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      in Energy

      Investors awaken to the risks of climate change

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      Poppy Allonby, a senior financial executive and the former managing director of BlackRock, has been analyzing the link between climate change and investing for more than two decades. “For a lot of that, it was quite lonely,” Allonby said during her December address at the MIT Energy Initiative Fall Colloquium. “There weren’t that many other people looking at this field. And over the last three or four years, that’s completely changed.”

      Increasingly, Allonby said, investors are opening their eyes to the long-term risks of climate change — risks that threaten not only the planet, but also their portfolios. And as more institutional investors come to see climate change as a threat to their beneficiaries, they are taking action to fight it. Still, she cautioned that much more work remains to be done.

      “Various investors are at very different stages in considering climate change,” Allonby said. “Once they realize this is something they need to think about … they need to do a risk assessment, then develop a strategy.” 

      “When you look at different institutions,” she said, “some are just at the very beginning of this journey.”

      A changing landscape

      Although there is a compelling moral case to be made for taking steps to mitigate climate change, Allonby noted that institutional investors such as pension funds are bound by a fiduciary duty to their beneficiaries. That is to say, they are obligated to put their client or member interests ahead of their own.

      “I talk about fiduciary duty, because one of the things that has really changed in the investment space is that more and more investors are beginning to see climate change and climate risk as [impacting] their fiduciary duty,” said Allonby. “That has been a shift. In my mind, it makes total sense. If you’re a long-term investor … and you’re thinking about beneficiaries that need assets over the next 10 or 20 years, and thinking about risks that might materialize — and climate change, in particular — then that makes a lot of sense. But that is not where we were five or 10 years ago.”

      Allonby spent more than 20 years at the multinational investment management corporation BlackRock. For 17 of those years, she was a senior portfolio manager responsible for managing multibillion-dollar funds investing globally in companies across the traditional energy sector, and also those involved in sustainable energy and mitigating climate change. Most recently, she was head of the corporation’s Global Product Group on several continents, where she provided oversight for nearly $1 trillion assets and played a critical role in developing BlackRock’s sustainable product strategy.

      “Where I like to think the finance industry is heading is integration,” she said. “This means thinking holistically about pretty much every decision you make as an investor, and thinking about how climate risk is going to impact that investment. That is a sea change in the mentality around how people invest.”

      Divestment versus engagement

      For many years, activists have pushed for institutions — including MIT — to divest from fossil fuel companies. By keeping fossil fuel companies out of their portfolios, these activists argue, institutions and individuals can exert social, political, and economic pressure on these corporations and help to accelerate the shift to renewable energy.

      However, Allonby argued instead for ongoing engagement with fossil fuel companies, reasoning that this better positions investors to push for change. “My personal view with divesting from oil and gas companies is, that’s not very effective,” Allonby said. “I think there might be examples where you have very specific companies which you don’t think will be involved in the transition [to net zero], and [divestment] might make sense. Or if you’ve got an institutional investor where it is imperative that their investment is entirely aligned with their values — so, certain charities — it might make sense. But if you really care about change, I think you need to keep a seat at the table.”

      In a way, Allonby said, divesting from fossil fuel companies lets leaders at those organizations off the hook, reducing the pressure on them to make meaningful changes to their operations. “Imagine a company that is incredibly polluting and not sustainable, and they have shareholders that are not happy, but they don’t do anything, and those shareholders decide to divest,” she said. “What happens as a result of that, potentially, is the company goes, ‘Oh, that was easy! I didn’t have to do anything, and [the activists] have gone away.’ And potentially, those assets end up being owned by people who care less. So that is a risk, when you think about divestment.”

      Challenges and opportunities         

      Allonby outlined several challenges with climate-focused investing, but also noted a number of opportunities — both for investors looking to make money, and those looking to make a change.

      Among the challenges: For one, some investors simply still need to be convinced that climate change is a problem they should be working to solve. Also, Allonby said, there is a lack both of a formalized methodology and of specialized investment products for climate-focused investing, although she noted that both of these areas are improving. Finally, she said, it remains a challenge to encourage investors to direct capital toward clean-energy projects in developing countries. 

      Investors can both set themselves up for financial success and mitigate climate change, Allonby said, through savvy investments in either distressed or underpriced assets. “If you can buy assets that are discounted or cheaper because people have real concerns about their environmental footprint, then you can work with those companies to improve it and therefore reduce the risk and improve the valuation,” she said.

      Allonby, pointing to the high cost of waterfront property in areas that are vulnerable to rising sea levels, also suggested that the long-term risks of climate change have not been fully priced into many assets. “My view is that we haven’t really gotten our arms around that,” she said. “From a purely investment perspective, that’s also an opportunity.”

      Additionally, Allonby noted the recent rise of ESG funds, which invest with environmental, social, and corporate governance guidelines in mind. Some of these funds, she noted, have outperformed the larger market over the past several years.

      “When we talk about climate change, one has a range of emotions,” Allonby said. “Sometimes it can feel like we’re not making enough progress. And one of the nice things about being here at MIT is that whenever I’m here, I always feel hopeful about the future, and quite hopeful about all of the technologies and work that you are doing to transition energy systems and move things forward. When you look at what’s happening in the financial services sector, there’s still a huge amount to do, but it’s also quite a hopeful story.” More

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      in Environment

      New visions for better transportation

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      We typically experience transportation problems from the ground up. Waiting for a delayed bus, packing ourselves into a subway car, or crawling along in traffic, it is common to see such systems struggling at close range.

      Yet sometimes transportation solutions come from a high-level, top-down approach. That was the theme of the final talk in MIT’s Mobility Forum series, delivered on Friday by MIT Professor Thomas Magnanti, which centered on applying to transportation the same overarching analytical framework used in other domains, such as bioengineering.

      Magnanti’s remarks focused on a structured approach to problem-solving known as the 4M method — which stands for measuring, mining, modeling, and manipulating. In urban transportation planning, for instance, measuring and mining might involve understanding traffic flows. Modeling might simulate those traffic flows, and manipulating would mean engineering interventions: tolls, one-way streets, or other changes.

      “These are four things that interact quite a bit with each other,” said Magnanti, who is an Institute Professor — MIT’s highest faculty distinction — and a professor of operations research at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “And they provide us with a sense of how you can gather data and understand a system, but also how you can improve it.”

      Magnanti, a leading expert in operations research, pointed out that the 4M method can be applied to systems from physics to biomedical research. He outlined how it might be used to analyze transportations-related systems such as supply chains and warehouse movements.

      In all cases, he noted, applying the 4M concept to a system is an iterative process: Making changes to a system will likely produce new flows — of traffic and goods — and thus be subject to a new set of measurements.

      “One thing to notice here, once you manipulate the system, it changes the data,” Magnanti observed. “You’re doing this so you can hopefully improve operations, but it creates new data. So, you want to measure that new data again, you want to mine it, you want to model it again, and then manipulate it. … This is a continuing loop that we use in these systems.”

      Magnanti’s talk, “Understanding and Improving Transportation Systems,” was delivered online to a public audience of about 175 people. It was the 12th and final event of the MIT Mobility Forum in the fall 2021 semester. The event series is organized by the MIT Mobility Initiative, an Institute-wide effort to research and accelerate the evolution of transportation, at a time when decarbonization in the sector is critical.

      Other MIT Mobility Forum talks have focused on topics such as zero-environmental-impact aviation, measuring pedestrian flows in cities, autonomous vehicles, the impact of high-speed rail and subways on cities, values and equity in mobility design, and more.

      Overall, the forum “offers an opportunity to showcase the groundbreaking transportation research occurring across the Institute,” says Jinhua Zhao, an associate professor of transportation and city planning in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and director of the MIT Mobility Initiative.

      The initiative has held 39 such talks since it launched in 2020, and the series will continue again in the spring semester of 2022.

      One of the principal features of the forum, like the MIT Mobility Initiative in general, is that it “facilitates cross-disciplinary exchanges both within MIT and without,” Zhao says. Faculty and students from every school at MIT have participated in the forum, lending intellectual and methodological diversity to a broad field.

      For his part, Magnanti, who is both an engineer and operations researcher by training, embraced that interdisciplinary approach in his remarks, fielding a variety of audience questions after his talk, about research methods and other issues. Magnanti, who served from 2009 to 2017 as the founding president of the Singapore University of Technology and Design (with which MIT has had research collaborations), noted that the setting can heavily influence transportation research and progress.

      In Singapore, he noted, “They measure everything. They measure how people access the subway … and they use their data.” Of course, Singapore’s status as a city-state of modest size, among other factors, makes comprehensive transportation planning more feasible there. Still, Magnanti also noted that the infrastructure bill recently passed by the U.S. federal government is “going to provide lots of opportunities” for transportation improvements.

      And in general, Magnanti added, one of the best things academic leaders and research communities can do is to “continue to create a sense of excitement. Even when things are tough, the problems are going to be interesting.” More

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      in Environment

      Scientists and musicians tackle climate change together

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      Audiences may travel long distances to see their favorite musical acts in concert or to attend large music festivals, which can add to their personal carbon footprint of emissions that are steadily warming the planet. But these same audiences, and the performers they follow, are often quite aware of the dangers of climate change and eager to contribute to ways of curbing those emissions.

      How should the industry reconcile these two perspectives, and how should it harness the enormous influence that musicians have on their fans to help promote action on climate change?

      That was the focus of a wide-ranging discussion on Monday hosted by MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative, titled “Artists and scientists together on climate solutions.” The event, which was held live at the Media Lab’s Bartos Theater and streamed online, featured John Fernandez, director of ESI; Dava Newman, director of the Media Lab; Tony McGuinness, a musician with the group Above and Beyond; and Anna Johnson, the sustainability and environment officer at Involved Group, an organization dedicated to embedding sustainability in business operations in the arts and culture fields.

      Fernandez pointed out in opening the discussion that when it comes to influencing people’s attitudes and behavior, changes tend to come about not just through information from a particular field, but rather from a whole culture. “We started thinking about how we might work with artists, how to have scientists and engineers, inventors, and designers working with artists on the challenges that we really need to face,” he said.

      Dealing with the climate change issue, he said, “is not about 2050 or 2100. This is about 2030. This is about this decade. This is about the next two or three years, really shifting that curve” to lowering the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. “It’s not going to be done just with science and engineering,” he added. “It’s got to be done with artists and business and everyone else. It’s not only ‘all of the above’ solutions, it’s ‘all of the above’ people, coming together to solve this problem.”

      Newman, who is also a professor in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and has served as a NASA deputy administrator, said that while scientists and engineers can produce vast amounts of useful data that clearly demonstrate the dramatic changes the Earth’s climate is undergoing, communicating that information effectively is often a challenge for these specialists. “That data is just the data, but that doesn’t change the hearts and minds,” she said.

      “As scientists, having the data from our satellites, looking down, but also flying airplanes into the atmosphere, … we have the sensors, and then what can we do with it all? … How do we change human behavior? That’s the part I don’t know how to do,” Newman said. “I can have the technology, I can get precision measurements, I can study it, but really at the end of the day, we have to change human behavior, and that is so hard.”

      And that’s where the world of art and music can play a part, she said. “The best way that I know how to do it is with artistic experiences. You can have one moving experience and when you wake up tomorrow, maybe you’re going to do something a little different.” To help generate the compassion and empathy needed to affect behavior positively, she said, “that’s where we turn to the storytellers. We turn to the visionaries.”

      McGuinness, whose electronic music trio has performed for millions of people around the world, said that his own awareness of the urgency of the climate issue came from his passion for scuba diving, and the dramatic changes he has seen over the last two decades. In diving at a coral reef off Palau in the South Pacific, he returned to what had been a lush, brightly colored ecosystem, and found that “immediately when you put your face under the water, you’re looking at the surface of the moon. It was a horrible shock to see this.”

      After this and other similar diving experiences, he said, “I just came away shocked and stunned,” and realizing the kinds of underwater experiences he had enjoyed would no longer exist for his children. After reading more on the subject of global warming,  “that really sort of tipped me over the edge. And I was like, this is probably the most important thing for living beings now. And that’s sort of where I’ve remained ever since.”

      While his group Above and Beyond has performed one song specifically related to global warming, he doesn’t expect that to be the most impactful way of using their influence. Rather, they’re trying to lead by example, he said, by paying more attention to everything from the supply chains of the merchandise sold at concerts to the emissions generated by travel to the concerts. They’re also being selective about concert venues and making an effort to find performance spaces that are making a significant effort to curb their emissions.

      “If people start voting with their wallets,” McGuinness said, “and there are companies that are doing better than others and are doing the right thing, maybe it’ll catch on. I guess that’s what we can hope for.”

      Understanding these kinds of issues, involving supply chains, transportation, and facilities associated within the music industry, has been the focus of much of Johnson’s work, through the organization Involved Group, which has entered into a collaboration with MIT through the Environmental Solutions Initiative. “It’s these kinds of novel partnerships that have so much potential to catalyze the change that we need to see at an incredible pace,” she said. Already, her group has worked with MIT on mapping out where emissions occur throughout the various aspects of the music industry.

      At a recent music festival in London, she said, the group interviewed hundreds of participants, including audience members, band members, and the crew. “We explored people’s level of awareness of the issues around climate change and environmental degradation,” she said. “And what was really interesting was that there was clearly a lot of awareness of the issue across those different stakeholders, and what felt like a real, genuine level of concern and also of motivation, to want to deepen their understanding of what their contribution on a personal level really meant.”

      Working together across the boundaries of different disciplines and areas of expertise could be crucial to winning the battle against global warming, Newman said. “That’s usually how breakthroughs work,” she said. “If we’re really looking to have impact, it’s going to be from teams of people who are trained across the disciplines.” She pointed out that 90 percent of MIT students are also musicians: “It does go together!” she said. “I think going forward, we have to create new academia, new opportunities that are truly multidisciplinary.” More

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      in Energy

      MIT makes strides on climate action plan

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      Two recent online events related to MIT’s ambitious new climate action plan highlighted several areas of progress, including uses of the campus as a real-life testbed for climate impact research, the creation of new planning bodies with opportunities for input from all parts of the MIT community, and a variety of moves toward reducing the Institute’s own carbon footprint in ways that may also provide a useful model for others.

      On Monday, MIT’s Office of Sustainability held its seventh annual “Sustainability Connect” event, bringing together students, faculty, staff, and alumni to learn about and share ideas for addressing climate change. This year’s virtual event emphasized the work toward carrying out the climate plan, titled “Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade,” which was announced in May. An earlier event, the “MIT Climate Tune-in” on Nov. 3, provided an overview of the many areas of MIT’s work to tackle climate change and featured a video message from Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research, who was attending the COP26 international climate meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, as part of an 18-member team from MIT.

      Zuber pointed out some significant progress that was made at the conference, including a broad agreement by over 100 nations to end deforestation by the end of the decade; she also noted that the U.S. and E.U. are leading a global coalition of countries committed to curbing methane emissions by 30 percent from 2020 levels by decade’s end. “It’s easy to be pessimistic,” she said, “but being here in Glasgow, I’m actually cautiously optimistic, seeing the thousands and thousands of people here who are working toward meaningful climate action. And I know that same spirit exists on our own campus also.”

      As for MIT’s own climate plan, Zuber emphasized three points: “We’re committed to action; second of all, we’re committed to moving fast; and third, we’ve organized ourselves better for success.” That organization includes the creation of the MIT Climate Steering Committee, to oversee and coordinate MIT’s strategies on climate change; the Climate Nucleus, to oversee the management and implementation of the new plan; and three working groups that are forming now, to involve all parts of the MIT community.

      The “Fast Forward” plan calls for reducing the campus’s net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2026 and eliminating all such emissions, including indirect ones, by 2050. At Monday’s event, Director of Sustainability Julie Newman pointed out that the climate plan includes no less than 14 specific commitments related to the campus itself. These can be grouped into five broad areas, she said: mitigation, resiliency, electric vehicle infrastructure, investment portfolio sustainability, and climate leadership. “Each of these commitments has due dates, and they range from the tactical to the strategic,” she said. “We’re in the midst of activating our internal teams” to address these commitments, she added, noting that there are 30 teams that involve 75 faculty and researcher members, plus up to eight student positions.

      One specific project that is well underway involves preparing a detailed map of the flood risks to the campus as sea levels rise and storm surges increase. While previous attempts to map out the campus flooding risks had treated buildings essentially as uniform blocks, the new project has already mapped out in detail the location, elevation, and condition of every access point — doors, windows, and drains — in every building in the main campus, and now plans to extend the work to the residence buildings and outlying parts of campus. The project’s methods for identifying and quantifying the risks to specific parts of the campus, Newman said, represents “part of our mission for leveraging the campus as a test bed” by creating a map that is “true to the nature of the topography and the infrastructure,” in order to be prepared for the effects of climate change.

      Also speaking at the Sustainability Connect event, Vice President for Campus Services and Stewardship Joe Higgins outlined a variety of measures that are underway to cut the carbon footprint of the campus as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Part of that, he explained, involves using the campus as a testbed for the development of the equivalent of a “smart thermostat” system for campus buildings. While such products exist commercially for homeowners, there is no such system yet for large institutional or commercial buildings.

      There is a team actively developing such a pilot program in some MIT buildings, he said, focusing on some large lab buildings that have especially high energy usage. They are examining the use of artificial intelligence to reduce energy consumption, he noted. By adding systems to monitor energy use, temperatures, occupancy, and so on, and to control heating, lighting and air conditioning systems, Higgins said at least a 3 to 5 percent reduction in energy use can be realized. “It may be well beyond that,” he added. “There’s a huge opportunity here.”

      Higgins also outlined the ongoing plan to convert the existing steam distribution system for campus heating into a hot water system. Though the massive undertaking may take decades to complete, he said that project alone may reduce campus carbon emissions by 10 percent. Other efforts include the installation of an additional 400 kilowatts of rooftop solar installations.

      Jeremy Gregory, executive director of MIT’s climate and sustainability consortium, described efforts to deal with the most far-reaching areas of greenhouse gas emission, the so-called Scope 3 emissions. He explained that Scope 1 is the direct emissions from the campus itself, from buildings and vehicles; Scope 2 includes indirect emissions from the generation of electricity; and Scope 3 is “everything else.” That includes employee travel, buildings that MIT leases from others and to others, and all goods and services, he added, “so it includes a lot of different categories of emissions.” Gregory said his team, including several student fellows, is actively investigating and quantifying these Scope 3 emissions at MIT, along with potential methods of reducing them.

      Professor Noelle Selin, who was recently named as co-chair of the new Climate Nucleus along with Professor Anne White, outlined their plans for the coming year, including the setting up of the three working groups.

      Selin said the nucleus consists of representatives of departments, labs, centers, and institutes that have significant responsibilities under the climate plan. That body will make recommendations to the steering committee, which includes the deans of all five of MIT’s schools and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, “about how to amplify MIT’s impact in the climate sphere. We have an implementation role, but we also have an accelerator pedal that can really make MIT’s climate impact more ambitious, and really push the buttons and make sure that the Institute’s commitments are actually borne out in reality.”

      The MIT Climate Tune-In also featured Selin and White, as well as a presentation on MIT’s expanded educational offerings on climate and sustainability, from Sarah Meyers, ESI’s education program manager; students Derek Allmond and Natalie Northrup; and postdoc Peter Godart. Professor Dennis Whyte also spoke about MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ recent historical advance toward commercial fusion energy. Organizers said that the Climate Tune-In event is the first of what they hope will be many opportunities to hear updates on the wide range of work happening across campus to implement the Fast Forward plan, and to spark conversations within the MIT community. More

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      in Energy

      MIT Energy Night 2021: Connecting global innovators to local talent

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      On Oct. 29, leading clean technology innovators from around the world convened virtually and in-person on the MIT campus for the MIT Energy and Climate (MITEC) Club’s Energy Night 2021.

      The event featured an array of participants and attendees — from MIT students and faculty to investors, engineers, and established and early-stage companies — all committed to developing cutting-edge technologies to address climate and energy challenges.   

      The event began with a series of virtual presentations and panels that featured speakers from premier players in the climate and technology spheres. Those presenting included policymakers and market enablers, such as ARPA-E and Actuate, investors and accelerators, like TDK Ventures and Prime Coalition, along with numerous startups, including Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Infinite Cooling. The goal was to discuss how nascent technologies could crystalize into viable solutions.

      “A lot of project ideas have the potential to be commercialized,” explains Anne Liu, a research assistant at the MIT Materials Systems Lab and the event’s co-managing director. “So, the goal of our virtual session was to explore the business side of the energy ecosystem by inviting leaders to discuss how to turn ideas into successful companies.”

      While the virtual session explored commercialization, the poster session presented early-stage innovation. It featured more than 70 posters by scientists, startups, and engineers from across the MIT community and far beyond.

      “The poster session is one of the most exciting parts of Energy Night,” says Naomi Lutz, a fourth-year undergraduate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “It provides a great opportunity to step back and learn more about what others are doing in specific areas of energy.”

      The work featured spanned the climate and energy sphere, ranging from nuclear fusion to carbon capture — and even included a proposal for solar smokestacks.

      “There are so many topics in energy and climate. And, yet it’s common to only connect with those in your specific track,” says Alexandra Steckmest, one of the event’s organizers and an MBA candidate at MIT Sloan School of Management. “So, we designed the poster session as a platform for people to connect with those from different realms of the energy sector.”

      To the MITEC team, presenting this broader spectrum of research isn’t just exciting — it’s necessary.

      “This is such a rapidly changing industry,” says Steckmest. “So, it’s important to have so many industry experts share information about the changes that are going on in it.”

      The event’s hybrid format, therefore, responded to more than just the Covid-19 pandemic: it also catered to the global, collaborative, and continuously evolving nature of the energy and cleantech industries.

      “After some discussion, we decided on this hybrid format,” explains Liu. “We wanted to ensure that we could have the interactivity of an in-person event while also reaching the much broader audience we had cultivated during last year’s entirely remote format.”

      The new hybrid format helped the team cast a wide net. In total, 400 people attended the in-person poster session while nearly an additional 400 people attended virtually from around the world.

      Yet, despite an increasingly global scope, Energy Night still retained a distinctly local composition. Numerous companies present at the virtual session hailed from across Greater Boston, and, quite often, near MIT: Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Infinite Cooling retain offices within Somerville or Cambridge, and each spawned from MIT.

      “There are so many companies coming out of [MIT] that go on to establish themselves in Boston and Cambridge,” notes Steckmest. “That makes [Energy Night] well-positioned to build connections and generate value for local accelerators.”

      MITEC continues to cultivate these local connections while also contributing to Boston’s unique cleantech culture.

      “What sets Boston apart is its emphasis on long-term solutions that are not always easily achievable through conventional venture capital,” says Liu.

      When planning Energy Night, she and her team sought to invite both short- and long-term solutions to showcase Boston’s aspirational culture while also offering a venue for established investors to seek new, more readily deployable technologies.

      Perhaps the greatest testament to Energy Night’s ongoing success is its tendency to come full circle.

      “Over the past few years, we’ve featured serial presenters from MIT that have gone on to found their own companies,” explains Liu. “So, for a lot of projects, we see a transition from an idea to a successful business.”

      Form Energy, for instance, is an MIT spinoff founded in 2017 with the mission of creating low-cost, long-term energy storage. Its stature grew greatly following its presence at Energy Night in 2019, after which it attracted $40 million in venture capital funding.

      “Whether you’re a first-year undergraduate or a long-time member of the energy and cleantech industries, we want Energy Night to generate these driving connections that lead to professional growth, as well as successful partnerships,” says Steckmest. More

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      in Energy

      Inaugural fund supports early-stage collaborations between MIT and Jordan

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      MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI), together with the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation (AHSF), the cultural and social responsibility arm of the Arab Bank, recently created a new initiative to support collaboration with the Middle East. The MIT-Jordan Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation Seed Fund is providing awardees with financial grants up to $30,000 to cover travel, meeting, and workshop expenses, including in-person visits to build cultural and scientific connections between MIT and Jordan. MISTI and AHSF recently celebrated the first round of awardees in a virtual ceremony held in Amman and the United States.

      The new grant is part of the Global Seed Funds (GSF), MISTI’s annual grant program that enables participating teams to collaborate with international peers, either at MIT or abroad, to develop and launch joint research projects. Many of the projects funded lead to additional grant awards and the development of valuable long-term relationships between international researchers and MIT faculty and students.

      Since MIT’s first major collaboration in the Middle East in the 1970s, the Institute has deepened its connection and commitment to the region, expanding to create the MIT-Arab World program. The MIT-Jordan Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation Seed Fund enables the MIT-Arab World program to move forward on its key objectives: build critical cultural and scientific connections between MIT and the Arab world; develop a cadre of students who have a deep understanding of the Middle East; and bring tangible value to the partners in the region.

      Valentina Qussisiya, CEO of the foundation, shared the importance of collaboration between research institutes to improve and advance scientific research. She highlighted the role of AHSF in supporting science and researchers since 1982, emphasizing, “The partnership with MIT through the MISTI program is part of AHSF commitment toward this role in Jordan and hoped-for future collaborations and the impact of the fund on science in Jordan.”

      The new fund, open to both Jordanian and MIT faculty, is available to those pursuing research in the following fields: environmental engineering; water resource management; lean and modern technologies; automation; nanotechnology; entrepreneurship; nuclear engineering; materials engineering; energy and thermal engineering; biomedical engineering, prostheses, computational neuroscience, and technology; social and management sciences; urban studies and planning; science, technology, and society; innovation in education; Arabic language automation; and food security and sustainable agriculture.

      Philip S. Khoury, faculty director of MISTI’s MIT-Arab World program and Ford International Professor of History and associate provost at MIT, explained that the winning projects all deal with critical issues that will benefit both MIT and Jordan, both on- and off-campus. “Beyond the actual faculty collaboration, these projects will bring much value to the hands-on education of MIT and Jordanian students and their capacity to get to know one another as future leaders in science and technology,” he says.

      This year, the MIT-Jordan Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation Seed Fund received numerous high-quality proposals. Applications were reviewed by MIT and Jordanian faculty and selected by a committee of MIT faculty. There were six winning projects in the inaugural round:

      Low-Cost Renewable-Powered Electrodialysis Desalination and Drip Irrigation: Amos Winter (MIT principal investigator) and Samer Talozi (international collaborator)

      iPSC and CRISPR Gene Editing to Study Rare Diseases: Ernest Fraenkel (MIT principal investigator) and Nidaa Ababneh (international collaborator)

      Use of Distributed Low-Cost Sensor Networks for Air Quality Monitoring in Amann: Jesse Kroll (MIT principal investigator) and Tareq Hussein (international collaborator)

      Radiation Effects on Medical Devices Made by 3D Printing: Ju Li (MIT principal investigator) and Belal Gharaibeh (international collaborator)

      Superprotonic Conductivity in Metal-Organic Frameworks for Proton-Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells: Mircea Dinca (MIT principal investigator) and Kyle Cordova (international collaborator)

      Mapping Urban Air Quality Using Mobile Low-cost Sensors and Geospatial Techniques: Sarah Williams (MIT principal investigator) and Khaled Hazaymeh (international collaborator)

      The goal of these funded projects is for researchers and their students to form meaningful professional partnerships across cultures and leave a lasting impact upon the scientific communities in Jordan and at MIT.

      “[The fund will] enhance the future career prospects of emerging scholars from both countries,” said awardee Professor Kyle Cordova, executive director for scientific research at Royal Scientific Society and assistant to Her Royal Highness Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan for scientific affairs. “Our young scholars will gain a unique perspective of the influence of different cultures on scientific investigation that will help them to function effectively in a multidisciplinary and multicultural environment.” More