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    Shaping the future through systems thinking

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    Long before she stepped into a lab, Ananda Santos Figueiredo was stargazing in Brazil, captivated by the cosmos and feeding her curiosity of science through pop culture, books, and the internet. She was drawn to astrophysics for its blend of visual wonder and mathematics.Even as a child, Santos sensed her aspirations reaching beyond the boundaries of her hometown. “I’ve always been drawn to STEM,” she says. “I had this persistent feeling that I was meant to go somewhere else to learn more, explore, and do more.”Her parents saw their daughter’s ambitions as an opportunity to create a better future. The summer before her sophomore year of high school, her family moved from Brazil to Florida.  She recalls that moment as “a big leap of faith in something bigger and we had no idea how it would turn out.” She was certain of one thing: She wanted an education that was both technically rigorous and deeply expansive, one that would allow her to pursue all her passions.At MIT, she found exactly what she was seeking in a community and curriculum that matched her curiosity and ambition. “I’ve always associated MIT with something new and exciting that was grasping towards the very best we can achieve as humans,” Santos says, emphasizing the use of technology and science to significantly impact society. “It’s a place where people aren’t afraid to dream big and work hard to make it a reality.”As a first-generation college student, she carried the weight of financial stress and the uncertainty that comes with being the first in her family to navigate college in the U.S. But she found a sense of belonging in the MIT community. “Being a first-generation student helped me grow,” she says. “It inspired me to seek out opportunities and help support others too.”She channeled that energy into student government roles for the undergraduate residence halls. Through Dormitory Council (DormCon) and her dormitory, Simmons Hall, her voice could help shape life on campus. She began serving as reservations chair for her dormitory but ended up becoming president of the dormitory before being elected dining chair and vice president for DormCon. She’s worked to improve dining hall operations and has planned major community events like Simmons Hall’s 20th anniversary and DormCon’s inaugural Field Day.Now, a senior about to earn her bachelor’s degree, Santos says MIT’s motto, “mens et manus” — “mind and hand” — has deeply resonated with her from the start. “Learning here goes far beyond the classroom,” she says. “I’ve been surrounded by people who are passionate and purposeful. That energy is infectious. It’s changed how I see myself and what I believe is possible.”Charting her own courseInitially a physics major, Santos’ academic path took a turn after a transformative internship with the World Bank’s data science lab between her sophomore and junior years. There, she used her coding skills to study the impacts of heat waves in the Philippines. The experience opened her eyes to the role technology and data can play in improving lives and broadened her view of what a STEM career could look like.“I realized I didn’t want to just study the universe — I wanted to change it,” she says. “I wanted to join systems thinking with my interest in the humanities, to build a better world for people and communities.”When MIT launched a new major in climate system science and engineering (Course 1-12) in 2023, Santos was the first student to declare it. The interdisciplinary structure of the program, blending climate science, engineering, energy systems, and policy, gave her a framework to connect her technical skills to real-world sustainability challenges.She tailored her coursework to align with her passions and career goals, applying her physics background (now her minor) to understand problems in climate, energy, and sustainable systems. “One of the most powerful things about the major is the breadth,” she says. “Even classes that aren’t my primary focus have expanded how I think.”Hands-on fieldwork has been a cornerstone of her learning. During MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP), she studied climate impacts in Hawai’i in the IAP Course 1.091 (Traveling Research Environmental Experiences, or TREX). This year, she studied the design of sustainable polymer systems in Course 1.096/10.496 (Design of Sustainable Polymer Systems) under MISTI’s Global Classroom program. The IAP class brought her to the middle of the Amazon Rainforest to see what the future of plastic production could look like with products from the Amazon. “That experience was incredibly eye opening,” she explains. “It helped me build a bridge between my own background and the kind of problems that I want to solve in the future.”Santos also found enjoyment beyond labs and lectures. A member of the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble since her first year, she took to the stage in her final spring production of “Henry V,” performing as both the Chorus and Kate. “The ensemble’s collaborative spirit and the way it brings centuries-old texts to life has been transformative,” she adds.Her passion for the arts also intersected with her interest in the MIT Lecture Series Committee. She helped host a special screening of the film “Sing Sing,” in collaboration with MIT’s Educational Justice Institute (TEJI). That connection led her to enroll in a TEJI course, illustrating the surprising and meaningful ways that different parts of MIT’s ecosystem overlap. “It’s one of the beautiful things about MIT,” she says. “You stumble into experiences that deeply change you.”Throughout her time at MIT, the community of passionate, sustainability-focused individuals has been a major source of inspiration. She’s been actively involved with the MIT Office of Sustainability’s decarbonization initiatives and participated in the Climate and Sustainability Scholars Program.Santos acknowledges that working in sustainability can sometimes feel overwhelming. “Tackling the challenges of sustainability can be discouraging,” she says. “The urgency to create meaningful change in a short period of time can be intimidating. But being surrounded by people who are actively working on it is so much better than not working on it at all.”Looking ahead, she plans to pursue graduate studies in technology and policy, with aspirations to shape sustainable development, whether through academia, international organizations, or diplomacy.“The most fulfilling moments I’ve had at MIT are when I’m working on hard problems while also reflecting on who I want to be, what kind of future I want to help create, and how we can be better and kinder to each other,” she says. “That’s what excites me — solving real problems that matter.” More

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      MIT students turn vision to reality

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

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      Building for Ukraine: A hackathon with a mission

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      “No cash prizes. But our friends in Kiev are calling in, and they’ll probably say thanks,”​ was the the tagline that drew students and tech professionals to join MIT-Ukraine’s first-ever hackathon this past January.The hackathon was co-sponsored by MIT-Ukraine and Mission Innovation X and was shaped by the efforts of MIT alumni from across the world. It was led by Hosea Siu ’14, SM ’15, PhD ’18, a seasoned hackathon organizer and AI researcher, in collaboration with Phil Tinn MCP ’16, a research engineer now based at SINTEF [Foundation for Industrial and Technical Research] in Norway. The program was designed to prioritize tangible impact: “In a typical hackathon, you might get a weekend of sleepless nights and some flashy but mostly useless prototypes. Here, we stretched it out over four weeks, and we’re expecting real, meaningful outcomes,”​ says Siu, the hackathon director.One week of training, three weeks of project developmentIn the first week, participants attended lectures with leading experts on key challenges Ukraine currently faces, from a talk on mine contamination with Andrew Heafitz PhD ’05 to a briefing on disinformation with Nina Lutz SM ’21. Then, participants formed teams to develop projects addressing these challenges, with mentorship from top MIT specialists including Phil Tinn (AI & defense), Svetlana Boriskina (energy resilience), and Gene Keselman (defense innovation and dual-use technology).“I really liked the solid structure they gave us — walking us through exactly what’s happening in Ukraine, and potential solutions,”​ says Timur Gray, a first-year in engineering at Olin College.The five final projects spanned demining, drone technology, AI and disinformation, education for Ukraine, and energy resilience. Supporting demining effortsWith current levels of technology, it is estimated that it will take 757 years to fully de-mine Ukraine. Students Timur Gray and Misha Donchenko, who is a sophomore mathematics major at MIT, came together to research the latest developments in demining technology and strategize how students could most effectively support innovations.The team has made connections with the Ukrainian Association of Humanitarian Demining and the HALO Trust to explore opportunities for MIT students to directly support demining efforts in Ukraine. They also explored project ideas to work on tools for civilians to report on mine locations, and the team created a demo web page рішучість757, which includes an interactive database mapping mine locations.“Being able to apply my skills to something that has a real-world impact — that’s been the best part of this hackathon,” says Donchenko.Innovating drone productionDrone technology has been one of Ukraine’s most critical advantages on the battlefield — but government bureaucracy threatens to slow innovation, according to Oleh Deineka, who made this challenge the focus of his hackathon project. Joining remotely from Ukraine, where he studies post-war recovery at the Kyiv School of Economics, Deineka brought invaluable firsthand insight from living and working on the ground, enriching the experience for all participants. Prior to the hackathon, he had already begun developing UxS.AGENCY, a secure digital platform to connect drone developers with independent funders, with the aim of ensuring that the speed of innovations in drone technology is not curbed. He notes that Ukrainian arms manufacturers have the capacity to produce three times more weapons and military equipment than the Ukrainian government can afford to purchase. Promoting private sector development of drone production could help solve this. The platform Deineka is working on also aims to reduce the risk of corruption, allowing developers to work directly with funders, bypassing any bureaucratic interference.Deineka is also working with MIT’s Keselman, who gave a talk during the hackathon on dual-use technology — the idea that military innovations should also have civilian applications. Deineka emphasized that developing such dual-use technology in Ukraine could help not only to win the war, but also to create sustainable civilian applications, ensuring that Ukraine’s 10,000 trained drone operators have jobs after it ends. He pointed to future applications such as drone-based urban infrastructure monitoring, precision agriculture, and even personal security — like a small drone following a child with asthma, allowing parents to monitor their well-being in real time​.“This hackathon has connected me with MIT’s top minds in innovation and security. Being invited to collaborate with Gene Keselman and others has been an incredible opportunity,” says Deineka.Disinformation dynamics on WikipediaWikipedia has long been a battleground for Russian disinformation, from the profiling of artists like Kazimir Malevich to the framing of historical events. The hackathon’s disinformation team worked together on a machine learning-based tool to detect biased edits. They found that Wikipedia’s moderation system is susceptible to reinforcing systemic bias, particularly when it comes to history. Their project laid the groundwork for a potential student-led initiative to track disinformation, propose corrections, and develop tools to improve fact-checking on Wikipedia.Education for Ukraine’s futureRussia’s war against Ukraine is having a detrimental impact on education, with constant air raid sirens disrupting classes, and over 2,000 Ukrainian schools damaged or destroyed. The STEM education team focused on what they could do to support Ukrainian students. They developed a plan for adapting MIT’s Beaver Works Summer Institute in STEM for students still living in Ukraine, or potentially for Ukrainians currently displaced to neighboring countries. “I didn’t realize how many schools had been destroyed and how deeply that could impact kids’ futures. You hear about the war, but the hackathon made it real in a way I hadn’t thought about before,” says Catherine Tang, a senior in electrical engineering and computer science.Vlad Duda, founder of Nomad AI, also contributed to the education track of the hackathon with a focus on language accessibility and learning support. One of the prototypes he presented, MOVA, is a Chrome extension that uses AI to translate online resources into Ukrainian — an especially valuable tool for high school students in Ukraine, who often lack the English proficiency needed to engage with complex academic content. Duda also developed OpenBookLM, an AI-powered tool that helps students turn notes into audio and personalized study guides, similar in concept to Google’s NotebookLM but designed to be open-source and adaptable to different languages and educational contexts.Energy resilience The energy resilience team worked on exploring cheaper, more reliable heating and cooling technologies so Ukrainian homes can be less dependent on traditional energy grids that are susceptible to Russian attacks.The team tested polymer filaments that generate heat when stretched and cool when released, which could potentially offer low-cost, durable home heating solutions in Ukraine. Their work focused on finding the most effective braid structure to enhance durability and efficiency.From hackathon to realityUnlike most hackathons, where projects end when the event does, MIT-Ukraine’s goal is to ensure these ideas don’t stop here. All the projects developed during the hackathon will be considered as potential avenues for MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) and MISTI Ukraine summer internship programs. Last year, 15 students worked on UROP and MISTI projects for Ukraine, contributing in areas such as STEM education and reconstruction in Ukraine. With the many ideas generated during the hackathon, MIT-Ukraine is committed to expanding opportunities for student-led projects and collaborations in the coming year.”The MIT-Ukraine program is about learning by doing, and making an impact beyond MIT’s campus. This hackathon proved that students, researchers, and professionals can work together to develop solutions that matter — and Ukraine’s urgent challenges demand nothing less,” says Elizabeth Wood, Ford International Professor of History at MIT and the faculty director of the MIT-Ukraine Program at the Center for International Studies.  More

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      Developing materials for stellar performance in fusion power plants

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      When Zoe Fisher was in fourth grade, her art teacher asked her to draw her vision of a dream job on paper. At the time, those goals changed like the flavor of the week in an ice cream shop — “zookeeper” featured prominently for a while — but Zoe immediately knew what she wanted to put down: a mad scientist.When Fisher stumbled upon the drawing in her parents’ Chicago home recently, it felt serendipitous because, by all measures, she has realized that childhood dream. The second-year doctoral student at MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) is studying materials for fusion power plants at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) under the advisement of Michael Short, associate professor at NSE. Dennis Whyte, Hitachi America Professor of Engineering at NSE, serves as co-advisor.On track to an MIT educationGrowing up in Chicago, Fisher had heard her parents remarking on her reasoning abilities. When she was barely a preschooler she argued that she couldn’t have been found in a purple speckled egg, as her parents claimed they had done.Fisher didn’t put together just how much she had gravitated toward science until a high school physics teacher encouraged her to apply to MIT. Passionate about both the arts and sciences, she initially worried that pursuing science would be very rigid, without room for creativity. But she knows now that exploring solutions to problems requires plenty of creative thinking.It was a visit to MIT through the Weekend Immersion in Science and Engineering (WISE) that truly opened her eyes to the potential of an MIT education. “It just seemed like the undergraduate experience here is where you can be very unapologetically yourself. There’s no fronting something you don’t want to be like. There’s so much authenticity compared to most other colleges I looked at,” Fisher says. Once admitted, Campus Preview Weekend confirmed that she belonged. “We got to be silly and weird — a version of the Mafia game was a hit — and I was like, ‘These are my people,’” Fisher laughs.Pursuing fusion at NSEBefore she officially started as a first-year in 2018, Fisher enrolled in the Freshman Pre-Orientation Program (FPOP), which starts a week before orientation starts. Each FPOP zooms into one field. “I’d applied to the nuclear one simply because it sounded cool and I didn’t know anything about it,” Fisher says. She was intrigued right away. “They really got me with that ‘star in a bottle’ line,” she laughs. (The quest for commercial fusion is to create the energy equivalent of a star in a bottle). Excited by a talk by Zachary Hartwig, Robert N. Noyce Career Development Professor at NSE, Fisher asked if she could work on fusion as an undergraduate as part of an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) project. She started with modeling solders for power plants and was hooked. When Fisher requested more experimental work, Hartwig put her in touch with Research Scientist David Fischer at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). Fisher eventually moved on to explore superconductors, which eventually morphed into research for her master’s thesis.For her doctoral research, Fisher is extending her master’s work to explore defects in ceramics, specifically in alumina (aluminum oxide). Sapphire coatings are the single-crystal equivalent of alumina, an insulator being explored for use in fusion power plants. “I eventually want to figure out what types of charge defects form in ceramics during radiation damage so we can ultimately engineer radiation-resistant sapphire,” Fisher says.When you introduce a material in a fusion power plant, stray high-energy neutrons born from the plasma can collide and fundamentally reorder the lattice, which is likely to change a range of thermal, electrical, and structural properties. “Think of a scaffolding outside a building, with each one of those joints as a different atom that holds your material in place. If you go in and you pull a joint out, there’s a chance that you pulled out a joint that wasn’t structurally sound, in which case everything would be fine. But there’s also a chance that you pull a joint out and everything alters. And [such unpredictability] is a problem,” Fisher says. “We need to be able to account for exactly how these neutrons are going to alter the lattice property,” Fisher says, and it’s one of the topics her research explores.The studies, in turn, can function as a jumping-off point for irradiating superconductors. The goals are two-fold: “I want to figure out how I can make an industry-usable ceramic you can use to insulate the inside of a fusion power plant, and then also figure out if I can take this information that I’m getting with ceramics and make it superconductor-relevant,” Fisher says. “Superconductors are the electromagnets we will use to contain the plasma inside fusion power plants. However, they prove pretty difficult to study. Since they are also ceramic, you can draw a lot of parallels between alumina and yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO), the specific superconductor we use,” she adds. Fisher is also excited about the many experiments she performs using a particle accelerator, one of which involves measuring exactly how surface thermal properties change during radiation.Sailing new pathsIt’s not just her research that Fisher loves. As an undergrad, and during her master’s, she was on the varsity sailing team. “I worked my way into sailing with literal Olympians, I did not see that coming,” she says. Fisher participates in Chicago’s Race to Mackinac and the Melges 15 Series every chance she gets. Of all the types of boats she has sailed, she prefers dinghy sailing the most. “It’s more physical, you have to throw yourself around a lot and there’s this immediate cause and effect, which I like,” Fisher says. She also teaches sailing lessons in the summer at MIT’s Sailing Pavilion — you can find her on a small motorboat, issuing orders through a speaker.Teaching has figured prominently throughout Fisher’s time at MIT. Through MISTI, Fisher has taught high school classes in Germany and a radiation and materials class in Armenia in her senior year. She was delighted by the food and culture in Armenia and by how excited people were to learn new ideas. Her love of teaching continues, as she has reached out to high schools in the Boston area. “I like talking to groups and getting them excited about fusion, or even maybe just the concept of attending graduate school,” Fisher says, adding that teaching the ropes of an experiment one-on-one is “one of the most rewarding things.”She also learned the value of resilience and quick thinking on various other MISTI trips. Despite her love of travel, Fisher has had a few harrowing experiences with tough situations and plans falling through at the last minute. It’s when she tells herself, “Well, the only thing that you’re gonna do is you’re gonna keep doing what you wanted to do.”That eyes-on-the-prize focus has stood Fisher in good stead, and continues to serve her well in her research today. More

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      Optimizing nuclear fuels for next-generation reactors

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      In 2010, when Ericmoore Jossou was attending college in northern Nigeria, the lights would flicker in and out all day, sometimes lasting only for a couple of hours at a time. The frustrating experience reaffirmed Jossou’s realization that the country’s sporadic energy supply was a problem. It was the beginning of his path toward nuclear engineering.

      Because of the energy crisis, “I told myself I was going to find myself in a career that allows me to develop energy technologies that can easily be scaled to meet the energy needs of the world, including my own country,” says Jossou, an assistant professor in a shared position between the departments of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), where is the John Clark Hardwick (1986) Professor, and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

      Today, Jossou uses computer simulations for rational materials design, AI-aided purposeful development of cladding materials and fuels for next-generation nuclear reactors. As one of the shared faculty hires between the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and departments across MIT, his appointment recognizes his commitment to computing for climate and the environment.

      A well-rounded education in Nigeria

      Growing up in Lagos, Jossou knew education was about more than just bookish knowledge, so he was eager to travel and experience other cultures. He would start in his own backyard by traveling across the Niger river and enrolling in Ahmadu Bello University in northern Nigeria. Moving from the south was a cultural education with a different language and different foods. It was here that Jossou got to try and love tuwo shinkafa, a northern Nigerian rice-based specialty, for the first time.

      After his undergraduate studies, armed with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, Jossou was among a small cohort selected for a specialty master’s training program funded by the World Bank Institute and African Development Bank. The program at the African University of Science and Technology in Abuja, Nigeria, is a pan-African venture dedicated to nurturing homegrown science talent on the continent. Visiting professors from around the world taught intensive three-week courses, an experience which felt like drinking from a fire hose. The program widened Jossou’s views and he set his sights on a doctoral program with an emphasis on clean energy systems.

      A pivot to nuclear science

      While in Nigeria, Jossou learned of Professor Jerzy Szpunar at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, who was looking for a student researcher to explore fuels and alloys for nuclear reactors. Before then, Jossou was lukewarm on nuclear energy, but the research sounded fascinating. The Fukushima, Japan, incident was recently in the rearview mirror and Jossou remembered his early determination to address his own country’s energy crisis. He was sold on the idea and graduated with a doctoral degree from the University of Saskatchewan on an international dean’s scholarship.

      Jossou’s postdoctoral work registered a brief stint at Brookhaven National Laboratory as staff scientist. He leaped at the opportunity to join MIT NSE as a way of realizing his research interest and teaching future engineers. “I would really like to conduct cutting-edge research in nuclear materials design and to pass on my knowledge to the next generation of scientists and engineers and there’s no better place to do that than at MIT,” Jossou says.

      Merging material science and computational modeling

      Jossou’s doctoral work on designing nuclear fuels for next-generation reactors forms the basis of research his lab is pursuing at MIT NSE. Nuclear reactors that were built in the 1950s and ’60s are getting a makeover in terms of improved accident tolerance. Reactors are not confined to one kind, either: We have micro reactors and are now considering ones using metallic nuclear fuels, Jossou points out. The diversity of options is enough to keep researchers busy testing materials fit for cladding, the lining that prevents corrosion of the fuel and release of radioactive fission products into the surrounding reactor coolant.

      The team is also investigating fuels that improve burn-up efficiencies, so they can last longer in the reactor. An intriguing approach has been to immobilize the gas bubbles that arise from the fission process, so they don’t grow and degrade the fuel.

      Since joining MIT in July 2023, Jossou is setting up a lab that optimizes the composition of accident-tolerant nuclear fuels. He is leaning on his materials science background and looping computer simulations and artificial intelligence in the mix.

      Computer simulations allow the researchers to narrow down the potential field of candidates, optimized for specific parameters, so they can synthesize only the most promising candidates in the lab. And AI’s predictive capabilities guide researchers on which materials composition to consider next. “We no longer depend on serendipity to choose our materials, our lab is based on rational materials design,” Jossou says, “we can rapidly design advanced nuclear fuels.”

      Advancing energy causes in Africa

      Now that he is at MIT, Jossou admits the view from the outside is different. He now harbors a different perspective on what Africa needs to address some of its challenges. “The starting point to solve our problems is not money; it needs to start with ideas,” he says, “we need to find highly skilled people who can actually solve problems.” That job involves adding economic value to the rich arrays of raw materials that the continent is blessed with. It frustrates Jossou that Niger, a country rich in raw material for uranium, has no nuclear reactors of its own. It ships most of its ore to France. “The path forward is to find a way to refine these materials in Africa and to be able to power the industries on that continent as well,” Jossou says.

      Jossou is determined to do his part to eliminate these roadblocks.

      Anchored in mentorship, Jossou’s solution aims to train talent from Africa in his own lab. He has applied for a MIT Global Experiences MISTI grant to facilitate travel and research studies for Ghanaian scientists. “The goal is to conduct research in our facility and perhaps add value to indigenous materials,” Jossou says.

      Adding value has been a consistent theme of Jossou’s career. He remembers wanting to become a neurosurgeon after reading “Gifted Hands,” moved by the personal story of the author, Ben Carson. As Jossou grew older, however, he realized that becoming a doctor wasn’t necessarily what he wanted. Instead, he was looking to add value. “What I wanted was really to take on a career that allows me to solve a societal problem.” The societal problem of clean and safe energy for all is precisely what Jossou is working on today. More

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      Reflecting on COP28 — and humanity’s progress toward meeting global climate goals

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      With 85,000 delegates, the 2023 United Nations climate change conference, known as COP28, was the largest U.N. climate conference in history. It was held at the end of the hottest year in recorded history. And after 12 days of negotiations, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, it produced a decision that included, for the first time, language calling for “transitioning away from fossil fuels,” though it stopped short of calling for their complete phase-out.

      U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said the outcome in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, COP28’s host city, signaled “the beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era. 

      COP stands for “conference of the parties” to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, held this year for the 28th time. Through the negotiations — and the immense conference and expo that takes place alongside them — a delegation of faculty, students, and staff from MIT was in Dubai to observe the negotiations, present new climate technologies, speak on panels, network, and conduct research.

      On Jan. 17, the MIT Center for International Studies (CIS) hosted a panel discussion with MIT delegates who shared their reflections on the experience. Asking what’s going on at COP is “like saying, ‘What’s going on in the city of Boston today?’” quipped Evan Lieberman, the Total Professor of Political Science and Contemporary Africa, director of CIS, and faculty director of MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI). “The value added that all of us can provide for the MIT community is [to share] what we saw firsthand and how we experienced it.” 

      Phase-out, phase down, transition away?

      In the first week of COP28, over 100 countries issued a joint statement that included a call for “the global phase out of unabated fossil fuels.” The question of whether the COP28 decision — dubbed the “UAE Consensus” — would include this phase-out language animated much of the discussion in the days and weeks leading up to COP28. 

      Ultimately, the decision called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.” It also called for “accelerating efforts towards the phase down of unabated coal power,” referring to the combustion of coal without efforts to capture and store its emissions.

      In Dubai to observe the negotiations, graduate student Alessandra Fabbri said she was “confronted” by the degree to which semantic differences could impose significant ramifications — for example, when negotiators referred to a “just transition,” or to “developed vs. developing nations” — particularly where evolution in recent scholarship has produced more nuanced understandings of the terms.

      COP28 also marked the conclusion of the first global stocktake, a core component of the 2015 Paris Agreement. The effort every five years to assess the world’s progress in responding to climate change is intended as a basis for encouraging countries to strengthen their climate goals over time, a process often referred to as the Paris Agreement’s “ratchet mechanism.” 

      The technical report of the first global stocktake, published in September 2023, found that while the world has taken actions that have reduced forecasts of future warming, they are not sufficient to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global average temperature increase to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

      “Despite minor, punctual advancements in climate action, parties are far from being on track to meet the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Fabbri, a graduate student in the School of Architecture and Planning and a fellow in MIT’s Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism. Citing a number of persistent challenges, including some parties’ fears that rapid economic transition may create or exacerbate vulnerabilities, she added, “There is a noted lack of accountability among certain countries in adhering to their commitments and responsibilities under international climate agreements.” 

      Climate and trade

      COP28 was the first climate summit to formally acknowledge the importance of international trade by featuring an official “Trade Day” on Dec. 4. Internationally traded goods account for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, raising complex questions of accountability and concerns about offshoring of industrial manufacturing, a phenomenon known as “emissions leakage.” Addressing the nexus of climate and trade is therefore considered essential for successful decarbonization, and a growing number of countries are leveraging trade policies — such as carbon fees applied to imported goods — to secure climate benefits. 

      Members of the MIT delegation participated in several related activities, sharing research and informing decision-makers. Catherine Wolfram, professor of applied economics in the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Michael Mehling, deputy director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), presented options for international cooperation on such trade policies at side events, including ones hosted by the World Trade Organization and European Parliament. 

      “While COPs are often criticized for highlighting statements that don’t have any bite, they are also tremendous opportunities to get people from around the world who care about climate and think deeply about these issues in one place,” said Wolfram.

      Climate and health

      For the first time in the conference’s nearly 30-year history, COP28 included a thematic “Health Day” that featured talks on the relationship between climate and health. Researchers from MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) have been testing policy solutions in this area for years through research funds such as the King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI). 

      “An important but often-neglected area where climate action can lead to improved health is combating air pollution,” said Andre Zollinger, K-CAI’s senior policy manager. “COP28’s announcement on reducing methane leaks is an important step because action in this area could translate to relatively quick, cost-effective ways to curb climate change while improving air quality, especially for people living near these industrial sites.” K-CAI has an ongoing project in Colorado investigating the use of machine learning to predict leaks and improve the framework for regulating industrial methane emissions, Zollinger noted.

      This was J-PAL’s third time at COP, which Zollinger said typically presented an opportunity for researchers to share new findings and analysis with government partners, nongovernmental organizations, and companies. This year, he said, “We have [also] been working with negotiators in the [Middle East and North Africa] region in the months preceding COP to plug them into the latest evidence on water conservation, on energy access, on different challenging areas of adaptation that could be useful for them during the conference.”

      Sharing knowledge, learning from others

      MIT student Runako Gentles described COP28 as a “springboard” to greater impact. A senior from Jamaica studying civil and environmental engineering, Gentles said it was exciting to introduce himself as an MIT undergraduate to U.N. employees and Jamaican delegates in Dubai. “There’s a lot of talk on mitigation and cutting carbon emissions, but there needs to be much more going into climate adaptation, especially for small-island developing states like those in the Caribbean,” he said. “One of the things I can do, while I still try to finish my degree, is communicate — get the story out there to raise awareness.”

      At an official side event at COP28 hosted by MIT, Pennsylvania State University, and the American Geophysical Union, Maria T. Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research, stressed the importance of opportunities to share knowledge and learn from people around the world.

      “The reason this two-way learning is so important for us is simple: The ideas we come up with in a university setting, whether they’re technological or policy or any other kind of innovations — they only matter in the practical world if they can be put to good use and scaled up,” said Zuber. “And the only way we can know that our work has practical relevance for addressing climate is by working hand-in-hand with communities, industries, governments, and others.”

      Marcela Angel, research program director at the Environmental Solutions Initiative, and Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, also spoke at the event, which was moderated by Bethany Patten, director of policy and engagement for sustainability at the MIT Sloan School of Management.  More

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      Hearing Amazônia: MIT musicians in Manaus, Brazil

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      On Dec. 13, the MIT community came together for the premiere of “We Are The Forest,” a documentary by MIT Video Productions that tells the story of the MIT musicians who traveled to the Brazilian Amazon seeking culture and scientific exchange.

      The film features performances by Djuena Tikuna, Luciana Souza, Anat Cohen, and Evan Ziporyn, with music by Antônio Carlos Jobim. Fred Harris conducts the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble and MIT Wind Ensemble and Laura Grill Jaye conducts the MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble.

      Play video

      “We Are The Forest”Video: MIT Video Productions

      The impact of ecological devastation in the Amazon reflects the climate crisis worldwide. During the Institute’s spring break in March 2023, nearly 80 student musicians became only the second student group from MIT to travel to the Brazilian Amazon. Inspired by the research and activism of Talia Khan ’20, who is currently a PhD candidate in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, the trip built upon experiences of the 2020-21 academic year when virtual visiting artists Luciana Souza and Anat Cohen lectured on Brazilian music and culture before joining the November 2021 launch of Hearing Amazônia — The Responsibility of Existence.

      This consciousness-raising project at MIT, sponsored by the Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST), began with a concert featuring Brazilian and Amazonian music influenced by the natural world. The project was created and led by MIT director of wind and jazz ensembles and senior lecturer in music Frederick Harris Jr.

      The performance was part eulogy and part praise song: a way of bearing witness to loss, while celebrating the living and evolving cultural heritage of Amazonia. The event included short talks, one of which was by Khan. As the first MIT student to study in the Brazilian Amazonia (via MISTI-Brazil), she spoke of her research on natural botanical resins and traditional carimbó music in Santarém, Pará, Brazil. Soon after, as a Fulbright Scholar, Khan continued her research in Manaus, setting the stage for the most complex trip in the history of MIT Music and Theater Arts.“My experiences in the Brazilian Amazon changed my life,” enthuses Khan. “Getting to know Indigenous musicians and immersing myself in the culture of this part of the world helped me realize how we are all so connected.”

      “Talia’s experiences in Brazil convinced me that the Hearing Amazônia project needed to take a next essential step,” explains Harris. “I wanted to provide as many students as possible with a similar opportunity to bring their musical and scientific talents together in a deep and spiritual manner. She provided a blueprint for our trip to Manaus.”

      An experience of a lifetime

      A multitude of musicians from three MTA ensembles traveled to Manaus, located in the middle of the world’s largest rainforest and home to the National Institute of Amazonian Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, or INPA), the most important center for scientific studies in the Amazon region for international sustainability issues.

      Tour experiences included cultural/scientific exchanges with Indigenous Amazonians through Nobre Academia de Robótica and the São Sebastião community on the Tarumã Açu River, INPA, the Cultural Center of the Peoples of the Amazon, and the Museu da Amazônia. Musically, students connected with local Indigenous instrument builders and performed with the Amazonas State Jazz Orchestra and renowned vocalist and Indigenous activist Djuena Tikuna.

      “Hearing Amazônia: Arte ê Resistência,” a major concert in the famed 19th century opera house Teatro Amazonas, concluded the trip on March 31. The packed event featured the MIT Wind Ensemble, MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble, vocalist Luciana Souza, clarinetist Anat Cohen, MIT professor and composer-clarinetist Evan Ziporyn, and local musicians from Manaus. The program ended with “Nós Somos A Floresta (We Are The Forest) — Eware (Sacred Land) — Reflections on Amazonia,” a large-scale collaborative performance with Djuena Tikuna. The two songs were composed by Tikuna, with Eware newly arranged by Israeli composer-bassist Nadav Erlich for the occasion. It concluded with all musicians and audience members coming together in song: a moving and beautiful moment of mediation on the sacredness of the earth.

      “It was humbling to see the grand display of beauty and diversity that nature developed in the Amazon rainforest,” reflects bass clarinetist and MIT sophomore Richard Chen. “By seeing the bird life, sloths, and other species and the flora, and eating the fruits of the region, I received lessons on my harmony and connection to the natural world around us. I developed a deeper awareness of the urgency of resolving conflicts and stopping the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and to listening to and celebrating the stories and experiences of those around me.”

      Indigenous musicians embodying the natural world

      “The trip expanded the scope of what music means,” MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble member and biomedical researcher Autumn Geil explains. “It’s living the music, and you can’t feel that unless you put yourself in new experiences and get yourself out of your comfort zone.”

      Over two Indigenous music immersion days, students spent time listening to, and playing and singing with, musicians who broadened their scope of music’s relationship to nature and cultural sustainability. Indigenous percussionist and instrument builder Eliberto Barroncas and music producer-arranger César Lima presented contrasting approaches with a shared objective — connecting people to the natural world through Indigenous instruments.

      Barroncas played instruments built from materials from the rainforest and from found objects in Manaus that others might consider trash, creating ethereal tones bespeaking his life as one with nature. Students had the opportunity to play his instruments and create a spontaneous composition playing their own instruments and singing with him in a kind of “Amazonia jam session.”

      “Eliberto expressed that making music is visceral; it’s best when it comes from the gut and is tangible and coming from one’s natural environment. When we cannot understand each other using language, using words, logic and thinking, we go back to the body,” notes oboist and ocean engineer Michelle Kornberg ’20. “There’s a difference between teaching music as a skill you learn and teaching music as something you feel, that you experience and give — as a gift.”

      Over the pandemic, César Lima developed an app, “The Roots VR,” as a vehicle for people to discover over 100 Amazonia instruments. Users choose settings to interact with instruments and create pieces using a variety of instrumental combinations; a novel melding of technology with nature to expand the reach of these Indigenous instruments and their cultural significance.

      At the Cultural Center of the Peoples of the Amazon, students gathered around a tree, hand-in-hand singing with Djuena Tikuna, accompanied by percussionist Diego Janatã. “She spoke about being one of the first Indigenous musicians ever to sing in the Teatro Amazonas, which was built on the labor and blood of Indigenous people,” recalls flutist and atmospheric engineer Phoebe Lin, an MIT junior. “And then to hold hands and close our eyes and step back and forth; a rare moment of connection in a tumultuous world — it felt like we were all one.”

      Bringing the forest back to MIT

      On April 29, Djuena Tikuna made her MIT debut at “We Are the Forest — Music of Resilience and Activism,” a special concert for MIT President Sally Kornbluth’s inauguration, presenting music from the Teatro Amazonas event. Led and curated by Harris, the performance included new assistant professor in jazz and saxophonist-composer Miguel Zenón, director of the MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble; Laura Grill Jaye; and vocalist Sara Serpa, among others. 

      “Music unites people and through art we can draw the world’s attention to the most urgent global challenges such as climate change,” says Djuena Tikuna. “My songs bring the message that every seed will one day germinate to reforest hearts, because we are all from the same village.”

      Hearing Amazônia has set the stage for the blossoming of artistic and scientific collaborations in the Amazon and beyond.

      “The struggle of Indigenous peoples to keep their territories alive should concern us all, and it will take more than science and research to help find solutions for climate change,” notes President Kornbluth. “It will take artists, too, to unite us and raise awareness across all communities. The inclusivity and expressive power of music can help get us all rowing in the same direction — it’s a great way to encourage us all to care and act!” More

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      in Environment

      Putting public service into practice

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      Salomé Otero ’23 doesn’t mince words about the social impact internship she had in 2022. “It was transformational for me,” she says.

      Otero, who majored in management with a concentration in education, always felt that education would play some role in her career path after MIT, but she wasn’t sure how. That all changed her junior year, when she got an email from the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center (PKG Center) about an internship at The Last Mile, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that provides education and technology training for justice-impacted individuals.

      Otero applied and was selected as a web curriculum and re-entry intern at The Last Mile the summer between her junior and senior year — an eye-opening experience that cemented her post-graduation plans. “You hear some amazing stories, like this person was incarcerated before the iPhone had come out. Now he’s a software developer,” she explains. “And for me, the idea of using computer science education for good appealed to me on many fronts. But even if I hadn’t gotten the opportunity to work at The Last Mile, the fact that I saw a job description for this role and learned that companies have the resources to make a difference … I didn’t know that there were people and organizations dedicating their time and energy into this.”

      She was so inspired that, when she returned for her senior year, Otero found work at two education labs at MIT, completed another social impact internship over Independent Activities Period (IAP) at G{Code}, an education nonprofit that provides computer science education to women and nonbinary people of color, and decided to apply to graduate school. “I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that I would not be pursuing a PhD in education policy right now if it weren’t for the PKG Center,” she says. She will begin her doctorate this fall.

      Otero’s experience doesn’t surprise Jill Bassett, associate dean and director of the PKG Center. “MIT students are deeply concerned about the world’s most challenging problems,” she says. “And social impact internships are an incredible way for them to leverage their unique talents and skills to help create meaningful change while broadening their perspectives and discovering potential career paths.”

      “There’s a lot more out there”

      Founded 35 years ago, the PKG Center offers a robust portfolio of experiential learning programs broadly focused on four themes: climate change, health equity, racial justice, and tech for social good. The Center’s Social Impact Internship Program provides funded internships to students interested in working with government agencies, nonprofits, and social ventures. Students reap rich rewards from these experiences, including learning ways to make social change, informing their academic journey and career path, and gaining valuable professional skills.

      “It was a really good learning opportunity,” says Juliet Liao ’23, a graduate of MIT’s Naval ROTC program who commissioned as a submarine officer in June. She completed a social impact internship with the World Wildlife Fund, where she researched greenhouse gas emissions related to the salmon industry. “I haven’t had much exposure to what work outside of the Navy looks like and what I’m interested in working on. And I really liked the science-based approach to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.”

      Amina Abdalla, a rising junior in biological engineering, arrived at MIT with a strong interest in health care and determined to go to medical school. But her internship at MassHealth, the Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program provider for the state of Massachusetts, broadened her understanding of the complexity of the health care system and introduced her to many career options that she didn’t know existed.

      “They did coffee chats between interns and various people who work in MassHealth, such as doctors, lawyers, policy advocates, and consultants. There’s a lot more out there that one can do with the degree that they get and the knowledge they gain. It just depends on your interests, and I came away from that really excited,” she says. The experience inspired her to take a class in health policy before she graduates. “I know I want to be a doctor and I have a lot of interest in science in general, but if I could do some kind of public sector impact with that knowledge, I would definitely be interested in doing that.”

      Social impact internships also provide an opportunity for students to hone their analytical, technical, and people skills. Selma Sharaf ’22 worked on developing a first-ever climate action plan for Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, one of two all-women’s historically Black colleges and universities in the United States. She conducted research and stakeholder interviews with nonprofits; sustainability directors at similar colleges; local utility companies; and faculty, staff, and students at Bennett.

      “Our external outreach efforts with certain organizations allowed me to practice having conversations about energy justice and climate issues with people who aren’t already in this space. I learned how useful it can be to not only discuss the overall issues of climate change and carbon emissions, but to also zoom in on more relatable personal-level impacts,” she says. Sharaf is currently working in clean energy consulting and plans to pursue a master’s degree at Stanford University’s Atmosphere/Energy Program this fall.

      Working with “all stars”

      Organizations that partner with the PKG Center are often constrained by limited technical and financial resources. Since the program is funded by the PKG Center, these internships help expand their organizational capacity and broaden their impact; MIT students can take on projects that might not otherwise get done, and they also bring fresh skills and ideas to the organization — and the zeal to pursue those ideas.

      Emily Moberg ’11, PhD ’16 got involved with the social impact internship programs in 2020. Moberg, who is the director of Scope 3 Carbon Measurement and Mitigation at the World Wildlife Fund, has worked with 20 MIT students since then, including Liao. The body of work that Liao and several other interns completed has been published in the form of 10 briefs onmitigating greenhouse gas emissions from key commodities, such as soy, beef, coffee, and palm oil.

      “Social impact interns bring technical skills, deep curiosity, and tenacity,” Moberg says. “I’ve worked with students across many majors, including computer and materials science; all of them bring a new, fresh perspective to our problems and often sophisticated quantitative ability. Their presence often helps us to investigate new ideas or expand a project. In some cases, interns have proposed new projects and ideas themselves. The support from the PKG Center for us to host these interns has been critical, especially for these new explorations.”

      Anne Carrington Hayes, associate professor and executive director of the Global Leadership and Interdisciplinary Studies program at Bennett College, calls the MIT interns she’s worked with since 2021 “all stars.” The work Sharaf and three other students performed has culminated in a draft climate action plan that will inform campus renovations and other measures that will be implemented at the college in the coming years.

      “They have been foundational in helping me to research, frame, collect data, and engage with our students and the community around issues of environmental justice and sustainability, particularly from the lens of what would be impactful and meaningful for women of color at Bennett College,” she says.

      Balancing supply and demand

      Bassett says that the social impact internship program has grown exponentially in the past few years. Before the pandemic, the program served five students from summer 2019 to spring 2020; it now serves about 125 students per year. Over that time, funding has become a significant limiting factor; demand for internships was three times the number of available internships in summer 2022, and five times the supply during IAP 2023.

      “MIT students have no shortage of opportunities available to them in the private sector, yet students are seeking social impact internships because they want to apply their skills to issues that they care about,” says Julie Uva, the PKG Center’s program administrator for social impact internships and employment. “We want to ensure every student who wants a social impact internship can access that experience.”

      MIT has taken note of this financial shortfall: the Task Force 2021 report recommended fundraising to alleviate the under-supply of social impact experiential learning opportunities (ELOs), and MIT’s Fast Forward Climate Action Plan called on the Institute to make a climate or clean-energy ELOs available to every undergraduate who wants one. As a result, the Office of Experiential Learning is working with Resource Development to raise new funding to support many more opportunities, which would be available to students not only through the PKG Center but also other offices and programs, such as MIT D-Lab, Undergraduate Research Opportunity Programs, MISTI, and the Environmental Solutions Initiative, among others.

      That’s welcome news to Salomé Otero. She’s familiar with the Institute’s fundraising efforts, having worked as one of the Alumni Association’s Tech Callers. Now, as an alumna herself and a former social impact intern, she has an appreciation for the power of philanthropy.

      “MIT is ahead of the game compared to so many universities, in so many ways,” she says. “But if they want to continue to do that in the most impactful way possible, I think investing in ideas and missions like the PKG Center is the way to go. So when that call comes, I’ll tell whoever is working that night shift, ‘Yeah, I’ll donate to the PKG Center.’” More

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      in Environment

      Andrea Lo ’21 draws on ecological lessons for life, work, and education

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      Growing up in Los Angeles about 10 minutes away from the Ballona Wetlands, Andrea Lo ’21 has long been interested in ecology. She witnessed, in real-time, the effects of urbanization and the impacts that development had on the wetlands. 

      “In hindsight, it really helped shape my need for a career — and a life — where I can help improve my community and the environment,” she says.

      Lo, who majored in biology at MIT, says a recurring theme in her life has been the pursuit of balance, valuing both extracurricular and curricular activities. She always felt an equal pull toward STEM and the humanities, toward wet lab work and field work, and toward doing research and helping her community. 

      “One of the most important things I learned in 7.30[J] (Fundamentals of Ecology) was that there are always going to be trade-offs. That’s just the way of life,” she says. “The biology major at MIT is really flexible. I got a lot of room to explore what I was interested in and get a good balance overall, with humanities classes along with technical classes.” 

      Lo was drawn to MIT because of the focus on hands-on work — but many of the activities Lo was hoping to do, both extracurricular and curricular, were cut short because of the pandemic, including her lab-based Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) project. 

      Instead, she pursued a UROP with MIT Sea Grant, working on a project in partnership with Northeastern University and the Charles River Conservancy with funding support from the MIT Community Service fund as part of STEAM Saturday.  

      She was involved in creating Floating Wetland kits, an educational activity directed at students in grades 4 to 6 to help students understand ecological concepts,the challenges the Charles River faces due to urbanization, and how floating wetlands improve the ecosystem. 

      “Our hope was to educate future generations of local students in Cambridge in order for them to understand the ecology surrounding where they live,” she says. 

      In recent years, many bodies of water in Massachusetts have become unusable during the warmer months due to the process of eutrophication: stormwater runoff picks up everything — from fertilizer and silt to animal excrement — and deposits it at the lowest point, which is often a body of water. This leads to an excess of nutrients in the body of water and, when combined with warm temperatures, can lead to harmful algal blooms, making the water sludgy, bright green, and dangerously toxic. 

      The wetland kits Lo worked with were mini ecosystems, replicating a full-sized floating wetland. One such floating wetland can be seen from the Longfellow Bridge at one end of MIT’s campus — the Charles River floating wetland is a patch of grass attached to a buoy like a boat, which is often visited by birds and inhabited by much smaller critters that cannot be seen from the shore.  

      The Charles River floating wetland has a variety of flora, but the kits Lo helped present use only wheat grass because it is easy to grow and has long, dangling roots that could penetrate the watery medium below. A water tray beneath the grass — the Charles river of the mini ecosystem — contains spirulina powder for replicating algae growth and daphnia, which are small, planktonic crustaceans that help keep freshwater clean and usable. 

      “This work was really fulfilling, but it’s also really important, because environmental sustainability relies on future generations to carry on the work that past generations have been doing,” she says. “MIT’s motto is ‘mens et manus’ — education for practical application, and applying theoretical knowledge to what we do in our daily lives. I think this project really helped reinforce that.” 

      Since 2021, Lo has been working in Denmark in a position she learned about through the MIT-Denmark program. 

      She chose Denmark because of its reputation for environmental and sustainability issues and because she didn’t know much about it except for it being one of the happiest countries in the world, often thought of synonymously with the word “hygge,” which has no direct translation but encapsulates coziness and comfort from the small joys in life. 

      “At MIT, we have a very strong work-hard, play-hard culture. I think we can learn a lot from the work-life balance that Denmark has a reputation for,” she says. “I really wanted to take the opportunity in between graduation and whatever came after to explore beyond my bubble. For me, it was important to step back, out of my comfort zone, step into a different environment — and just live.”

      Currently, her personal project is comparing the conditions of two lagoons on the island of Fyn in Denmark. Both are naturally occurring, but in different states of environmental health. 

      She’s been doing a mix of field work and lab work. She collects sediment and fauna samples using a steel corer, or “butter stick” in her lab’s slang. In the same way that one can use a metal tube-shaped tool to remove the core of an apple, she punches the steel corer into the ground, removing a plug of sample. She then sifts the sample through 1 millimeter mesh, preserves the filtered sample in formalin, and takes everything back to the lab. 

      Once there, she looks through the sample to find macrofauna — mollusks, barnacles, and polychaetes, a bristly-looking segmented worm, for example. Collected over time, sediment characteristics like organic matter content, sediment grain size, and the size and abundance of macrofauna, can reveal trends that can help determine the health of the ecosystem. 

      Lo doesn’t have any concrete results yet, but her data could help researchers project the recovery of a lagoon that was rehabilitated using a technique called managed realignment, where water is allowed to reclaim areas where it was once found. She says she’s glad she gets a mix of field work and lab work, even on Denmark’s stormiest days. 

      “Sometimes there are really cold days where it’s windy and I wish I was in the lab, but, at the same time, it’s nice to have a balance where I can be outside and really be hands-on with my work,” she says.  

      Reflecting her dual interests in the technical and the innovative, she will be back in the Greater Boston area in the fall, pursuing a master of science in innovation and management and an MS in civil and environmental engineering at the Tufts Gordon Institute.

      “So much has happened and changed due to the pandemic that it’s easy to dwell on what could’ve been, but I tell myself to be optimistic and take the positive aspects that have come out of the circumstances,” Lo says. “My opportunities with the Sea Grant, MISTI, and Tufts definitely wouldn’t have happened if the pandemic hadn’t happened.” More