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      in Environment

      Putting public service into practice

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

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

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

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

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

      “There’s a lot more out there”

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Working with “all stars”

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

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

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

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

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

      Balancing supply and demand

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

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

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

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

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

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      in Energy

      Ms. Nuclear Energy is winning over nuclear skeptics

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

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

      Kaylee Cunningham: Dispelling myths and winning over skeptics

      A theater and science nerd

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

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

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

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

      Merging nuclear engineering and computer science

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

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

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

      The activism continues

      Simultaneously, Cunningham is determined to keep her activism going.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      in Energy

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

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

      Serena Patel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Rameen Hayat Malik

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Ethan Harrison

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      in Environment

      Dyanna Jaye: Bringing the urgency of organizing to climate policy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      A foundation in organizing

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

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

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

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

      On the other side, crafting policy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      in Environment

      Q&A: Steven Gonzalez on Indigenous futurist science fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      in Environment

      MIT at the 2023 Venice Biennale

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      The Venice Architecture Biennale, the world’s largest and most visited exhibition focusing on architecture, is once again featuring work by many MIT faculty, students, and alumni. On view through Nov. 26, the 2023 biennale, curated by Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic, and novelist Lesley Lokko, is showcasing projects responding to the theme of “The Laboratory of Change.”

      Architecture and Planning and curator of the previous Venice Biennale. “Our students, faculty, and alumni have responded to the speculative theme with innovative projects at a range of scales and in varied media.”

      Below are descriptions of MIT-related projects and activities.

      MIT faculty participants

      Xavi Laida Aguirre, assistant professor of architecture

      Project: Everlasting Plastics

      Project description: SPACES, a nonprofit alternative art organization based in Cleveland, Ohio, and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs are behind the U.S. Pavilion’s exhibition at this year’s biennale. The theme, Everlasting Plastics, provides a platform for artists and designers to engage audiences in reframing the overabundance of plastic detritus in our waterways, landfills, and streets as a rich resource. Aguirre’s installation covers two rooms and holds a series of partial scenographies examining indoor proofing materials such as coatings, rubbers, gaskets, bent aluminum, silicone, foam, cement board, and beveled edges.

      Yolande Daniels, associate professor of architecture

      Project: The BLACK City Astrolabe: A Constellation of African Diasporic Women

      Project description: From the multiple displacements of race and gender, enter “The BLACK City Astrolabe,” a space-time field comprised of a 3D map and a 24-hour cycle of narratives that reorder the forces of subjugation, devaluation, and displacement through the spaces and events of African diasporic women. The diaspora map traces the flows of descendants of Africa (whether voluntary or forced) atop the visible tension between the mathematical regularity of meridians of longitude and the biases of international date lines.

      In this moment we are running out of time. The meridians and timeline decades are indexed to an infinite conical projection metered in decades. It structures both the diaspora map and timeline and serves as a threshold to project future structures and events. “The BLACK City Astrolabe” is a vehicle to proactively contemplate things that have happened, that are happening, and that will happen. Yesterday, a “Black” woman went to the future, and here she is.

      Mark Jarzombek, professor of architecture

      Project: Kishkindha NY

      Project description: “Kishkindha NY (Office of (Un)Certainty Research: Mark Jarzombek and Vikramaditya Parakash)” is inspired by an imagined forest-city as described in the ancient Indian text the Ramayana. It comes into being not through the limitations of human agency, but through a multi-species creature that destroys and rebuilds. It is exhibited as a video (Space, Time, Existence) and as a special dance performance.

      Ana Miljački, professor of architecture

      Team: Ana Miljački, professor of architecture and director of Critical Broadcasting Lab, MIT; Ous Abou Ras, MArch candidate; Julian Geltman, MArch; Recording and Design, faculty of Dramatic Arts, Belgrade; Calvin Zhong, MArch candidate. Sound design and production: Pavle Dinulović, assistant professor, Department of Sound Recording and Design, University of Arts in Belgrade.

      Collaborators: Melika Konjičanin, researcher, faculty of architecture, Sarajevo; Ana Martina Bakić, assistant professor, head of department of drawing and visual design, faculty of architecture, Zagreb; Jelica Jovanović, Grupa Arhitekata, Belgrade; Andrew Lawler, Belgrade; Sandro Đukić, CCN Images, Zagreb; Other Tomorrows, Boston.

      Project: The Pilgrimage/Pionirsko hodočašće

      Project description:  The artifacts that constitute Yugoslavia’s socialist architectural heritage, and especially those instrumental in the ideological wiring of several postwar generations for anti-fascism and inclusive living, have been subject to many forms of local and global political investment in forgetting their meaning, as well as to vandalism. The “Pilgrimage” synthesizes “memories” from Yugoslavian childhood visits to myriad postwar anti-fascist memorial monuments and offers them in a shifting and spatial multi-channel video presentation accompanied by a nonlinear documentary soundscape, presenting thus anti-fascism and unity as political and activist positions available (and necessary) today, for the sake of the future. Supported by: MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST) Mellon Faculty Grant.

      Adèle Naudé Santos, professor of architecture, planning, and urban design; and Mohamad Nahleh, lecturer in architecture and urbanism; in collaboration with the Beirut Urban Lab at the American University of Beirut

      MIT research team: Ghida El Bsat, Joude Mabsout, Sarin Gacia Vosgerichian, Lasse Rau

      Project: Housing as Infrastructure

      Project description: On Aug. 4, 2020, an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut exploded, resulting in the deaths of more than 200 people and the devastation of port-adjacent neighborhoods. With over 200,000 housing units in disrepair, exploitative real estate ventures, and the lack of equitable housing policies, we viewed the port blast as a potential escalation of the mechanisms that have produced the ongoing affordable housing crisis across the city. 

      The Dar Group requested proposals to rethink the affected part of the city, through MIT’s Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism. To best ground our design proposal, we invited the Beirut Urban Lab at the American University of Beirut to join us. We chose to work on the heavily impacted low-rise and high-density neighborhood of Mar Mikhael. Our resultant urban strategy anchors housing within a corridor of shared open spaces. Housing is inscribed within this network and sustained through an adaptive system defined by energy-efficiency and climate responsiveness. Cross-ventilation sweeps through the project on all sides, with solar panel lined roofs integrated to always provide adequate levels of electricity for habitation. These strategies are coupled with an array of modular units designed to echo the neighborhood’s intimate quality — all accessible through shared ramps and staircases. Within this context, housing itself becomes the infrastructure, guiding circulation, managing slopes, integrating green spaces, and providing solar energy across the community. 

      Rafi Segal, associate professor of architecture and urbanism, director of the Future Urban Collectives Lab, director of the SMArchS program; and Susannah Drake.

      Contributors: Olivia Serra, William Minghao Du

      Project:  From Redlining to Blue Zoning: Equity and Environmental Risk, Miami 2100 (2021)

      Project description: As part of Susannah Drake and Rafi Segal’s ongoing work on “Coastal Urbanism,” this project examines the legacy of racial segregation in South Florida and the existential threat that climate change poses to communities in Miami. Through models of coops and community-owned urban blocks, this project seeks to empower formerly disenfranchised communities with new methods of equity capture, allowing residents whose parents and grandparents suffered from racial discrimination to build wealth and benefit from increased real estate value and development.

      Nomeda Urbonas, Art, Culture, and Technology research affiliate; and Gediminas Urbonas, ACT associate professor

      Project: The Swamp Observatory

      Project description: “The Swamp Observatory” augmented reality app is a result of two-year collaboration with a school in Gotland Island in the Baltic Sea, arguably the most polluted sea in the world. Developed as a conceptual playground and a digital tool to augment reality with imaginaries for new climate commons, the app offers new perspective to the planning process, suggesting eco-monsters as emergent ecology for the planned stormwater ponds in the new sustainable city. 

      Sarah Williams, associate professor, technology and urban planning

      Team members: listed here.

      Project: DISTANCE UNKNOWN: RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES OF MIGRATION IN THE AMERICAS 

      Project description: On view are visualizations made by the MIT Civic Data Design Lab and the United Nations World Food Program that helped to shape U.S. migration policy. The exhibition is built from a unique dataset collected from 4,998 households surveyed in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. A tapestry woven out of money and constructed by the hands of Central America migrants illustrates that migrants spent $2.2 billion to migrate from Central America in 2021.

      MIT student curators

      Carmelo Ignaccolo, PhD candidate, Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP)

      Curator: Carmelo Ignaccolo; advisor: Sarah Williams; researchers: Emily Levenson (DUSP), Melody Phu (MIT), Leo Saenger (Harvard University), Yuke Zheng (Harvard); digital animation designer: Ting Zhang

      Exhibition Design Assistant: Dila Ozberkman (architecture and DUSP)

      Project: The Consumed City 

      Project description: “The Consumed City” narrates a spatial investigation of “overtourism” in the historic city of Venice by harnessing granular data on lodging, dining, and shopping. The exhibition presents two large maps and digital animations to showcase the complexity of urban tourism and to reveal the spatial interplay between urban tourism and urban features, such as landmarks, bridges, and street patterns. By leveraging by-product geospatial datasets and advancing visualization techniques, “The Consumed City” acts as a prototype to call for novel policymaking tools in cities “consumed” by “overtourism.”

      MIT-affiliated auxiliary events

      Rania Ghosn, associate professor of architecture and urbanism, El Hadi Jazairy, Anhong Li, and Emma Jurczynski, with initial contributions from Marco Nieto and Zhifei Xu. Graphic design: Office of Luke Bulman.

      Project: Climate Inheritance

      Project description: “Climate Inheritance” is a speculative design research publication that reckons with the complexity of “heritage” and “world” in the Anthropocene Epoch. The impacts of climate change on heritage sites — from Venice flooding to extinction in the Galapagos Islands — have garnered empathetic attention in a media landscape that has otherwise mostly failed to communicate the urgency of the climate crisis. In a strategic subversion of the media aura of heritage, the project casts World Heritage sites as narrative figures to visualize pervasive climate risks all while situating the present emergency within the wreckage of other ends of worlds, replete with the salvages of extractivism, racism, and settler colonialism.   

      Rebuilding Beirut: Using Data to Co-Design a New Future

      SA+P faculty, researchers, and students are participating in the sixth biennial architecture exhibition “Time Space Existence,” presented by the European Cultural Center. The exhibit showcases three collaborative research and design proposals that support the rebuilding efforts in Beirut following the catastrophic explosion at the Port of Beirut in August 2020.

      “Living Heritage Atlas” captures the significance and vulnerability of Beirut’s cultural heritage. 

      “City Scanner” tracks the environmental impacts of the explosion and the subsequent rebuilding efforts. “Community Streets” supports the redesign of streets and public space. 

      The work is supported by the Dar Group Urban Seed Grant Fund at MIT’s Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism.

      Team members:Living Heritage AtlasCivic Data Design Lab and Future Heritage Lab at MITAssociate Professor Sarah Williams, co-principal investigator (PI)Associate Professor Azra Aksamija, co-PICity Scanner Senseable City Lab at MIT with the American University of Beirut and FAE Technology Professor Carlo Ratti, co-PIFábio Duarte, co-PISimone Mora, research and project leadCommunity Streets City Form Lab at MIT with the American University of BeirutAssociate Professor Andres Sevtsuk, co-PIProfessor Maya Abou-Zeid, co-PISchool of Architecture and Planning alumni participants   Rodrigo Escandón Cesarman SMArchS Design ’20 (co-curator, Mexican Pavilion)Felecia Davis PhD ’17 Design and Computation, SOFTLAB@PSU (Penn State University)Jaekyung Jung SM ’10, (with the team for the Korean pavilion)Vijay Rajkumar MArch ’22 (with the team for the Bahrain Pavilion)

      Other MIT alumni participants

      Basis with GKZ

      Team: Emily Mackevicius PhD ’18, brain and cognitive sciences, with Zenna Tavares, Kibwe Tavares, Gaika Tavares, and Eli Bingham

      Project description: The nonprofit research group works on rethinking AI as a “reasoning machine.” Their two goals are to develop advanced technological models and to make society able to tackle “intractable problems.” Their approach to technology is founded less on pattern elaboration than on the Bayes’ hypothesis, the ability of machines to work on abductive reasoning, which is the same used by the human mind. Two city-making projects model cities after interaction between experts and stakeholders, and representation is at the heart of the dialogue. More

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      in Energy

      A welcome new pipeline for students invested in clean energy

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      Akarsh Aurora aspired “to be around people who are actually making the global energy transition happen,” he says. Sam Packman sought to “align his theoretical and computational interests to a clean energy project” with tangible impacts. Lauryn Kortman says she “really liked the idea of an in-depth research experience focused on an amazing energy source.”

      These three MIT students found what they wanted in the Fusion Undergraduate Scholars (FUSars) program launched by the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) to make meaningful fusion energy research accessible to undergraduates. Aurora, Kortman, and Packman are members of a cohort of 10 for the program’s inaugural run, which began spring semester 2023.

      FUSars operates like a high-wattage UROP (MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program). The program requires a student commitment of 10 to 12 hours weekly on a research project during the course of an academic year, as well as participation in a for-credit seminar providing professional development, communication, and wellness support. Through this class and with the mentorship of graduate students, postdocs, and research scientist advisors, students craft a publication-ready journal submission summarizing their research. Scholars who complete the entire year and submit a manuscript for review will receive double the ordinary UROP stipend — a payment that can reach $9,000.

      “The opportunity just jumped out at me,” says Packman. “It was an offer I couldn’t refuse,” adds Aurora.

      Building a workforce

      “I kept hearing from students wanting to get into fusion, but they were very frustrated because there just wasn’t a pipeline for them to work at the PSFC,” says Michael Short, Class of ’42 Associate Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering and associate director of the PSFC. The PSFC bustles with research projects run by scientists and postdocs. But since the PSFC isn’t a university department with educational obligations, it does not have the regular machinery in place to integrate undergraduate researchers.

      This poses a problem not just for students but for the field of fusion energy, which holds the prospect of unlimited, carbon-free electricity. There are promising advances afoot: MIT and one of its partners, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, are developing a prototype for a compact commercial fusion energy reactor. The start of a fusion energy industry will require a steady infusion of skilled talent.

      “We have to think about the workforce needs of fusion in the future and how to train that workforce,” says Rachel Shulman, who runs the FUSars program and co-instructs the FUSars class with Short. “Energy education needs to be thinking right now about what’s coming after solar, and that’s fusion.”

      Short, who earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees at MIT, was himself the beneficiary of the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) at the PSFC. As a faculty member, he has become deeply engaged in building transformative research experiences for undergraduates. With FUSars, he hopes to give students a springboard into the field — with an eye to developing a diverse, highly trained, and zealous employee pool for a future fusion industry.

      Taking a deep dive

      Although these are early days for this initial group of FUSars, there is already a shared sense of purpose and enthusiasm. Chosen from 32 applicants in a whirlwind selection process — the program first convened in early February after crafting the experience over Independent Activities Period — the students arrived with detailed research proposals and personal goals.

      Aurora, a first-year majoring in mechanical engineering and artificial intelligence, became fixed on fusion while still in high school. Today he is investigating methods for increasing the availability, known as capacity factor, of fusion reactors. “This is key to the commercialization of fusion energy,” he says.

      Packman, a first-year planning on a math and physics double major, is developing approaches to help simplify the computations involved in designing the complex geometries of solenoid induction heaters in fusion reactors. “This project is more immersive than my last UROP, and requires more time, but I know what I’m doing here and how this fits into the broader goals of fusion science,” he says. “It’s cool that our project is going to lead to a tool that will actually be used.”

      To accommodate the demands of their research projects, Shulman and Short discouraged students from taking on large academic loads.

      Kortman, a junior majoring in materials science and engineering with a concentration in mechanical engineering, was eager to make room in her schedule for her project, which concerns the effects of radiation damage on superconducting magnets. A shorter research experience with the PSFC during the pandemic fired her determination to delve deeper and invest more time in fusion.

      “It is very appealing and motivating to join people who have been working on this problem for decades, just as breakthroughs are coming through,” she says. “What I’m doing feels like it might be directly applicable to the development of an actual fusion reactor.”

      Camaraderie and support

      In the FUSar program, students aim to seize a sizeable stake in a multipronged research enterprise. “Here, if you have any hypotheses, you really get to pursue those because at the end of the day, the paper you write is yours,” says Aurora. “You can take ownership of what sort of discovery you’re making.”

      Enabling students to make the most of their research experiences requires abundant support — and not just for the students. “We have a whole separate set of programming on mentoring the mentors, where we go over topics with postdocs like how to teach someone to write a research paper, rather than write it for them, and how to help a student through difficulties,” Shulman says.

      The weekly student seminar, taught primarily by Short and Shulman, covers pragmatic matters essential to becoming a successful researcher — topics not always addressed directly or in the kind of detail that makes a difference. Topics include how to collaborate with lab mates, deal with a supervisor, find material in the MIT libraries, produce effective and persuasive research abstracts, and take time for self-care.

      Kortman believes camaraderie will help the cohort through an intense year. “This is a tight-knit community that will be great for keeping us all motivated when we run into research issues,” she says. “Meeting weekly to see what other students are able to accomplish will encourage me in my own project.”

      The seminar offerings have already attracted five additional participants outside the FUSars cohort. Adria Peterkin, a second-year graduate student in nuclear science and engineering, is sitting in to solidify her skills in scientific writing.

      “I wanted a structured class to help me get good at abstracts and communicating with different audiences,” says Peterkin, who is investigating radiation’s impact on the molten salt used in fusion and advanced nuclear reactors. “There’s a lot of assumed knowledge coming in as a PhD student, and a program like FUSars is really useful to help level out that playing field, regardless of your background.”

      Fusion research for all

      Short would like FUSars to cast a wide net, capturing the interest of MIT undergraduates no matter their backgrounds or financial means. One way he hopes to achieve this end is with the support of private donors, who make possible premium stipends for fusion scholars.

      “Many of our students are economically disadvantaged, on financial aid or supporting family back home, and need work that pays more than $15 an hour,” he says. This generous stipend may be critical, he says, to “flipping students from something else to fusion.”

      Although this first FUSars class is composed of science and engineering students, Short envisions a cohort eventually drawn from the broad spectrum of MIT disciplines. “Fusion is not a nuclear-focused discipline anymore — it’s no longer just plasma physics and radiation,” he says. “We’re trying to make a power plant now, and it’s an all hands-on-deck kind of thing, involving policy and economics and other subjects.”

      Although many are just getting started on their academic journeys, FUSar students believe this year will give them a strong push toward potential energy careers. “Fusion is the future of the energy transition and how we’re going to defeat climate change,” says Aurora. “I joined the program for a deep dive into the field, to help me decide whether I should invest the rest of my life to it.” More

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      in Energy

      3 Questions: What’s it like winning the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition?

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      Solar power plays a major role in nearly every roadmap for global decarbonization. But solar panels are large, heavy, and expensive, which limits their deployment. But what if solar panels looked more like a yoga mat?

      Such a technology could be transported in a roll, carried to the top of a building, and rolled out across the roof in a matter of minutes, slashing installation costs and dramatically expanding the places where rooftop solar makes sense.

      That was the vision laid out by the MIT spinout Active Surfaces as part of the winning pitch at this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, which took place May 15. The company is leveraging materials science and manufacturing innovations from labs across MIT to make ultra-thin, lightweight, and durable solar a reality.

      The $100K is one of MIT’s most visible entrepreneurship competitions, and past winners say the prize money is only part of the benefit that winning brings to a burgeoning new company. MIT News sat down with Active Surface founders Shiv Bhakta, a graduate student in MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations dual-degree program within the MIT Sloan School of Management and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Richard Swartwout SM ’18 PhD ’21, an electrical engineering and computer science graduate and former Research Laboratory of Electronics postdoc and MIT.nano innovation fellow, to learn what the last couple of months have been like since they won.

      Q: What is Active Surfaces’ solution, and what is its potential?

      Bhakta: We’re commercializing an ultrathin film, flexible solar technology. Solar is one of the most broadly distributed resources in the world, but access is limited today. It’s heavy — it weighs 50 to 60 pounds a panel — it requires large teams to move around, and the form factor can only be deployed in specific environments.

      Our approach is to develop a solar technology for the built environment. In a nutshell, we can create flexible solar panels that are as thin as paper, just as efficient as traditional panels, and at unprecedented cost floors, all while being applied to any surface. Same area, same power. That’s our motto.

      When I came to MIT, my north star was to dive deeper in my climate journey and help make the world a better, greener place. Now, as we build Active Surfaces, I’m excited to see that dream taking shape. The prospect of transforming any surface into an energy source, thereby expanding solar accessibility globally, holds the promise of significantly reducing CO2 emissions at a gigaton scale. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.

      Swartwout: Solar and a lot of other renewables tend to be pretty land-inefficient. Solar 1.0 is using low hanging fruit: cheap land next to easy interconnects and new buildings designed to handle the weight of current panels. But as we ramp up solar, those things will run out. We need to utilize spaces and assets better. That’s what I think solar 2.0 will be: urban PV deployments, solar that’s closer to demand, and integrated into the built environment. These next-generation use cases aren’t just a racking system in the middle of nowhere.

      We’re going after commercial roofs, which would cover most [building] energy demand. Something like 80-90 percent of building electricity demands in the space can be met by rooftop solar.

      The goal is to do the manufacturing in-house. We use roll-to-roll manufacturing, so we can buy tons of equipment off the shelf, but most roll-to-roll manufacturing is made for things like labeling and tape, and not a semiconductor, so our plan is to be the core of semiconductor roll-to-roll manufacturing. There’s never been roll-to-roll semiconductor manufacturing before.

      Q: What have the last few months been like since you won the $100K competition?

      Bhakta: After winning the $100K, we’ve gotten a lot of inbound contact from MIT alumni. I think that’s my favorite part about the MIT community — people stay connected. They’ve been congratulating us, asking to chat, looking to partner, deploy, and invest.

      We’ve also gotten contacted by previous $100K competition winners and other startups that have spun out of MIT that are a year or two or three ahead of us in terms of development. There are a lot of startup scaling challenges that other startup founders are best equipped to answer, and it’s been huge to get guidance from them.

      We’ve also gotten into top accelerators like Cleantech Open, Venture For Climatetech, and ACCEL at Greentown Labs. We also onboarded two rockstar MIT Sloan interns for the summer. Now we’re getting to the product-development phase, building relationships with potential pilot partners, and scaling up the area of our technology.      

      Swartwout: Winning the $100K competition was a great point of validation for the company, because the judges themselves are well known in the venture capital community as well as people who have been in the startup ecosystem for a long time, so that has really propelled us forward. Ideally, we’ll be getting more MIT alumni to join us to fulfill this mission.

      Q: What are your plans for the next year or so?

      Swartwout: We’re planning on leveraging open-access facilities like those at MIT.nano and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. We’re pretty focused now on scaling size. Out of the lab, [the technology] is a 4-inch by 4-inch solar module, and the goal is to get up to something that’s relevant for the industry to offset electricity for building owners and generate electricity for the grid at a reasonable cost.

      Bhakta: In the next year, through those open-access facilities, the goal is to go from 100-millimeter width to 300-millimeter width and a very long length using a roll-to-roll manufacturing process. That means getting through the engineering challenges of scaling technology and fine tuning the performance.

      When we’re ready to deliver a pilotable product, it’s my job to have customers lined up ready to demonstrate this works on their buildings, sign longer term contracts to get early revenue, and have the support we need to demonstrate this at scale. That’s the goal. More