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    J-PAL North America announces new evaluation incubator collaborators from state and local governments

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    J-PAL North America recently selected government partners for the 2024-25 Leveraging Evaluation and Evidence for Equitable Recovery (LEVER) Evaluation Incubator cohort. Selected collaborators will receive funding and technical assistance to develop or launch a randomized evaluation for one of their programs. These collaborations represent jurisdictions across the United States and demonstrate the growing enthusiasm for evidence-based policymaking.Launched in 2023, LEVER is a joint venture between J-PAL North America and Results for America. Through the Evaluation Incubator, trainings, and other program offerings, LEVER seeks to address the barriers many state and local governments face around finding and generating evidence to inform program design. LEVER offers government leaders the opportunity to learn best practices for policy evaluations and how to integrate evidence into decision-making. Since the program’s inception, more than 80 government jurisdictions have participated in LEVER offerings.J-PAL North America’s Evaluation Incubator helps collaborators turn policy-relevant research questions into well-designed randomized evaluations, generating rigorous evidence to inform pressing programmatic and policy decisions. The program also aims to build a culture of evidence use and give government partners the tools to continue generating and utilizing evidence in their day-to-day operations.In addition to funding and technical assistance, the selected state and local government collaborators will be connected with researchers from J-PAL’s network to help advance their evaluation ideas. Evaluation support will also be centered on community-engaged research practices, which emphasize collaborating with and learning from the groups most affected by the program being evaluated.Evaluation Incubator selected projectsPierce County Human Services (PCHS) in the state of Washington will evaluate two programs as part of the Evaluation Incubator. The first will examine how extending stays in a fentanyl detox program affects the successful completion of inpatient treatment and hospital utilization for individuals. “PCHS is interested in evaluating longer fentanyl detox stays to inform our funding decisions, streamline our resource utilization, and encourage additional financial commitments to address the unmet needs of individuals dealing with opioid use disorder,” says Trish Crocker, grant coordinator.The second PCHS program will evaluate the impact of providing medication and outreach services via a mobile distribution unit to individuals with opioid use disorders on program take-up and substance usage. Margo Burnison, a behavioral health manager with PCHS, says that the team is “thrilled to be partnering with J-PAL North America to dive deep into the data to inform our elected leaders on the best way to utilize available resources.”The City of Los Angeles Youth Development Department (YDD) seeks to evaluate a research-informed program: Student Engagement, Exploration, and Development in STEM (SEEDS). This intergenerational STEM mentorship program supports underrepresented middle school and college students in STEM by providing culturally responsive mentorship. The program seeks to foster these students’ STEM identity and degree attainment in higher education. YDD has been working with researchers at the University of Southern California to measure the SEEDS program’s impact, but is interested in developing a randomized evaluation to generate further evidence. Darnell Cole, professor and co-director of the Research Center for Education, Identity and Social Justice, shares his excitement about the collaboration with J-PAL: “We welcome the opportunity to measure the impact of the SEEDS program on our students’ educational experience. Rigorously testing the SEEDS program will help us improve support for STEM students, ultimately enhancing their persistence and success.”The Fort Wayne Police Department’s Hope and Recovery Team in Indiana will evaluate the impact of two programs that connect social workers with people who have experienced an overdose, or who have a mental health illness, to treatment and resources. “We believe we are on the right track in the work we are doing with the crisis intervention social worker and the recovery coach, but having an outside evaluation of both programs would be extremely helpful in understanding whether and what aspects of these programs are most effective,” says Police Captain Kevin Hunter.The County of San Diego’s Office of Evaluation, Performance and Analytics, and Planning & Development Services will engage with J-PAL staff to explore evaluation opportunities for two programs that are a part of the county’s Climate Action Plan. The Equity-Driven Tree Planting Program seeks to increase tree canopy coverage, and the Climate Smart Land Stewardship Program will encourage climate-smart agricultural practices. Ricardo Basurto-Davila, chief evaluation officer, says that “the county is dedicated to evidence-based policymaking and taking decisive action against climate change. The work with J-PAL will support us in combining these commitments to maximize the effectiveness in decreasing emissions through these programs.”J-PAL North America looks forward to working with the selected collaborators in the coming months to learn more about these promising programs, clarify our partner’s evidence goals, and design randomized evaluations to measure their impact. More

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      in Environment

      Lemelson-MIT awards 2024-25 InvenTeam grants to eight high school teams

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      The Lemelson-MIT Program has announced the 2024-25 InvenTeams — eight teams of high school students, teachers, and mentors from across the country. Each team will each receive $7,500 in grant funding and year-long support to build a technological invention to solve a problem of their own choosing. The students’ inventions are inspired by real-world problems they identified in their local communities.The InvenTeams were selected by a respected panel consisting of university professors, inventors, entrepreneurs, industry professionals, and college students. Some panel members were former InvenTeam members now working in industry. The InvenTeams are focusing on problems facing their local communities, with a goal that their inventions will have a positive impact on beneficiaries and, ultimately, improve the lives of others beyond their communities.This year’s teams are:Battle Creek Area Mathematics and Science Center (Battle Creek, Michigan)Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (Cambridge, Massachusetts)Colegio Rosa-Bell (Guaynabo, Puerto Rico)Edison High School (Edison, New Jersey)Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science (Worcester, Massachusetts)Nitro High School (Nitro, West Virginia)Southcrest Christian School (Lubbock, Texas)Ygnacio Valley High School (Concord, California)InvenTeams are comprised of students, teachers and community mentors who pursue year-long invention projects involving creative thinking, problem-solving, and hands-on learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The InvenTeams’ prototype inventions will be showcased at a technical review within their home communities in February 2025, and then again as a final prototype at EurekaFest — an invention celebration taking place June 9-11, 2025, at MIT.“The InvenTeams are focusing on solving problems that impact their local communities,” says Leigh Estabrooks, Lemelson-MIT’s invention education officer. “Teams are focusing their technological solutions — their inventions — on health and well-being, environmental issues, and safety concerns. These high school students are not just problem-solvers of tomorrow, they are problem solvers today helping to make our world healthier, greener, and safer.”This year the Lemelson-MIT Program and the InvenTeams grants initiative celebrate a series of firsts in the annual high school invention grant program. For the first time, a team from their home city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, will participate, representing the Cambridge community’s innovative spirit on a national stage. Additionally, the program welcomes the first team from Puerto Rico, highlighting the expanding reach of the InvenTeams grants initiative. The pioneering teams exemplify the diversity and creativity that fuel invention.The InvenTeams grants initiative, now in its 21st year, has enabled 18 teams of high school students to be awarded U.S. patents for their projects. Intellectual property education is combined with invention education offerings as part of the Lemelson-MIT Program’s deliberate efforts to remedy historic inequities among those who develop inventions, protect their intellectual property, and commercialize their creations. The ongoing efforts empower students from all backgrounds, equipping them with invaluable problem-solving skills that will serve them well throughout their academic journeys, professional pursuits, and personal lives. The program has worked with over 4,000 students across 304 different InvenTeams nationwide and has included:partnering with intellectual property (IP) law firms to provide pro bono legal support;collaborating with industry-leading companies that provide technical guidance and mentoring;providing professional development for teachers on invention education and IP;assisting teams with identifying resources within their communities’ innovation ecosystems to support ongoing invention efforts; andpublishing case studies and research to inform the work of invention educators and policy makers to build support for engaging students in efforts to invent solutions to real-world problems, thus fueling the innovation economy in the U.S.The Lemelson-MIT Program is a national leader in efforts to prepare the next generation of inventors and entrepreneurs, focusing on the expansion of opportunities for people to learn ways inventors find and solve problems that matter to improve lives. A commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion aims to remedy historic inequities among those who develop inventions, protect their intellectual property, and commercialize their creations.Jerome H. Lemelson, one of U.S. history’s most prolific inventors, and his wife Dorothy founded the Lemelson-MIT Program in 1994. It is funded by The Lemelson Foundation and administered by the MIT School of Engineering. For more information, contact Leigh Estabrooks.  More

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      in Environment

      “They can see themselves shaping the world they live in”

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      During the journey from the suburbs to the city, the tree canopy often dwindles down as skyscrapers rise up. A group of New England Innovation Academy students wondered why that is.“Our friend Victoria noticed that where we live in Marlborough there are lots of trees in our own backyards. But if you drive just 30 minutes to Boston, there are almost no trees,” said high school junior Ileana Fournier. “We were struck by that duality.”This inspired Fournier and her classmates Victoria Leeth and Jessie Magenyi to prototype a mobile app that illustrates Massachusetts deforestation trends for Day of AI, a free, hands-on curriculum developed by the MIT Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) initiative, headquartered in the MIT Media Lab and in collaboration with the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and MIT Open Learning. They were among a group of 20 students from New England Innovation Academy who shared their projects during the 2024 Day of AI global celebration hosted with the Museum of Science.The Day of AI curriculum introduces K-12 students to artificial intelligence. Now in its third year, Day of AI enables students to improve their communities and collaborate on larger global challenges using AI. Fournier, Leeth, and Magenyi’s TreeSavers app falls under the Telling Climate Stories with Data module, one of four new climate-change-focused lessons.“We want you to be able to express yourselves creatively to use AI to solve problems with critical-thinking skills,” Cynthia Breazeal, director of MIT RAISE, dean for digital learning at MIT Open Learning, and professor of media arts and sciences, said during this year’s Day of AI global celebration at the Museum of Science. “We want you to have an ethical and responsible way to think about this really powerful, cool, and exciting technology.”Moving from understanding to actionDay of AI invites students to examine the intersection of AI and various disciplines, such as history, civics, computer science, math, and climate change. With the curriculum available year-round, more than 10,000 educators across 114 countries have brought Day of AI activities to their classrooms and homes.The curriculum gives students the agency to evaluate local issues and invent meaningful solutions. “We’re thinking about how to create tools that will allow kids to have direct access to data and have a personal connection that intersects with their lived experiences,” Robert Parks, curriculum developer at MIT RAISE, said at the Day of AI global celebration.Before this year, first-year Jeremie Kwapong said he knew very little about AI. “I was very intrigued,” he said. “I started to experiment with ChatGPT to see how it reacts. How close can I get this to human emotion? What is AI’s knowledge compared to a human’s knowledge?”In addition to helping students spark an interest in AI literacy, teachers around the world have told MIT RAISE that they want to use data science lessons to engage students in conversations about climate change. Therefore, Day of AI’s new hands-on projects use weather and climate change to show students why it’s important to develop a critical understanding of dataset design and collection when observing the world around them.“There is a lag between cause and effect in everyday lives,” said Parks. “Our goal is to demystify that, and allow kids to access data so they can see a long view of things.”Tools like MIT App Inventor — which allows anyone to create a mobile application — help students make sense of what they can learn from data. Fournier, Leeth, and Magenyi programmed TreeSavers in App Inventor to chart regional deforestation rates across Massachusetts, identify ongoing trends through statistical models, and predict environmental impact. The students put that “long view” of climate change into practice when developing TreeSavers’ interactive maps. Users can toggle between Massachusetts’s current tree cover, historical data, and future high-risk areas.Although AI provides fast answers, it doesn’t necessarily offer equitable solutions, said David Sittenfeld, director of the Center for the Environment at the Museum of Science. The Day of AI curriculum asks students to make decisions on sourcing data, ensuring unbiased data, and thinking responsibly about how findings could be used.“There’s an ethical concern about tracking people’s data,” said Ethan Jorda, a New England Innovation Academy student. His group used open-source data to program an app that helps users track and reduce their carbon footprint.Christine Cunningham, senior vice president of STEM Learning at the Museum of Science, believes students are prepared to use AI responsibly to make the world a better place. “They can see themselves shaping the world they live in,” said Cunningham. “Moving through from understanding to action, kids will never look at a bridge or a piece of plastic lying on the ground in the same way again.”Deepening collaboration on earth and beyondThe 2024 Day of AI speakers emphasized collaborative problem solving at the local, national, and global levels.“Through different ideas and different perspectives, we’re going to get better solutions,” said Cunningham. “How do we start young enough that every child has a chance to both understand the world around them but also to move toward shaping the future?”Presenters from MIT, the Museum of Science, and NASA approached this question with a common goal — expanding STEM education to learners of all ages and backgrounds.“We have been delighted to collaborate with the MIT RAISE team to bring this year’s Day of AI celebration to the Museum of Science,” says Meg Rosenburg, manager of operations at the Museum of Science Centers for Public Science Learning. “This opportunity to highlight the new climate modules for the curriculum not only perfectly aligns with the museum’s goals to focus on climate and active hope throughout our Year of the Earthshot initiative, but it has also allowed us to bring our teams together and grow a relationship that we are very excited to build upon in the future.”Rachel Connolly, systems integration and analysis lead for NASA’s Science Activation Program, showed the power of collaboration with the example of how human comprehension of Saturn’s appearance has evolved. From Galileo’s early telescope to the Cassini space probe, modern imaging of Saturn represents 400 years of science, technology, and math working together to further knowledge.“Technologies, and the engineers who built them, advance the questions we’re able to ask and therefore what we’re able to understand,” said Connolly, research scientist at MIT Media Lab.New England Innovation Academy students saw an opportunity for collaboration a little closer to home. Emmett Buck-Thompson, Jeff Cheng, and Max Hunt envisioned a social media app to connect volunteers with local charities. Their project was inspired by Buck-Thompson’s father’s difficulties finding volunteering opportunities, Hunt’s role as the president of the school’s Community Impact Club, and Cheng’s aspiration to reduce screen time for social media users. Using MIT App Inventor, ​their combined ideas led to a prototype with the potential to make a real-world impact in their community.The Day of AI curriculum teaches the mechanics of AI, ethical considerations and responsible uses, and interdisciplinary applications for different fields. It also empowers students to become creative problem solvers and engaged citizens in their communities and online. From supporting volunteer efforts to encouraging action for the state’s forests to tackling the global challenge of climate change, today’s students are becoming tomorrow’s leaders with Day of AI.“We want to empower you to know that this is a tool you can use to make your community better, to help people around you with this technology,” said Breazeal.Other Day of AI speakers included Tim Ritchie, president of the Museum of Science; Michael Lawrence Evans, program director of the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics; Dava Newman, director of the MIT Media Lab; and Natalie Lao, executive director of the App Inventor Foundation. More

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      in Energy

      Powering the future in Mongolia

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      Nestled within the Tuul River valley and embraced by the southern Khentii Mountain Range, Ulaanbaatar (UB), Mongolia’s largest city, presents itself as an arena where nature’s forces wage an unrelenting battle against human resilience. The capital city is an icy crucible, with bone-chilling winters that plummet temperatures to an astonishing -40 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 degrees Celsius). Mongolia, often hailed with the celestial moniker of “The Land of the Eternal Blue Sky,” paradoxically succumbs to a veil of pollution and energy struggles during the winter months, obscuring the true shade of the cherished vista.

      To understand the root of these issues, MIT students from classes 22.S094 (Climate and Sustainability Systems: Decarbonizing Ulaanbaatar at Scale) and 21A.S01 (Anthro-Engineering: Decarbonization at the Million-Person Scale) visited Mongolia to conduct on-site surveys, diving into the diverse tapestry of local life as they gleaned insight from various stakeholder groups. Setting foot on Mongolian soil on a crisp day in January, they wasted no time in shaking off the weariness of their arduous 17-hour flight, promptly embarking on a waiting bus. As they traversed the vast expanse of the countryside, their eyes were captivated by snow-laden terrain.

      That is, until a disconcerting sight unfolded — thick smog, akin to ethereal pillars, permeated the cityscape ahead. These imposing plumes emanated from the colossal smokestacks of Ulaanbaatar’s coal-fired power plants, steadfastly churning electricity and heat to fuel Mongolia’s central and district energy systems. Over 93 percent of the nation’s energy comes from coal-fired power plants, where the most considerable load is caused by household consumption. Nevertheless, with nearly half of Ulaanbaatar’s population disconnected from the central heating networks, one of Mongolia’s most significant sources of pollution comes from coal-burning stoves in the residential settlements known as the ger districts. Over the past three decades, since the democratic revolution in 1990, Mongolians have grappled with escalating concerns surrounding energy provision, accessibility, and sustainability.

      Engineers who think like anthropologists

      “We find ourselves compelled to venture on-site, engaging in direct conversations with the locals, and immersing ourselves in the fabric of daily life to uncover what we don’t know,” emphasized Michael Short, professor in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and faculty lead of MIT’s NEET Climate and Sustainability Systems thread, shortly before heading to Mongolia.

      The Ulaanbaatar Project sprang from a multiyear collaboration between MIT and the National University of Mongolia (NUM). Shedding light on the matter, Professor Munkhbat Byambajav of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at NUM underscored the paramount importance of mitigating environmental pollution at an economic scale to alleviate the heavy burden borne by the people.

      Class 22.S094 is offered through MIT’s New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) program, which allows students with multidisciplinary interests to collaborate across departments within four different subject areas, or threads. In this capstone project, students consider ways to decarbonize a city like Ulaanbaatar, transitioning from burning coal briquettes to a more sustainable, energy-efficient solution, given several parameters and constraints set by the local context.

      One of the ideas students have recently explored is a thermal battery made with molten salt that can store enough energy to heat a ger for up to 12 hours with added insulation for cooling curve regulation. The Mongolian ger, meaning home, is a dome-like portable dwelling covered in felt and canvas, held together by ropes traditionally crafted of animal hair or wool. Over several semesters, students have been testing a version of their proposed idea on campus, working with a prototype that weighs around 35 pounds.

      Nathan Melenbrink, the lead instructor of NEET’s Climate and Sustainability Systems (CSS) thread, believes that the complexity of the Ulaanbaatar capstone project allows students to reject the one-way solution approach and instead consider challenges with a nonprescriptive mindset. The uniqueness of the CSS thread is that students are asked to build on the previous findings from the past cohort and iterate on their designs each year. This workflow has allowed the project to mature and advance in ways that may not be feasible within a semester schedule. When asked how the recent trip impacted the ongoing research back on campus, Melenbrink states, “In light of the recent trip to Mongolia, students are beginning to see the impact of cultural immersion and social awareness leveraging the technical scope and rigor of their work.”

      Course 21A.S01, taught by Professor Manduhai Buyandelger of the MIT Anthropology Section, proved instrumental in deepening students’ understanding of the intricate dynamics at play. She asks, “The prototype works in the lab, but does it work in real life once you factor in the challenges in the larger structures of delivery, production, and implementation in Mongolia?”

      This recognition of the social dimensions of engineering permeated the early stages of the UB project, engaging all participants, including students from MIT and NUM, professionals residing in Mongolia, and local nongovernmental organizations, fostering what Buyandelger aptly describes as “a collaboration on multiple scales: trans-disciplinary and transcontinental.” Lauren Bonilla, co-lecturer for the anthropology course, was crucial in devising the first onsite trip to Mongolia. Drawing upon her extensive ethnographic research in Mongolia that spans decades, Bonilla remarks, “To me, engineering is a highly social discipline.” She further stresses how anthro-engineering elevates the social dimensions of engineering by critically questioning the framing of problems and solutions, stating, “It draws on anthropological insights and methods, like ethnography, to bring a human face to the users of a technology and adds complexity and nuance to the social constraints that limit designs.”

      Making of khorkhog

      Amidst the frigid atmosphere, a traditional Mongolian ger stands in front of the Nuclear Science Laboratory at the National University of Mongolia, emitting warm steam from its roof. The faculty and students of NUM organize a welcoming event inside the ger, inviting everyone to partake in a khorkhog cookout. Earlier that week, a remark from the Mongolian energy representative stood out during one of the presentations: “We need powerful heat. Solar is not enough, and electricity is not enough. Mongolians need fire,” he had emphasized.

      Indeed, the culinary delight known as khorkhog demands the relentless embrace of scorching flames. The process involves a large metal jug, stones, fire, and lamb. With skillful precision, the volunteer chef places the fire-heated stones and large pieces of lamb into the cooking container, triggering a cascade of steam that fills the ger, accompanied by the sounds of sizzling and hissing. Everyone waits patiently as the cook carefully inspects the dish, keenly listening for signs of readiness. And when the time comes, a feast is shared among all, complemented by steam-cooked potatoes, freshly sliced onions, and vegetables. In this moment, the presence of fire symbolizes a profound connection with the heart of Mongolian culture, evoking a deep resonance among the gathered crowd as they partake in this cherished staple meal.

      The distance between two points

      Familiar faces form a grid on the computer screen as the standing meeting between the students in Massachusetts and Ulaanbaatar begins. Sharing the morning (evening in Mongolia) for updates has been a critical effort by both sides to stay engaged and make decisions together. NEET CSS students in Cambridge proceeded to share their latest findings.

      Lucy Nester, a nuclear science and engineering major, has been diligently working on developing a high-efficiency electrical heating solution for individual consumers. Her primary focus is leveraging the discounted electricity rates available in the ger districts and utilize existing infrastructure. Recognizing the importance of maximum flexibility in heating the brick, Nester emphasizes the “no one-size-fits-all” solution. She shares the results of her test trials, which involve both inductive and resistive heating methods, outlining the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Despite her limited experience in electrical engineering and circuit building, Nester has impressively overcome the steep learning curve. She enthusiastically describes her UB trip as “one of the most remarkable experiences I’ve had during my time at MIT.”

      Darshdeep Grewal, a dedicated materials science and engineering major with a strong passion for data science and computation, has been diligently conducting research on convection heating using COMSOL Multiphysics. In his investigation, Grewal explores the correlation between air temperature and heating, investigates the impact of convecting air arrangement on the heating process, and examines the conditions that may contribute to overheating. Leveraging his expertise in computational workflows, Grewal presents an impressive collection of heatmap simulations derived from the extensive data accumulated by his team throughout the project. Recognizing the immense value of these simulations in modeling complex scenarios, he highlights the importance of running experiments concurrently with simulations to ensure accurate calibration of results, stating, “It’s important to stay rooted in reality.”

      Arina Khotimsky, another materials science and engineering major, has actively engaged in NEET’s Climate and Sustainability Systems thread since her sophomore year. Balancing the demands of her final semester at MIT and the upcoming review of 22.S094, Khotimsky reveals how she has seamlessly integrated her project involvement into her energy studies minor. Reflecting on her journey, she remarks, “Working on the Ulaanbaatar project has taught me the significance of taking local context into account while suggesting solutions as an engineer.” Khotimsky has been tirelessly iterating and refining the insulation box prototype, which holds the thermal battery and controls the rate at which the battery releases heat. In addition, the on-site observations have unveiled another design challenge — ensuring the insulation box functions as a secure and dependable means of transportation. 

      To “engineer” means to contrive through one’s deliberate use of skills. What confronted the UB Project team on site was not the limitations of skill or technology, but the real-world constraints often amiss in the early equation: the people and their everyday lives. With over 6,195 miles of distance between the two groups, it takes more than just dedication to make a collaboration blossom. That may be the desire for a positive impact. Moreover, it may be the goal of cultivating a healthier relationship with energy that spans a million-person scale. No matter where you are, there is no one solution to the complex story of energy. This progressive realization brings the two teams together every two weeks in virtual space, bridging the distance between the two points.  More

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      in Energy

      An education in climate change

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      Several years ago, Christopher Knittel’s father, then a math teacher, shared a mailing he had received at his high school. When he opened the packet, alarm bells went off for Knittel, who is the George P. Shultz Professor of Energy Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the deputy director for policy at the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI). “It was a slickly produced package of materials purporting to show how to teach climate change,” he says. “In reality, it was a thinly veiled attempt to kindle climate change denial.”

      Knittel was especially concerned to learn that this package had been distributed to schools nationwide. “Many teachers in search of information on climate change might use this material because they are not in a position to judge its scientific validity,” says Knittel, who is also the faculty director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR). “I decided that MIT, which is committed to true science, was in the perfect position to develop its own climate change curriculum.”

      Today, Knittel is spearheading the Climate Action Through Education (CATE) program, a curriculum rolling out in pilot form this year in more than a dozen Massachusetts high schools, and eventually in high schools across the United States. To spur its broad adoption, says Knittel, the CATE curriculum features a unique suite of attributes: the creation of climate-based lessons for a range of disciplines beyond science, adherence to state-based education standards to facilitate integration into established curricula, material connecting climate change impacts to specific regions, and opportunities for students to explore climate solutions.

      CATE aims to engage both students and teachers in a subject that can be overwhelming. “We will be honest about the threats posed by climate change but also give students a sense of agency that they can do something about this,” says Knittel. “And for the many teachers — especially non-science teachers — starved for knowledge and background material, CATE offers resources to give them confidence to implement our curriculum.”

      Partnering with teachers

      From the outset, CATE sought guidance and hands-on development help from educators. Project manager Aisling O’Grady surveyed teachers to learn about their experiences teaching about climate and to identify the kinds of resources they lacked. She networked with MIT’s K-12 education experts and with Antje Danielson, MITEI director of education, “bouncing ideas off of them to shape the direction of our effort,” she says.

      O’Grady gained two critical insights from this process: “I realized that we needed practicing high school teachers as curriculum developers and that they had to represent different subject areas, because climate change is inherently interdisciplinary,” she says. This echoes the philosophy behind MITEI’s Energy Studies minor, she remarks, which includes classes from MIT’s different schools. “While science helps us understand and find solutions for climate change, it touches so many other areas, from economics, policy, environmental justice and politics, to history and literature.”

      In line with this thinking, CATE recruited Massachusetts teachers representing key subject areas in the high school curriculum: Amy Block, a full-time math teacher, and Lisa Borgatti, a full-time science teacher, both at the Governor’s Academy in Byfield; and Kathryn Teissier du Cros, a full-time language arts teacher at Newton North High School.

      The fourth member of this cohort, Michael Kozuch, is a full-time history teacher at Newton South High School, where he has worked for 24 years. Kozuch became engaged with environmental issues 15 years ago, introducing an elective in sustainability at Newton South. He serves on the coordinating committee for the Climate Action Network at the Massachusetts Teachers Association. He also is president of Earth Day Boston and organized Boston’s 50th anniversary celebration of Earth Day. When he learned that MIT was seeking teachers to help develop a climate education curriculum, he immediately applied.

      “I’ve heard time and again from teachers across the state that they want to incorporate climate change into the curriculum but don’t know how to make it work, given lesson plans and schedules geared toward preparing students for specific tests,” says Kozuch. “I knew that for a climate curriculum to succeed, it had to be part of an integrated approach.”

      Using climate as a lens

      Over the course of a year, Kozuch and fellow educators created units that fit into their pre-existing syllabi but were woven through with relevant climate change themes. Kozuch already had some experience in this vein, describing the role of the Industrial Revolution in triggering the use of fossil fuels and the greenhouse gas emissions that resulted. For CATE, Kozuch explored additional ways of shifting focus in covering U.S. history. There are, for instance, lessons looking at westward expansion in terms of land use, expulsion of Indigenous people, and environmental justice, and at the Baby Boom period and the emergence of the environmental movement.

      In English/language arts, there are units dedicated to explaining terms used by scientists and policymakers, such as “anthropogenic,” as well as lessons devoted to climate change fiction and to student-originated sustainability projects.

      The science and math classes work independently but also dovetail. For instance, there are science lessons that demystify the greenhouse effect, utilizing experiments to track fossil fuel emissions, which link to math lessons that calculate and graph the average rate of change of global carbon emissions. To make these classes even more relevant, there are labs where students compare carbon emissions in Massachusetts to those of a neighboring state, and where they determine the environmental and economic costs of plugging in electric devices in their own homes.

      Throughout this curriculum-shaping process, O’Grady and the teachers sought feedback from MIT faculty from a range of disciplines, including David McGee, associate professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. With the help of CATE undergraduate researcher Heidi Li ’22, the team held a focus group with the Sustainable Energy Alliance, an undergraduate student club. In spring 2022, CATE convened a professional development workshop in collaboration with the Massachusetts Teachers Association Climate Action Network, Earth Day Boston, and MIT’s Office of Government and Community Relations, sponsored by the Beker Foundation, to evaluate 15 discrete CATE lessons. One of the workshop participants, Gary Smith, a teacher from St. John’s Preparatory School in Danvers, Massachusetts, signed on as a volunteer science curriculum developer.

      “We had a diverse pool of teachers who thought the lessons were fantastic, but among their suggestions noted that their student cohorts included new English speakers, who needed simpler language and more pictures,” says O’Grady. “This was extremely useful to us, and we revised the curriculum because we want to reach students at every level of learning.”

      Reaching all the schools

      Now, the CATE curriculum is in the hands of a cohort of Massachusetts teachers. Each of these educators will test one or more of the lessons and lab activities over the next year, checking in regularly with MIT partners to report on their classroom experiences. The CATE team is building a Climate Education Resource Network of MIT graduate students, postdocs, and research staff who can answer teachers’ specific climate questions and help them find additional resources or datasets. Additionally, teachers will have the opportunity to attend two in-person cohort meetings and be paired with graduate student “climate advisors.”

      In spring 2023, in honor of Earth Day, O’Grady and Knittel want to bring CATE first adopters — high school teachers, students, and their families — to campus. “We envision professors giving mini lectures, youth climate groups discussing how to get involved in local actions, and our team members handing out climate change packets to students to spark conversations with their families at home,” says O’Grady.

      By creating a positive experience around their curriculum in these pilot schools, the CATE team hopes to promote its dissemination to many more Massachusetts schools in 2023. The team plans on enhancing lessons, offering more paths to integration in high school studies, and creating a companion resource website for teachers. Knittel wants to establish footholds in school after school, in Massachusetts and beyond.

      “I plan to spend a lot of my time convincing districts and states to adopt,” he says. “If one teacher tells another that the curriculum is useful, with touchpoints in different disciplines, that’s how we get a foot in the door.”

      Knittel is not shying away from places where “climate change is a politicized topic.” He hopes to team up with universities in states where there might be resistance to including such lessons in schools to develop the curriculum. Although his day job involves computing household-level carbon footprints, determining the relationship between driving behavior and the price of gasoline, and promoting wise climate policy, Knittel plans to push CATE as far as he can. “I want this curriculum to be adopted by everybody — that’s my goal,” he says.

      “In one sense, I’m not the natural person for this job,” he admits. “But I share the mission and passion of MITEI and CEEPR for decarbonizing our economy in ways that are socially equitable and efficient, and part of doing that is educating Americans about the actual costs and consequences of climate change.”

      The CATE program is sponsored by MITEI, CEEPR, and the MIT Vice President for Research.

      This article appears in the Winter 2023 issue of Energy Futures, the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative. More

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      Shrinky Dinks, nail polish, and smelly bacteria

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      In a lab on the fourth floor of MIT’s Building 56, a group of Massachusetts high school students gathered around a device that measures conductivity.

      Vincent Nguyen, 15, from Saugus, thought of the times the material on their sample electrode flaked off the moment they took it out of the oven. Or how the electrode would fold weirdly onto itself. The big fails were kind of funny, but discouraging. The students had worked for a month, experimenting with different materials, and 17-year-old Brianna Tong of Malden wondered if they’d finally gotten it right: Would their electrode work well enough to power a microbial fuel cell?

      The students secured their electrode with alligator clips, someone hit start, and the teens watched anxiously as the device searched for even the faintest electrical current.

      Capturing electrons from bacteria

      Last July, Tong, Nguyen, and six other students from Malden Catholic High School commuted between the lab of MIT chemical engineer Ariel L. Furst and their school’s chemistry lab. Their goal was to fashion electrodes for low-cost microbial fuel cells — miniature bioreactors that generate small amounts of electricity by capturing electrons transferred from living microbes. These devices can double as electrochemical sensors.

      Furst, the Paul M. Cook Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering, uses a mix of electrochemistry, microbial engineering, and materials science to address challenges in human health and clean energy. “The goal of all of our projects is to increase sustainability, clean energy, and health equity globally,” she says.

      Electrochemical sensors are powerful, sensitive detection and measurement tools. Typically, their electrodes need to be built in precisely engineered environments. “Thinking about ways of making devices without needing a cleanroom is important for coming up with inexpensive devices that can be deployed in low-resource settings under non-ideal conditions,” Furst says.

      For 17-year-old Angelina Ang of Everett, the project illuminated the significance of “coming together to problem-solve for a healthier and more sustainable earth,” she says. “It made me realize that we hold the answers to fix our dying planet.”

      With the help of a children’s toy called Shrinky Dinks, carbon-based materials, nail polish, and a certain smelly bacterium, the students got — literally — a trial-by-fire introduction to the scientific method. At one point, one of their experimental electrodes burst into flames. Other results were more promising.

      The students took advantage of the electrical properties of a bacterium — Shewanella oneidensis — that’s been called nature’s microscopic power plant. As part of their metabolism, Shewanella oneidensis generate electricity by oxidizing organic matter. In essence, they spit out electrons. Put enough together, and you get a few milliamps.

      To build bacteria-friendly electrodes, one of the first things the students did was culture Shewanella. They learned how to pour a growth medium into petri dishes where the reddish, normally lake-living bacteria could multiply. The microbes, Furst notes, are a little stinky, like cabbage. “But we think they’re really cool,” she says.

      With the right engineering, Shewanella can produce electric current when they detect toxins in water or soil. They could be used for bioremediation of wastewater. Low-cost versions could be useful for areas with limited or no access to reliable electricity and clean water.

      Next-generation chemists

      The Malden Catholic-MIT program resulted from a fluke encounter between Furst and a Malden Catholic parent.

      Mary-Margaret O’Donnell-Zablocki, then a medicinal chemist at a Kendall Square biotech startup, met Furst through a mutual friend. She asked Furst if she’d consider hosting high school chemistry students in her lab for the summer.

      Furst was intrigued. She traces her own passion for science to a program she’d happened upon between her junior and senior years in high school in St. Louis. The daughter of a software engineer and a businesswoman, Furst was casting around for potential career interests when she came across a summer program that enlisted scientists in academia and private research to introduce high school students and teachers to aspects of the scientific enterprise.

      “That’s when I realized that research is not like a lab class where there’s an expected outcome,” Furst recalls. “It’s so much cooler than that.”

      Using startup funding from an MIT Energy Initiative seed grant, Furst developed a curriculum with Malden Catholic chemistry teacher Seamus McGuire, and students were invited to apply. In addition to Tong, Ang, and Nguyen, participants included Chengxiang Lou, 18, from China; Christian Ogata, 14, of Wakefield; Kenneth Ramirez, 17, of Everett; Isaac Toscano, 17, of Medford; and MaryKatherine Zablocki, 15, of Revere and Wakefield. O’Donnell-Zablocki was surprised — and pleased — when her daughter applied to the program and was accepted.

      Furst notes that women are still underrepresented in chemical engineering. She was particularly excited to mentor young women through the program.

      A conductive ink

      The students were charged with identifying materials that had high conductivity, low resistance, were a bit soluble, and — with the help of a compatible “glue” — were able to stick to a substrate.

      Furst showed the Malden Catholic crew Shrinky Dinks — a common polymer popularized in the 1970s as a craft material that, when heated in a toaster oven, shrinks to a third of its size and becomes thicker and more rigid. Electrodes based on Shrinky Dinks would cost pennies, making it an ideal, inexpensive material for microbial fuel cells that could monitor, for instance, soil health in low- and middle-income countries.

      “Right now, monitoring soil health is problematic,” Furst says. “You have to collect a sample and bring it back to the lab to analyze in expensive equipment. But if we have these little devices that cost a couple of bucks each, we can monitor soil health remotely.”

      After a crash course in conductive carbon-based inks and solvent glues, the students went off to Malden Catholic to figure out what materials they wanted to try.

      Tong rattled them off: carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers, graphite powder, activated carbon. Potential solvents to help glue the carbon to the Shrinky Dinks included nail polish, corn syrup, and embossing ink, to name a few. They tested and retested. When they hit a dead end, they revised their hypotheses.

      They tried using a 3D printed stencil to daub the ink-glue mixture onto the Shrinky Dinks. They hand-painted them. They tried printing stickers. They worked with little squeegees. They tried scooping and dragging the material. Some of their electro-materials either flaked off or wouldn’t stick in the heating process.

      “Embossing ink never dried after baking the Shrinky Dink,” Ogata recalls. “In fact, it’s probably still liquid! And corn syrup had a tendency to boil. Seeing activated carbon ignite or corn syrup boiling in the convection oven was quite the spectacle.”

      “After the electrode was out of the oven and cooled down, we would check the conductivity,” says Tong, who plans to pursue a career in science. “If we saw there was a high conductivity, we got excited and thought those materials worked.”

      The moment of truth came in Furst’s MIT lab, where the students had access to more sophisticated testing equipment. Would their electrodes conduct electricity?

      Many of them didn’t. Tong says, “At first, we were sad, but then Dr. Furst told us that this is what science is, testing repeatedly and sometimes not getting the results we wanted.” Lou agrees. “If we just copy the data left by other scholars and don’t collect and figure it out by ourselves, then it is difficult to be a qualified researcher,” he says.

      Some of the students plan to continue the project one afternoon a week at MIT and as an independent study at Malden Catholic. The long-term goal is to create a field-based soil sensor that employs a bacterium like Shewanella.

      By chance, the students’ very first electrode — made of graphite powder ink and nail polish glue — generated the most current. One of the team’s biggest surprises was how much better black nail polish worked than clear nail polish. It turns out black nail polish contains iron-based pigment — a conductor. The unexpected win took some of the sting out of the failures.

      “They learned a very hard lesson: Your results might be awesome, and things are exciting, but then nothing else might work. And that’s totally fine,” Furst says.

      This article appears in the Winter 2023 issue of Energy Futures, the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative. More

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      Fusion’s newest ambassador

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      When high school senior Tuba Balta emailed MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) Director Dennis Whyte in February, she was not certain she would get a response. As part of her final semester at BASIS Charter School, in Washington, she had been searching unsuccessfully for someone to sponsor an internship in fusion energy, a topic that had recently begun to fascinate her because “it’s not figured out yet.” Time was running out if she was to include the internship as part of her senior project.

      “I never say ‘no’ to a student,” says Whyte, who felt she could provide a youthful perspective on communicating the science of fusion to the general public.

      Posters explaining the basics of fusion science were being considered for the walls of a PSFC lounge area, a space used to welcome visitors who might not know much about the center’s focus: What is fusion? What is plasma? What is magnetic confinement fusion? What is a tokamak?

      Why couldn’t Balta be tasked with coming up with text for these posters, written specifically to be understandable, even intriguing, to her peers?

      Meeting the team

      Although most of the internship would be virtual, Balta visited MIT to meet Whyte and others who would guide her progress. A tour of the center showed her the past and future of the PSFC, one lab area revealing on her left the remains of the decades-long Alcator C-Mod tokamak and on her right the testing area for new superconducting magnets crucial to SPARC, designed in collaboration with MIT spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

      With Whyte, graduate student Rachel Bielajew, and Outreach Coordinator Paul Rivenberg guiding her content and style, Balta focused on one of eight posters each week. Her school also required her to keep a weekly blog of her progress, detailing what she was learning in the process of creating the posters.

      Finding her voice

      Balta admits that she was not looking forward to this part of the school assignment. But she decided to have fun with it, adopting an enthusiastic and conversational tone, as if she were sitting with friends around a lunch table. Each week, she was able to work out what she was composing for her posters and her final project by trying it out on her friends in the blog.

      Her posts won praise from her schoolmates for their clarity, as when in Week 3 she explained the concept of turbulence as it relates to fusion research, sending her readers to their kitchen faucets to experiment with the pressure and velocity of running tap water.

      The voice she found through her blog served her well during her final presentation about fusion at a school expo for classmates, parents, and the general public.

      “Most people are intimidated by the topic, which they shouldn’t be,” says Balta. “And it just made me happy to help other people understand it.”

      Her favorite part of the internship? “Getting to talk to people whose papers I was reading and ask them questions. Because when it comes to fusion, you can’t just look it up on Google.”

      Awaiting her first year at the University of Chicago, Balta reflects on the team spirit she experienced in communicating with researchers at the PSFC.

      “I think that was one of my big takeaways,” she says, “that you have to work together. And you should, because you’re always going to be missing some piece of information; but there’s always going to be somebody else who has that piece, and we can all help each other out.” More

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      MIT engineers introduce the Oreometer

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      When you twist open an Oreo cookie to get to the creamy center, you’re mimicking a standard test in rheology — the study of how a non-Newtonian material flows when twisted, pressed, or otherwise stressed. MIT engineers have now subjected the sandwich cookie to rigorous materials tests to get to the center of a tantalizing question: Why does the cookie’s cream stick to just one wafer when twisted apart?

      “There’s the fascinating problem of trying to get the cream to distribute evenly between the two wafers, which turns out to be really hard,” says Max Fan, an undergraduate in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.

      In pursuit of an answer, the team subjected cookies to standard rheology tests in the lab and found that no matter the flavor or amount of stuffing, the cream at the center of an Oreo almost always sticks to one wafer when twisted open. Only for older boxes of cookies does the cream sometimes separate more evenly between both wafers.

      The researchers also measured the torque required to twist open an Oreo, and found it to be similar to the torque required to turn a doorknob and about 1/10th what’s needed to twist open a bottlecap. The cream’s failure stress — i.e. the force per area required to get the cream to flow, or deform — is twice that of cream cheese and peanut butter, and about the same magnitude as mozzarella cheese. Judging from the cream’s response to stress, the team classifies its texture as “mushy,” rather than brittle, tough, or rubbery.

      So, why does the cookie’s cream glom to one side rather than splitting evenly between both? The manufacturing process may be to blame.

      “Videos of the manufacturing process show that they put the first wafer down, then dispense a ball of cream onto that wafer before putting the second wafer on top,” says Crystal Owens, an MIT mechanical engineering PhD candidate who studies the properties of complex fluids. “Apparently that little time delay may make the cream stick better to the first wafer.”

      The team’s study isn’t simply a sweet diversion from bread-and-butter research; it’s also an opportunity to make the science of rheology accessible to others. To that end, the researchers have designed a 3D-printable “Oreometer” — a simple device that firmly grasps an Oreo cookie and uses pennies and rubber bands to control the twisting force that progressively twists the cookie open. Instructions for the tabletop device can be found here.

      The new study, “On Oreology, the fracture and flow of ‘milk’s favorite cookie,’” appears today in Kitchen Flows, a special issue of the journal Physics of Fluids. It was conceived of early in the Covid-19 pandemic, when many scientists’ labs were closed or difficult to access. In addition to Owens and Fan, co-authors are mechanical engineering professors Gareth McKinley and A. John Hart.

      Confection connection

      A standard test in rheology places a fluid, slurry, or other flowable material onto the base of an instrument known as a rheometer. A parallel plate above the base can be lowered onto the test material. The plate is then twisted as sensors track the applied rotation and torque.

      Owens, who regularly uses a laboratory rheometer to test fluid materials such as 3D-printable inks, couldn’t help noting a similarity with sandwich cookies. As she writes in the new study:

      “Scientifically, sandwich cookies present a paradigmatic model of parallel plate rheometry in which a fluid sample, the cream, is held between two parallel plates, the wafers. When the wafers are counter-rotated, the cream deforms, flows, and ultimately fractures, leading to separation of the cookie into two pieces.”

      While Oreo cream may not appear to possess fluid-like properties, it is considered a “yield stress fluid” — a soft solid when unperturbed that can start to flow under enough stress, the way toothpaste, frosting, certain cosmetics, and concrete do.

      Curious as to whether others had explored the connection between Oreos and rheology, Owens found mention of a 2016 Princeton University study in which physicists first reported that indeed, when twisting Oreos by hand, the cream almost always came off on one wafer.

      “We wanted to build on this to see what actually causes this effect and if we could control it if we mounted the Oreos carefully onto our rheometer,” she says.

      Play video

      Cookie twist

      In an experiment that they would repeat for multiple cookies of various fillings and flavors, the researchers glued an Oreo to both the top and bottom plates of a rheometer and applied varying degrees of torque and angular rotation, noting the values  that successfully twisted each cookie apart. They plugged the measurements into equations to calculate the cream’s viscoelasticity, or flowability. For each experiment, they also noted the cream’s “post-mortem distribution,” or where the cream ended up after twisting open.

      In all, the team went through about 20 boxes of Oreos, including regular, Double Stuf, and Mega Stuf levels of filling, and regular, dark chocolate, and “golden” wafer flavors. Surprisingly, they found that no matter the amount of cream filling or flavor, the cream almost always separated onto one wafer.

      “We had expected an effect based on size,” Owens says. “If there was more cream between layers, it should be easier to deform. But that’s not actually the case.”

      Curiously, when they mapped each cookie’s result to its original position in the box, they noticed the cream tended to stick to the inward-facing wafer: Cookies on the left side of the box twisted such that the cream ended up on the right wafer, whereas cookies on the right side separated with cream mostly on the left wafer. They suspect this box distribution may be a result of post-manufacturing environmental effects, such as heating or jostling that may cause cream to peel slightly away from the outer wafers, even before twisting.

      The understanding gained from the properties of Oreo cream could potentially be applied to the design of other complex fluid materials.

      “My 3D printing fluids are in the same class of materials as Oreo cream,” she says. “So, this new understanding can help me better design ink when I’m trying to print flexible electronics from a slurry of carbon nanotubes, because they deform in almost exactly the same way.”

      As for the cookie itself, she suggests that if the inside of Oreo wafers were more textured, the cream might grip better onto both sides and split more evenly when twisted.

      “As they are now, we found there’s no trick to twisting that would split the cream evenly,” Owens concludes.

      This research was supported, in part, by the MIT UROP program and by the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program. More

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      Nurturing human communities and natural ecosystems

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      When she was in 7th grade, Heidi Li and the five other members of the Oyster Gardening Club cultivated hundreds of oysters to help repopulate the Chesapeake Bay. On the day they released the oysters into the bay, the event attracted TV journalists and local officials, including the governor. The attention opened the young Li’s eyes to the ways that a seemingly small effort in her local community could have a real-world impact.

      “I got to see firsthand how we can make change at a grassroots level and how that impacts where we are,” she says.

      Growing up in Howard County, Maryland, Li was constantly surrounded by nature. Her family made frequent trips to the Chesapeake Bay, as it reminded them of her parent’s home in Shandong, China. Li worked to bridge the cultural gap between parents, who grew up in China, and their children, who grew up in the U.S., and attended Chinese school every Sunday for 12 years. These experiences instilled in her a community-oriented mindset, which Li brought with her to MIT, where she now majors in materials science and engineering.

      During her first year, Li pursued a microbiology research project through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She studied microbes in aquatic environments, analyzing how the cleanliness of water impacted immunity and behavioral changes of the marine bacteria.

      The experience led her to consider the ways environmental policy affected sustainability efforts. She began applying the problem to energy, asking herself questions such as, “How can you take this specific economic principle and apply it to energy? What has energy policy looked like in the past and how can we tailor that to apply to our current energy system?”

      To explore the intersection of policy and energy, Li participated in the Roosevelt Project, through the Center of Energy and Environmental Policy Research, during the summer after her junior year. The project used case studies targeting specific communities in vulnerable areas to propose methods for a more sustainable future. Li focused on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, evaluating the efficiency of an energy transition from natural gas and fossil fuels to carbon-capture, which would mean redistributing the carbon dioxide produced by the coal industry. After traveling to Pittsburgh and interviewing stakeholders in the area, Li watched as local community leaders created physical places for citizens to share their ideas and opinions on the energy transition

      “I watched community leaders create a safe space for people from the surrounding town to share their ideas for entrepreneurship. I saw how important community is and how to create change at a grassroots level,” she says.

      In the summer of 2021, Li pursued an internship through the energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, where she looked at technologies that could potentially help with the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Her job was to make sure the technology could be implemented efficiently and cost-effectively, optimizing the resources available to the surrounding area. The project allowed Li to engage with industry-based efforts to chart and analyze the technological advancements for various decarbonization scenarios. She hopes to continue looking at both the local, community-based, and external, industry-based, inputs on how economic policy would affect stakeholders.

      On campus, Li is the current president of the Sustainable Energy Alliance (SEA), where she aims to make students more conscious about climate change and their impact on the environment. During summer of her sophomore year, Li chaired a sustainability hackathon for over 200 high school students, where she designed and led the “Protecting Climate Refugees” and “Tackling Environmental Injustice” challenges to inspire students to think about humanitarian efforts for protecting frontline communities.

      “The whole goal of this is to empower students to think about solutions for themselves. Empowering students is really important to show them they can make change and inspire hope in themselves and the people around them,” she says.

      Li also hosted and produced “Open SEAcrets,” a podcast designed to engage MIT students with topics surrounding energy sustainability and provide them with the opportunity to share their opinions on the subject. She sees the podcast as a platform to raise awareness about energy, climate change, and environmental policy, while also inspiring a sense of community with listeners.

      When she is not in the classroom or the lab, Li relaxes by playing volleyball. She joined the Volleyball Club during her first year at MIT, though she has been playing since she was 12. The sport allows her to not only relieve stress, but also have conversations with both undergrads and graduate students, who bring different their backgrounds, interests, and experiences to conversations. The sport has also taught Li about teamwork, trust, and the importance of community in ways that her other experience doesn’t.

      Looking ahead, Li is currently working on a UROP project, called Climate Action Through Education (CATE), that designs climate change curriculum for K-12 grades and aims to show how climate change and energy are integral to peoples’ daily lives. Seeing the energy transition as an interdisciplinary problem, she wants to educate students about the problems of climate change and sustainability using perspectives from math, science, history, and psychology to name a few areas.

      But above all, Li wants to empower younger generations to develop solution-minded approaches to environmentalism. She hopes to give local communities a voice in policy implementation, with the end goal of a more sustainable future for all.

      “Finding a community you really thrive in will allow you to push yourself and be the best version of yourself you can be. I want to take this mindset and create spaces for people and establish and instill this sense of community,” she says. More