed for city planning and conservation. “This is the amazing thing about MIT,” she says. “When you study a problem here, you’re not just playing in a sandbox. Everyone I’ve worked with is motivated by the complexity of the technical challenge and the opportunity for meaningful engagement in Mocoa, and hopefully in many more places besides.” At the same time, Angel created opportunities for the next generation of MIT graduate students to follow in her footsteps. With Fernández and Bayomi, she created a new course, 4.S23 (Biodiversity and Cities), in which students traveled to Colombia to develop urban planning strategies for the cities of Quidbó and Leticia, located in carbon-rich and biodiverse areas. The course has been taught twice, with Professor Gabriella Carolini joining the teaching team for spring 2023, and has already led to a student report to city officials in Quidbó recommending ways to enhance biodiversity and adapt to climate change as the city grows, a multi-stakeholder partnership to train local youth and implement a citizen-led biodiversity survey, and a seed grant from the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium to begin providing both cities detailed data on their tree cover derived from satellite images. “These regions face serious threats, especially on a warming planet, but many of the solutions for climate change, biodiversity conservation, and environmental equity in the region go hand-in-hand,” Angel says. “When you design a city to use fewer resources, to contribute less to climate change, it also causes less pressure on the environment around it. When you design a city for equity and quality of life, you’re giving attention to its green spaces and what they can provide for people and as habitat for other species. When you protect and restore forests, you’re protecting local bioeconomies.”

      Bringing the data home

      Meanwhile, in Mocoa, Angel’s original vision is taking flight. With the team’s test flights behind them, they can now begin creating digital models of the surrounding area. Regular drone flights and soil samples will fill in changing information about trees, water, and local geology, allowing the project’s machine learning specialists to identify warning signs for future landslides and extreme weather events. More importantly, there is now an established network of local community researchers and leaders ready to make use of this information. With feedback from their Mocoan partners, Angel’s team has built a prototype of the online platform they will use to share their UAV data; they’re now letting Mocoa residents take it for a test drive and suggest how it can be made more user-friendly. Her visit this January also paved the way for new projects that will tie the Environmental Solutions Initiative more tightly to Mocoa. With her project partners, Angel is exploring developing a course to teach local students how to use UAVs like the ones her team is flying. She is also considering expanded efforts to collect the kind of informal knowledge of Mocoa, on the local ecology and culture, that people everywhere use in making their city planning and emergency response decisions, but that is rarely codified and included in scientific risk analyses. It’s a great deal of work to offer this one community the tools to adapt successfully to climate change. But even with all the robotics and machine learning models in the world, this close, slow-unfolding engagement, grounded in trust and community inclusion, is what it takes to truly prepare people to confront profound changes in their city and environment. “Protecting natural carbon sinks is a global socio-environmental challenge, and one where it is not enough for MIT to just contribute to the knowledge base or develop a new technology,” says Angel. “But we can help mobilize decision-makers and nontraditional actors, and design more inclusive and technology-enhanced processes, to make this easier for the people who have lifelong stakes in these ecosystems. That is the vision.” More

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      in Energy

      Building better batteries, faster

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      To help combat climate change, many car manufacturers are racing to add more electric vehicles in their lineups. But to convince prospective buyers, manufacturers need to improve how far these cars can go on a single charge. One of their main challenges? Figuring out how to make extremely powerful but lightweight batteries.

      Typically, however, it takes decades for scientists to thoroughly test new battery materials, says Pablo Leon, an MIT graduate student in materials science. To accelerate this process, Leon is developing a machine-learning tool for scientists to automate one of the most time-consuming, yet key, steps in evaluating battery materials.

      With his tool in hand, Leon plans to help search for new materials to enable the development of powerful and lightweight batteries. Such batteries would not only improve the range of EVs, but they could also unlock potential in other high-power systems, such as solar energy systems that continuously deliver power, even at night.

      From a young age, Leon knew he wanted to pursue a PhD, hoping to one day become a professor of engineering, like his father. Growing up in College Station, Texas, home to Texas A&M University, where his father worked, many of Leon’s friends also had parents who were professors or affiliated with the university. Meanwhile, his mom worked outside the university, as a family counselor in a neighboring city.

      In college, Leon followed in his father’s and older brother’s footsteps to become a mechanical engineer, earning his bachelor’s degree at Texas A&M. There, he learned how to model the behaviors of mechanical systems, such as a metal spring’s stiffness. But he wanted to delve deeper, down to the level of atoms, to understand exactly where these behaviors come from.

      So, when Leon applied to graduate school at MIT, he switched fields to materials science, hoping to satisfy his curiosity. But the transition to a different field was “a really hard process,” Leon says, as he rushed to catch up to his peers.

      To help with the transition, Leon sought out a congenial research advisor and found one in Rafael Gómez-Bombarelli, an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE). “Because he’s from Spain and my parents are Peruvian, there’s a cultural ease with the way we talk,” Leon says. According to Gómez-Bombarelli, sometimes the two of them even discuss research in Spanish — a “rare treat.” That connection has empowered Leon to freely brainstorm ideas or talk through concerns with his advisor, enabling him to make significant progress in his research.

      Leveraging machine learning to research battery materials

      Scientists investigating new battery materials generally use computer simulations to understand how different combinations of materials perform. These simulations act as virtual microscopes for batteries, zooming in to see how materials interact at an atomic level. With these details, scientists can understand why certain combinations do better, guiding their search for high-performing materials.

      But building accurate computer simulations is extremely time-intensive, taking years and sometimes even decades. “You need to know how every atom interacts with every other atom in your system,” Leon says. To create a computer model of these interactions, scientists first make a rough guess at a model using complex quantum mechanics calculations. They then compare the model with results from real-life experiments, manually tweaking different parts of the model, including the distances between atoms and the strength of chemical bonds, until the simulation matches real life.

      With well-studied battery materials, the simulation process is somewhat easier. Scientists can buy simulation software that includes pre-made models, Leon says, but these models often have errors and still require additional tweaking.

      To build accurate computer models more quickly, Leon is developing a machine-learning-based tool that can efficiently guide the trial-and-error process. “The hope with our machine learning framework is to not have to rely on proprietary models or do any hand-tuning,” he says. Leon has verified that for well-studied materials, his tool is as accurate as the manual method for building models.

      With this system, scientists will have a single, standardized approach for building accurate models in lieu of the patchwork of approaches currently in place, Leon says.

      Leon’s tool comes at an opportune time, when many scientists are investigating a new paradigm of batteries: solid-state batteries. Compared to traditional batteries, which contain liquid electrolytes, solid-state batteries are safer, lighter, and easier to manufacture. But creating versions of these batteries that are powerful enough for EVs or renewable energy storage is challenging.

      This is largely because in battery chemistry, ions dislike flowing through solids and instead prefer liquids, in which atoms are spaced further apart. Still, scientists believe that with the right combination of materials, solid-state batteries can provide enough electricity for high-power systems, such as EVs. 

      Leon plans to use his machine-learning tool to help look for good solid-state battery materials more quickly. After he finds some powerful candidates in simulations, he’ll work with other scientists to test out the new materials in real-world experiments.

      Helping students navigate graduate school

      To get to where he is today, doing exciting and impactful research, Leon credits his community of family and mentors. Because of his upbringing, Leon knew early on which steps he would need to take to get into graduate school and work toward becoming a professor. And he appreciates the privilege of his position, even more so as a Peruvian American, given that many Latino students are less likely to have access to the same resources. “I understand the academic pipeline in a way that I think a lot of minority groups in academia don’t,” he says.

      Now, Leon is helping prospective graduate students from underrepresented backgrounds navigate the pipeline through the DMSE Application Assistance Program. Each fall, he mentors applicants for the DMSE PhD program at MIT, providing feedback on their applications and resumes. The assistance program is student-run and separate from the admissions process.

      Knowing firsthand how invaluable mentorship is from his relationship with his advisor, Leon is also heavily involved in mentoring junior PhD students in his department. This past year, he served as the academic chair on his department’s graduate student organization, the Graduate Materials Council. With MIT still experiencing disruptions from Covid-19, Leon noticed a problem with student cohesiveness. “I realized that traditional [informal] modes of communication across [incoming class] years had been cut off,” he says, making it harder for junior students to get advice from their senior peers. “They didn’t have any community to fall back on.”

      To help fix this problem, Leon served as a go-to mentor for many junior students. He helped second-year PhD students prepare for their doctoral qualification exam, an often-stressful rite of passage. He also hosted seminars for first-year students to teach them how to make the most of their classes and help them acclimate to the department’s fast-paced classes. For fun, Leon organized an axe-throwing event to further facilitate student cameraderie.

      Leon’s efforts were met with success. Now, “newer students are building back the community,” he says, “so I feel like I can take a step back” from being academic chair. He will instead continue mentoring junior students through other programs within the department. He also plans to extend his community-building efforts among faculty and students, facilitating opportunities for students to find good mentors and work on impactful research. With these efforts, Leon hopes to help others along the academic pipeline that he’s become familiar with, journeying together over their PhDs. More