Students

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Environment

      Helping the transportation sector adapt to a changing world

      by

      After graduating from college, Nick Caros took a job as an engineer with a construction company, helping to manage the building of a new highway bridge right near where he grew up outside of Vancouver, British Columbia.  

      “I had a lot of friends that would use that new bridge to get to work,” Caros recalls. “They’d say, ‘You saved me like 20 minutes!’ That’s when I first realized that transportation could be a huge benefit to people’s lives.”

      Now a PhD candidate in the Urban Mobility Lab and the lead researcher for the MIT Transit Research Consortium, Caros works with seven transit agencies across the country to understand how workers’ transportation needs have changed as companies have adopted remote work policies.

      “Another cool thing about working on transportation is that everybody, even if they don’t engage with it on an academic level, has an opinion or wants to talk about it,” says Caros. “As soon as I mention I’ve worked with the T, they have something they want to talk about.”

      Caros is drawn to projects with social impact beyond saving his friends a few minutes during their commutes. He sees public transportation as a crucial component in combating climate change and is passionate about identifying and lowering the psychological barriers that prevent people around the world from taking advantage of their local transit systems.

      “The more I’ve learned about public transportation, the more I’ve come to realize it will play an essential part in decarbonizing urban transportation,” says Caros. “I want to continue working on these kinds of issues, like how we can make transportation more sustainable or promoting public transportation in places where it doesn’t exist or can be improved.”

      Caros says he doesn’t have a “transportation origin story,” like some of his peers who grew up in urban centers with robust public transit systems. As a child growing up in the Vancouver suburbs, he always enjoyed the outdoors, which were as close as his backyard. He chose to study engineering as an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia, fascinated by the hydroelectric dams that supply Vancouver with most of its power. But after two projects with the construction company, the second of which took him to Maryland to work on a fossil fuel project, he decided he needed a change.

      Not quite sure what he wanted to do next, Caros sought out the shortest master’s program he could find that interested him. That ended up being an 18-month master’s program in transportation planning and engineering at New York University. Initially intending to pursue the course-based program, Caros was soon offered the chance to be a research assistant in NYU’s Behavioral Urban Informatics, Logistics, and Transport Laboratory with Professor Joseph Chow. There, he worked to model an experimental transportation system of modular self-driving cars that could link and unlink with each other while in motion.

      “It was this really futuristic stuff,” says Caros. “It turned out to be a really cool project to work on because it’s kind of rare to have a blank-slate problem to try and solve. A lot of transportation engineering problems have largely been solved. We know how to make efficient and sustainable transportation systems; it’s just finding the political support and encouraging behavioral change that remains a challenge.”

      At NYU, Caros fell in love with research and the field of transportation. Later, he was drawn to MIT by its interdisciplinary PhD program that spans both urban studies and planning and civil engineering and the opportunity to work with Professor Jinhua Zhao.

      His research focuses on identifying “third places,” locations where some people go if their job gives them the flexibility to work remotely. Previously, transportation needs revolved around office spaces, typically located in city centers. With more people working from home, the first assumption is that transportation needs would decrease. But that’s not what Caros has found.

      “One major finding from our research is that people have changed where they’re going when they go to work,” says Caros. “A lot of people are working from home, but some are also working in other places, like coffee shops or co-working spaces. And these third places are not evenly distributed in Boston.”

      Identifying the concentration of these third places and what locations would benefit from them is the core of Caros’ dissertation. He’s building an algorithm that identifies ideal locations to build more shared workplaces based on both economic and social factors. Caros seeks to answer how you can minimize travel time across the board while leaving room for the spontaneous social interactions that drive a city’s productivity. His research is sponsored by seven of the largest transit agencies in the United States, who are members of the MIT Transit Research Consortium. Rather than a single agency sponsoring a single specific project, funding is pooled to tackle projects that address general topics that can apply to multiple cities.

      These kinds of problems require a multidisciplinary approach that appeals to Caros. Even when diving into the technical details of a solution, he always keeps the bigger picture in mind. He is certain that changing people’s views of public transportation will be crucial in the fight against climate change.

      “A lot of it is not necessarily engineering, but understanding what the motivations of people are,” says Caros. “Transportation is a leading sector for carbon emissions in the U.S., and so figuring out what makes people tick and how you can get them to ride public transit more, for example, would help to reduce the overall carbon cost.”

      Following the completion of his degree, Caros will join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He already spent six months at its Paris headquarters as an intern during a leave from MIT, something his lab encourages all of its students to do. Last fall, he worked on drafting policy guidelines for new mobility services such as vehicle-share scooters, and addressing transportation equity issues in Ghana. Plus, living in Paris gave him the opportunity to practice his French. Growing up in Canada, he attended a French immersion school, and his internship offered his first opportunity to use the language outside of an academic context.

      Looking forward, Caros hopes to keep tackling projects that promote sustainable public transportation. There is an urgency in getting ahead of the curve, especially in cities experiencing rapid growth.

      “You kind of get locked in,” says Caros. “It becomes much harder to build sustainable transportation systems after the fact. But it’s really just a geometry problem. Trains and buses are a way more efficient way to move people using the same amount of space as private cars.” More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Environment

      Transatlantic connections make the difference for MIT Portugal

      by

      Successful relationships take time to develop, with both parties investing energy and resources and fostering mutual trust and understanding. The MIT Portugal Program (MPP), a strategic partnership between MIT, Portuguese universities and research institutions, and the Portuguese government, is a case in point.

      Portugal’s inaugural partnership with a U.S. university, MPP was established in 2006 as a collaboration between MIT and the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, or FCT). Since then, the program has developed research platforms in areas such as bioengineering, sustainable energy, transportation systems, engineering design, and advanced manufacturing. Now halfway through its third phase (MPP2030, begun in 2018), the program owes much of its success to the bonds connecting institutions and people across the Atlantic over the past 17 years.

      “When you look at the successes and the impact, these things don’t happen overnight,” says John Hansman, the T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and co-director of MPP, noting, in particular, MPP’s achievements in the areas of energy and ocean research, as well as bioengineering. “This has been a longstanding relationship that we have and want to continue. I think it’s been beneficial to Portugal and to MIT. I think you can argue it has made substantial contributions to the success that Portugal is currently experiencing both in its technical capabilities and also its energy policy.”

      With research often aimed at climate and sustainability solutions, one of MPP’s key strengths is its education of future leaders in science, technology, and entrepreneurship. And the program’s impacts carry forward, as several former MPP students are now on the faculty at participating Portuguese universities.

      “The original intent of working together with Portugal was to try to establish collaboration between universities and to instill some of the MIT culture with the culture in Portugal, and I think that’s been hugely successful,” says Douglas Hart, MPP co-director and professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “It has had a lot of impacts in terms of the research, but also the people.”

      One of those people is André Pina, associate director of H2 strategy and origination at the company EDP, who was in residence at MIT in 2014 as part of the MPP Sustainable Energy Systems Doctoral Program. He says the competencies and experiences he acquired have been critical to his professional development in energy system planning, have influenced his approach to problem solving, and have allowed him to bring “holistic thinking” to business endeavors.

      “The MIT Portugal Program has created a collaborative ecosystem between Portuguese universities, companies, and MIT that enabled the training of highly qualified professionals, while contributing to the positioning of Portuguese companies in new cutting-edge fields,” he says.

      Building on MPP’s previous successes, MPP2030 focuses on advancing research in four strategic areas: climate science and climate change; earth systems from oceans to near space; digital transformation in manufacturing; and sustainable cities — all involving data science-intensive approaches and methodologies. Within these broad scientific areas, FCT funding has enabled seven collaborative large-scale “flagship” projects between Portuguese and MIT researchers during the current phase, as well as dozens of smaller projects.

      Flagship projects currently underway include:

      ·   AEROS Constellation

      ·   C-Tech: Climate Driven Technologies for Low Carbon Cities

      ·   K2D: Knowledge and Data from the Deep to Space

      ·   NEWSAT

      ·   Operator: Digital Transformation in Industry with a Focus on the Operator 4.0

      ·   SNOB-5G: Scalable Network Backhauling for 5G

      ·   Transformer 4.0: Digital Revolution of Power Transformers

      Sustainability plays a significant role in MPP — reflective of the value both Portugal and MIT place on environmental, energy, and climate solutions. Projects under the Sustainable Cities strategic area, for example, are “helping cities in Portugal to become more efficient and more sustainable,” Hansman says, noting that MPP’s influence is being felt in cities across the country and it is “having a big impact in terms of local city planning activities.”

      Regarding energy, Hansman points to a previous MPP phase that focused on the Azores as an isolated energy ecosystem and investigated its ability to minimize energy use and become energy independent.

      “That view of system-level energy use helped to stimulate activity on the mainland in Portugal, which has helped Portugal become a leader in various energy sources and made them less vulnerable in the last year or two,” Hansman says.

      In the Oceans to Near Space strategic area, the K2D flagship project also emphasizes research into sustainability solutions, as well as resilience to environmental change. Over the past few years, K2D researchers in Portugal and MIT have worked together to develop components that permit cost-effective gathering of chemical, physical, biological, and environmental data from the ocean depths. One current project investigates the integration of autonomous underwater vehicles with subsea cables to enhance both environmental monitoring and hazard warning systems.

      “The program has been very successful,” Hart says. “They are now deploying a 2-kilometer cable just south of Lisbon, which will be in place in another month or so. Portugal has been hit with tsunamis that caused tremendous devastation, and one of the objectives of these cables is to sense tsunamis. So, it’s an early warning system.”

      As a leader in ocean technology with a long history of maritime discovery, Portugal provides many opportunities for MIT’s ocean researchers. Hart notes that the Portuguese military invites international researchers on board its ships, providing MIT with research opportunities that would be financially difficult otherwise.

      Hansman adds that partnering with researchers in the Azores provides MIT with unique access to facilities and labs in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. For example, Hart will be teaching at a marine robotics summer school in the Azores this July.

      Cadence Payne, an MIT PhD candidate, is among those planning to attend. Through MPP’s AEROS project, Payne has helped develop a modular “cubesat” that will orbit over Portugal’s Exclusive Economic Zone collecting images and radio data to help define the ecological health of the country’s coastal waters. The nanosatellite is expected to launch in late 2023 or early 2024, says Payne, adding that it will be Portugal’s first cubesat mission.

      “In monitoring the ocean, you’re monitoring the climate,” Payne says. “If you want to do work on detecting climate change and developing methods of mitigating climate change … it helps to integrate international collaboration,” she says, adding that, for students, “it’s been a really beautiful opportunity for us to see the benefits of collaboration.”

      “I would say one of the main benefits of working with Portugal is that we share many interests in research in the sense that they’re very interested in climate change, sustainability, environmental impacts and those kinds of things,” says Hart. “They have turned out to be a very good strategic partner for MIT, and, hopefully, MIT for them.” More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Environment

      MIT engineering students take on the heat of Miami

      by

      Think back to the last time you had to wait for a bus. How miserable were you? If you were in Boston, your experience might have included punishing wind and icy sleet — or, more recently, a punch of pollen straight to the sinuses. But in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, where the effects of climate change are both drastic and intensifying, commuters have to contend with an entirely different set of challenges: blistering temperatures and scorching humidity, making long stints waiting in the sun nearly unbearable.

      One of Miami’s most urgent transportation needs is shared by car-clogged Boston: coaxing citizens to use the municipal bus network, rather than the emissions-heavy individual vehicles currently contributing to climate change. But buses can be a tough sell in a sunny city where humidity hovers between 60 and 80 percent year-round. 

      Enter MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and the MIT Priscilla King Gray (PKG) Public Service Center. The result of close collaboration between the two organizations, class 6.900 (Engineering For Impact) challenges EECS students to apply their engineering savvy to real-world problems beyond the MIT campus.

      This spring semester, the real-world problem was heat. 

      Miami-Dade County Department of Transportation and Public Works Chief Innovation Officer Carlos Cruz-Casas explains: “We often talk about the city we want to live in, about how the proper mix of public transportation, on-demand transit, and other mobility solutions, such as e-bikes and e-scooters, could help our community live a car-light life. However, none of this will be achievable if the riders are not comfortable when doing so.” 

      “When people think of South Florida and climate change, they often think of sea level rise,” says Juan Felipe Visser, deputy director of equity and engagement within the Office of the Mayor in Miami-Dade. “But heat really is the silent killer. So the focus of this class, on heat at bus stops, is very apt.” With little tree cover to give relief at some of the hottest stops, Miami-Dade commuters cluster in tiny patches of shade behind bus stops, sometimes giving up when the heat becomes unbearable. 

      A more conventional electrical engineering course might use temperature monitoring as an abstract example, building sample monitors in isolation and grading them as a merely academic exercise. But Professor Joel Volman, EECS faculty head of electrical engineering, and Joe Steinmeyer, senior lecturer in EECS, had something more impactful in mind.

      “Miami-Dade has a large population of people who are living in poverty, undocumented, or who are otherwise marginalized,” says Voldman. “Waiting, sometimes for a very long time, in scorching heat for the bus is just one aspect of how a city population can be underserved, but by measuring patterns in how many people are waiting for a bus, how long they wait, and in what conditions, we can begin to see where services are not keeping up with demand.”

      Only after that gap is quantified can the work of city and transportation planners begin, Cruz-Casas explains: “We needed to quantify the time riders are exposed to extreme heat and prioritize improvements, including on-time performance improvements, increasing service frequency, or looking to enhance the tree canopy near the bus stop.” 

      Quantifying that time — and the subjective experience of the wait — proved tricky, however. With over 7,500 bus stops along 101 bus routes, Miami-Dade’s transportation network presents a considerable data-collection challenge. A network of physical temperature monitors could be useful, but only if it were carefully calibrated to meet the budgetary, environmental, privacy, and implementation requirements of the city. But how do you work with city officials — not to mention all of bus-riding Miami — from over 2,000 miles away? 

      This is where the PKG Center comes in. “We are a hub and a connector and facilitator of best practices,” explains Jill Bassett, associate dean and director of the center, who worked with Voldman and Steinmeyer to find a municipal partner organization for the course. “We bring knowledge of current pedagogy around community-engaged learning, which includes: help with framing a partnership that centers community-identified concerns and is mutually beneficial; identifying and learning from a community partner; talking through ways to build in opportunities for student learners to reflect on power dynamics, reciprocity, systems thinking, long-term planning, continuity, ethics, all the types of things that come up with this kind of shared project.”

      Through a series of brainstorming conversations, Bassett helped Voldman and Steinmeyer structure a well-defined project plan, as Cruz-Casas weighed in on the county’s needed technical specifications (including affordability, privacy protection, and implementability).

      “This course brings together a lot of subject area experts,” says Voldman. “We brought in guest lecturers, including Abby Berenson from the Sloan Leadership Center, to talk about working in teams; engineers from BOSE to talk about product design, certification, and environmental resistance; the co-founder and head of engineering from MIT spinout Butlr to talk about their low-power occupancy sensor; Tony Hu from MIT IDM [Integrated Design and Management] to talk about industrial design; and Katrina LaCurts from EECS to talk about communications and networking.”

      With the support of two generous donations and a gift of software from Altium, 6.900 developed into a hands-on exercise in hardware/software product development with a tangible goal in sight: build a better bus monitor.

      The challenges involved in this undertaking became apparent as soon as the 6.900 students began designing their monitors. “The most challenging requirement to meet was that the monitor be able to count how many people were waiting — and for how long they’d been standing there — while still maintaining privacy,” says Fabian Velazquez ’23 a recent EECS graduate. The task was complicated by commuters’ natural tendency to stand where the shade goes — whether beneath a tree or awning or snaking against a nearby wall in a line — rather than directly next to the bus sign or inside the bus shelter. “Accurately measuring people count with a camera — the most straightforward choice — is already quite difficult since you have to incorporate machine learning to identify which objects in frame are people. Maintaining privacy added an extra layer of constraint … since there is no guarantee the collected data wouldn’t be vulnerable.”

      As the groups weighed various privacy-preserving options, including lidar, radar, and thermal imaging, the class realized that Wi-Fi “sniffers,” which count the number of Wi-Fi enabled signals in the immediate area, were their best option to count waiting passengers. “We were all excited and ready for this amazing, answer-to-all-our-problems radar sensor to count people,” says Velasquez. “That component was extremely complex, however, and the complexity would have ultimately made my team use a lot of time and resources to integrate with our system. We also had a short time-to-market for this system we developed. We made the trade-off of complexity for robustness.” 

      The weather also posed its own set of challenges. “Environmental conditions were big factors on the structure and design of our devices,” says Yong Yan (Crystal) Liang, a rising junior majoring in EECS. “We incorporated humidity and temperature sensors into our data to show the weather at individual stops. Additionally, we also considered how our enclosure may be affected by extreme heat or potential hurricanes.”

      The heat variable proved problematic in multiple ways. “People detection was especially difficult, for in the Miami heat, thermal cameras may not be able to distinguish human body temperature from the surrounding air temperature, and the glare of the sun off of other surfaces in the area makes most forms of imaging very buggy,” says Katherine Mohr ’23. “My team had considered using mmWave sensors to get around these constraints, but we found the processing to be too difficult, and (like the rest of the class), we decided to only move forward with Wi-Fi/BLE [Bluetooth Low Energy] sniffers.”

      The most valuable component of the new class may well have been the students’ exposure to real-world hardware/software engineering product development, where limitations on time and budget always exist, and where client requests must be carefully considered.  “Having an actual client to work with forced us to learn how to turn their wants into more specific technical specifications,” says Mohr. “We chose deliverables each week to complete by Friday, prioritizing tasks which would get us to a minimum viable product, as well as tasks that would require extra manufacturing time, like designing the printed-circuit board and enclosure.”

      Play video

      Joel Voldman, who co-designed 6.900 (Engineering For Impact) with Joe Steinmeyer and MIT’s Priscilla King Gray (PKG) Public Service Center, describes how the course allowed students help develop systems for the public good. Voldman is the winner of the 2023 Teaching with Digital Technology Award, which is co-sponsored by MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor. Video: MIT Open Learning

      Crystal Liang counted her conversations with city representatives as among her most valuable 6.900 experiences. “We generated a lot of questions and were able to communicate with the community leaders of this project from Miami-Dade, who made time to answer all of them and gave us ideas from the goals they were trying to achieve,” she reports. “This project gave me a new perspective on problem-solving because it taught me to see things from the community members’ point of view.” Some of those community leaders, including Marta Viciedo, co-founder of Transit Alliance Miami, joined the class’s final session on May 16 to review the students’ proposed solutions. 

      The students’ thoughtful approach paid off when it was time to present the heat monitors to the class’s client. In a group conference call with Miami-Dade officials toward the end of the semester, the student teams shared their findings and the prototypes they’d created, along with videos of the devices at work. Juan Felipe Visser was among those in attendance. “This is a lot of work,” he told the students following their presentation. “So first of all, thank you for doing that, and for presenting to us. I love the concept. I took the bus this morning, as I do every morning, and was battered by the sun and the heat. So I personally appreciated the focus.” 

      Cruz-Casas agreed: “I am pleasantly surprised by the diverse approach the students are taking. We presented a challenge, and they have responded to it and managed to think beyond the problem at hand. I’m very optimistic about how the outcomes of this project will have a long-lasting impact for our community. At a minimum, I’m thinking that the more awareness we raise about this topic, the more opportunities we have to have the brightest minds seeking for a solution.”

      The creators of 6.900 agree, and hope that their class helps more MIT engineers to broaden their perspective on the meaning and application of their work. 

      “We are really excited about students applying their skills within a real-world, complex environment that will impact real people,” says Bassett. “We are excited that they are learning that it’s not just the design of technology that matters, but that climate; environment and built environment; and issues around socioeconomics, race, and equity, all come into play. There are layers and layers to the creation and deployment of technology in a demographically diverse multilingual community that is at the epicenter of climate change.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Energy

      Understanding boiling to help the nuclear industry and space missions

      by

      To launch extended missions in space, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is borrowing a page from the nuclear engineering industry: It is trying to understand how boiling works.

      Planning for long-term missions has NASA researching ways of packing the least amount of cryogenic fuel possible for efficient liftoff. One potential solution is to refuel the rocket in space using fuel depots placed in low Earth orbits. This way, the spacecraft can carry the lightest fuel load — enough to reach the low Earth orbit to refuel as necessary and complete the mission. But refueling in space requires a thorough knowledge of cryogenic fuels.

      “We [need to understand] how boiling of cryogens behaves in microgravity conditions [encountered in space],” says Florian Chavagnat, a sixth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE). After all, understanding how cryogens boil in space is critical to NASA’s fuel management strategy. The vast majority of studies on boiling evaluate fluids that boil at high temperatures, which doesn’t necessarily apply to cryogens. Under the advisement of Matteo Bucci and Emilio Baglietto, Chavagnat is working on NASA-sponsored research about cryogens and the way the lack of buoyancy in space affects boiling.

      A childhood spent tinkering

      A deep understanding of engineering and physical phenomena is exactly what Chavagnat developed growing up in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, a suburb of Paris, with parents who worked for SNCF, the national state-owned rail company. Chavagnat remembers discussing the working of trains and motors with his engineer dad and building a variety of balsa-wood models. One of his memorable projects was a sailboat propelled by a motor from an electric toothbrush.

      By the time he was a teenager, Chavagnat received a metal lathe as a gift. His tinkering became an obsession; a compressed air engine was a favorite project. Soon his parents’ small shed, meant for gardening, became a factory, Chavagnat recalls, laughing.

      A lifelong love of math and physics propelled a path to the National Institute of Applied Science in Rouen, Normandy, where Chavagnat studied energetics and propulsion as part of a five-year engineering program. In his final year, Chavagnat studied atomic engineering from INSTN Paris-Saclay, part of the esteemed French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).

      The final year of studies at CEA required a six-month-long internship, which traditionally sets the course for a job. Chavagnat decided to take a chance and apply for an internship at MIT NSE instead, knowing his future course might be uncertain. “I didn’t take a lot of risk in my life, but this one was a big risk,” Chavagnat says. The gamble paid off: Chavagnat won the internship with Charles Forsberg, which paved the way for his admission as a doctoral student. “I selected MIT because it has always been my dream school,” Chavagnat says. He also enjoyed the idea of challenging himself to improve his English-speaking skills.

      A love of physics and heat transfer

      Chavagnat loves physics — “if I can study any problem in physics, I’d be happy” he says — which led him to working on heat transfer, more specifically on boiling heat transfer. His early doctoral research focused on transient boiling in nuclear reactors, part of which has been published in the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer.

      Chavagnat’s research targets a specific kind of nuclear reactor called a material test reactor (MTR). Nuclear scientists use MTRs to understand how materials used in plant operations might behave under long-term use. Densely packed nuclear fuel, running at high power, simulates long-term effects using a very intense neutron flux.

      To prevent failure, operators limit reactor temperature by flowing very cold water at high velocity. When reactor heat power increases uncontrollably, the piped water begins to boil. Boiling works to prevent meltdown by altering neutron moderation and extracting heat from the fuel. “[Unfortunately], that only works until you reach a certain heat flux at the fuel cladding, after which the efficiency completely drops,” Chavagnat says. Once the critical heat flux is reached, water vapor starts to blanket and insulate the fuel elements, leading to rapidly rising cladding temperatures and potential burnout.

      The key is to figure out the behavior of maximum boiling heat flux under routine MTR conditions — cold water, high flow velocity, and narrow spacing between the fuel elements.

      Study of cryogenic boiling

      Boiling continues to occupy center stage as Chavagnat pursues the question for NASA. Cryogens boil at very low temperatures, so the question of how to prevent fuel loss from routine space-based operations is an important one to answer.

      Chavagnat is studying how boiling would behave under reduced or absent buoyancy, which are the conditions cryogenic rocket fuel will encounter in space.

      To reproduce space-like conditions on Earth, buoyancy can be modified without going to space. Chavagnat is manipulating the inclination of the boiling surface — placing it upside down is an example — such that buoyancy does not do what it usually does: help bubbles break away from the surface. He is also performing boiling experiments in parabolic flights to simulate microgravity, similar to what is experienced aboard the International Space Station.

      Chavagnat designed and built equipment which can perform both methods with minimum changes. “We observed nitrogen boiling on our surface by imaging it using two high-speed video cameras,” he says. The experiment was approved to go on board the parabolic flights operated by Zero-G, a company that operates weightless flights. The team successfully completed four parabolic flights in 2022.

      “Flying an experiment aboard an aircraft and operating it in microgravity is an incredible experience, but is challenging,” Chavagnat says, “Knowing the details the experiment is a must, but other skills are quite useful — in particular, working as a team, being able to manage high stress levels, and being able to work while being motion-sick.” Another challenge is that the majority of issues cannot be fixed once aboard, as aircraft pilots perform the parabola (each lasting 17 seconds) almost back-to-back.

      Throughout his research at MIT, Chavagnat has been captivated by how complex a simple phenomenon like boiling can truly be. “In your childhood, you have a certain idea of how boiling looks, relatively slow bubbles that you can see with the naked eye,” he says, “but you don’t realize the complexity until you see it with your own eyes.”

      In his infrequent spare time, Chavagnat plays soccer with the NSE’s team, the Atom Smashers. The group meets only five times a semester so it’s a low-key commitment, says Chavagnat who spends most of his time at the lab. “I am doing mostly experiments at MIT; it turns out the skills I learned in my shed when I was 15 are actually quite useful here,” he laughs. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Energy

      MIT junior Anushree Chaudhuri named 2023 Udall Scholar

      by

      MIT junior Anushree Chaudhuri has been selected as a 2023 Morris K. Udall and Stewart L. Udall Foundation Scholar. She is only the second MIT student to win this award and the first winner since 2008.

      The Udall Scholarship honors students who have demonstrated a commitment to the environment, Native American health care, or tribal public policy. Chaudhuri is one of 55 Udall Scholars selected nationally out of 384 nominated applicants.

      Chaudhuri, who hails from San Diego, studies urban studies and planning as well as economics at MIT. She plans to work across the public and private sectors to drive structural changes that connect the climate crisis to local issues and inequities. Chaudhuri has conducted research with the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative Rapid Response Group, which develops science-based analysis on critical environmental issues for community partners in civil society, government, and industry.

      Throughout her sophomore year, Chaudhuri worked with MIT’s Office of Sustainability, creating data visualizations for travel and Scope 3 emissions as a resource for MIT departments, labs, and centers. As an MIT Washington intern at the U.S. Department of Energy, she also developed the Buildings Upgrade Equity Tool to assist local governments in identifying areas for decarbonization investments.

      While taking Bruno Verdini’s class 11.011 (Art and Science of Negotiation) in fall 2021, Chaudhuri became deeply interested in the field of dispute resolution as a way of engaging diverse stakeholders in collaborative problem-solving, and she began work with Professor Lawrence Susskind at the MIT Science Impact Collaborative. She has now completed multiple projects with the group, as part of the MIT Renewable Energy Siting Clinic, including creating qualitative case studies to inform mediated siting processes and developing an open-access website and database for 60 renewable energy siting conflicts from findings published in Energy Policy. Through the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium’s Climate Scholars Program and a DUSP-PKG Fellowship, she is conducting an ethnographic and econometric study on the energy justice impacts of clean infrastructure on local communities.

      As part of a yearlong campaign to revise MIT’s Fast Forward Climate Action Plan, Chaudhuri led the Investments Student Working Group, which advocated for institutional social responsibility and active engagement in the Climate Action 100+ investor coalition. She also served as chair of the Undergraduate Association Committee on Sustainability and co-leads the Student Sustainability Coalition. Her work led her to be selected by MIT as an undergraduate delegate to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Summit (COP27).

      Chaudhuri’s research experiences and leadership in campus sustainability organizations have strengthened her belief in deep community engagement as a catalyst for change. By taking an interdisciplinary approach that combines law, planning, conflict resolution, participatory research, and data science, she’s committed to a public service career creating policies that are human-centered and address climate injustices, creating co-benefits for diverse communities. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Environment

      Four researchers with MIT ties earn 2023 Schmidt Science Fellowships

      by

      Four researchers with ties to MIT have been named Schmidt Science Fellows this year. Lillian Chin ’17, SM ’19; Neil Dalvie PD ’22, PhD ’22; Suong Nguyen, and Yirui Zhang SM ’19, PhD ’23 are among the 32 exceptional early-career scientists worldwide chosen to receive the prestigious fellowships.

      “History provides powerful examples of what happens when scientists are given the freedom to ask big questions which can achieve real breakthroughs across disciplines,” says Wendy Schmidt, co-founder of Schmidt Futures and president of the Schmidt Family Foundation. “Schmidt Science Fellows are tackling climate destruction, discovering new drugs against disease, developing novel materials, using machine learning to understand the drivers of human health, and much more. This new cohort will add to this legacy in applying scientific discovery to improve human health and opportunity, and preserve and restore essential planetary systems.”

      Schmidt Futures is a philanthropic initiative that brings talented people together in networks to prove out their ideas and solve hard problems in science and society. Schmidt Science Fellows receive a stipend of $100,000 a year for up to two years of postdoctoral research in a discipline different from their PhD at a world-leading lab anywhere across the globe.

      Lillian Chin ’17, SM ’19 is currently pursuing her PhD in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Her research focuses on creating new materials for robots. By designing the geometry of a material, Chin creates new “meta-materials” that have different properties from the original. Using this technique, she has created robot balls that dramatically expand in volume and soft grippers that can work in dangerous environments. All of these robots are built out of a single material, letting the researchers 3D print them with extra internal features like channels. These channels help to measure the deformation of metamaterials, enabling Chin and her collaborators to create robots that are strong, can move, and sense their own shape, like muscles do.

      “I feel very honored to have been chosen for this fellowship,” says Chin. “I feel like I proposed a very risky pivot, since my background is only in engineering, with very limited exposure to neuroscience. I’m very excited to be given the opportunity to learn best practices for interacting with patients and be able to translate my knowledge from robotics to biology.”

      With the Schmidt Fellowship, Chin plans to pursue new frontiers for custom materials with internal sensors, which can measure force and deformation and can be placed anywhere within the material. “I want to use these materials to make tools for clinicians and neuroscientists to better understand how humans touch and grasp objects around them,” says Chin. “I’m especially interested in seeing how my materials could help in diagnosis motor-related diseases or improve rehab outcomes by providing the patient with feedback. This will help me create robots that have a better sense of touch and learn how to move objects around like humans do.”

      Neil Dalvie PD ’22, PhD ’22 is a graduate of the Department of Chemical Engineering, where he worked with Professor J. Christopher Love on manufacturing of therapeutic proteins. Dalvie developed molecular biology techniques for manufacturing high-quality proteins in yeast, which enables rapid testing of new products and low-cost manufacturing and large scales. During the pandemic, he led a team that applied these learnings to develop a Covid-19 vaccine that was deployed in multiple low-income countries. After graduating, Dalvie wanted to apply the precision biological engineering that is routinely deployed in medicinal manufacturing to other large-scale bioprocesses.

      “It’s rare for scientists to cross large technical gaps after so many years of specific training to get a PhD — you get comfy being an expert in your field,” says Dalvie. “I was definitely intimidated by the giant leap from vaccine manufacturing to the natural rock cycle. The fellowship has allowed me to dive into the new field by removing immediate pressure to publish or find my next job. I am excited for what commonalities we will find between biomanufacturing and biogeochemistry.”

      As a Schmidt Science Fellow, Dalvie will work with Professor Pamela Silver at Harvard Medical School on engineering microorganisms for enhanced rock weathering and carbon sequestration to combat climate change. They are applying modern molecular biology to enhance natural biogeochemical processes at gigaton scales.

      Suong (Su) Nguyen, a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Jeremiah Johnson’s lab in the Department of Chemistry, earned her PhD from Princeton University, where she developed light-driven, catalytic methodologies for organic synthesis, biomass valorization, plastic waste recycling, and functionalization of quantum sensing materials.

      As a Schmidt Science fellow, Nguyen will pivot from organic chemistry to nanomaterials. Biological systems are able to synthesize macromolecules with precise structure essential for their biological function. Scientists have long dreamed of achieving similar control over synthetic materials, but existing methods are inefficient and limited in scope. Nguyen hopes to develop new strategies to achieve such high level of control over the structure and properties of nanomaterials and explore their potential for use in therapeutic applications.

      “I feel extremely honored and grateful to receive the Schmidt Science Fellowship,” says Nguyen. “The fellowship will provide me with a unique opportunity to engage with scientists from a very wide range of research backgrounds. I believe this will significantly shape the research objectives for my future career.”

      Yirui Zhang SM ’19, PhD ’22 is a graduate of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Zhang’s research focuses on electrochemical energy storage and conversion, including lithium-ion batteries and electrocatalysis. She has developed in situ spectroscopy and electrochemical methods to probe the electrode-electrolyte interface, understand the interfacial molecular structures, and unravel the fundamental thermodynamics and kinetics of (electro)chemical reactions in energy storage. Further, she has leveraged the physical chemistry of liquids and tuned the molecular structures at the interface to improve the stability and kinetics of electrochemical reactions. 

      “I am honored and thrilled to have been named a Schmidt Science Fellow,” says Zhang. “The fellowship will not only provide me with the unique opportunity to broaden my scientific perspectives and pursue pivoting research, but also create a lifelong network for us to collaborate across diverse fields and become scientific and societal thought leaders. I look forward to pushing the boundaries of my research and advancing technologies to tackle global challenges in energy storage and health care with interdisciplinary efforts!”

      As a Schmidt Science Fellow, Zhang will work across disciplines and pivot to biosensing. She plans to combine spectroscopy, electrokinetics, and machine learning to develop a fast and cost-effective technique for monitoring and understanding infectious disease. The innovations will benefit next-generation point-of-care medical devices and wastewater-based epidemiology to provide timely diagnosis and help protect humans against deadly infections and antimicrobial resistance. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Environment

      Exploring the bow shock and beyond

      by

      For most people, the night sky conjures a sense of stillness, an occasional shooting star the only visible movement. A conversation with Rishabh Datta, however, unveils the supersonic drama crashing above planet Earth. The PhD candidate has focused his recent study on the plasma speeding through space, flung from sources like the sun’s corona and headed toward Earth, halted abruptly by colliding with the planet’s magnetosphere. The resulting shock wave is similar to the “bow shock” that forms around the nose cone of a supersonic jet, which manifests as the familiar sonic boom.

      The bow shock phenomenon has been well studied. “It’s probably one of the things that’s keeping life alive,” says Datta, “protecting us from the solar wind.” While he feels the magnetosphere provides “a very interesting space laboratory,” Datta’s main focus is, “Can we create this high-energy plasma that is moving supersonically in a laboratory, and can we study it? And can we learn things that are hard to diagnose in an astrophysical plasma?”

      Datta’s research journey to the bow shock and beyond began when he joined a research program for high school students at the National University Singapore. Tasked with culturing bacteria and measuring the amount of methane they produced in a biogas tank, Datta found his first research experience “quite nasty.”

      “I was working with chicken manure, and every day I would come home smelling completely awful,” he says.

      As an undergraduate at Georgia Tech, Datta’s interests turned toward solar power, compelled by a new technology he felt could generate sustainable energy. By the time he joined MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, though, his interests had morphed into researching the heat and mass transfer from airborne droplets. After a year of study, he felt the need to go in a yet another direction.

      The subject of astrophysical plasmas had recently piqued his interest, and he followed his curiosity to Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering Professor Nuno Loureiro’s introductory plasma class. There he encountered Professor Jack Hare, who was sitting in on the class and looking for students to work with him.

      “And that’s how I ended up doing plasma physics and studying bow shocks,” he says, “a long and circuitous route that started with culturing bacteria.”

      Gathering measurements from MAGPIE

      Datta is interested in what he can learn about plasma from gathering measurements of a laboratory-created bow shock, seeking to verify theoretical models. He uses data already collected from experiments on a pulsed-power generator known as MAGPIE (the Mega-Ampere Generator of Plasma Implosion Experiments), located at Imperial College, London. By observing how long it takes a plasma to reach an obstacle, in this case a probe that measures magnetic fields, Datta was able to determine its velocity.   

      With the velocity established, an interferometry system was able to provide images of the probe and the plasma around it, allowing Datta to characterize the structure of the bow shock.

      “The shape depends on how fast sound waves can travel in a plasma,” says Datta. “And this ‘sound speed’ depends on the temperature.”

      The interdependency of these characteristics means that by imaging a shock it’s possible to determine temperature, sound speed, and other measurements more easily and cheaply than with other methods.

      “And knowing more about your plasma allows you to make predictions about, for example, electrical resistivity, which can be important for understanding other physics that might interest you,” says Datta, “like magnetic reconnection.”

      This phenomenon, which controls the evolution of such violent events as solar flares, coronal mass ejections, magnetic storms that drive auroras, and even disruptions in fusion tokamaks, has become the focus of his recent research. It happens when opposing magnetic fields in a plasma break and then reconnect, generating vast quantities of heat and accelerating the plasma to high velocities.

      Onward to Z

      Datta travels to Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to work on the largest pulsed power facility in the world, informally known as “the Z machine,” to research how the properties of magnetic reconnection change when a plasma emits strong radiation and cools rapidly.

      In future years, Datta will only have to travel across Albany Street on the MIT campus to work on yet another machine, PUFFIN, currently being built at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). Like MAGPIE and Z, PUFFIN is a pulsed power facility, but with the ability to drive the current 10 times longer than other machines, opening up new opportunities in high-energy-density laboratory astrophysics.

      Hare, who leads the PUFFIN team, is pleased with Datta’s increasing experience.

      “Working with Rishabh is a real pleasure,” he says, “He has quickly learned the ins and outs of experimental plasma physics, often analyzing data from machines he hasn’t even yet had the chance to see! While we build PUFFIN it’s really useful for us to carry out experiments at other pulsed-power facilities worldwide, and Rishabh has already written papers on results from MAGPIE, COBRA at Cornell in Ithaca, New York, and the Z Machine.”

      Pursuing climate action at MIT

      Hand-in-hand with Datta’s quest to understand plasma is his pursuit of sustainability, including carbon-free energy solutions. A member of the Graduate Student Council’s Sustainability Committee since he arrived in 2019, he was heartened when MIT, revising their climate action plan, provided him and other students the chance to be involved in decision-making. He led focus groups to provide graduate student input on the plan, raising issues surrounding campus decarbonization, the need to expand hiring of early-career researchers working on climate and sustainability, and waste reduction and management for MIT laboratories.

      When not focused on bringing astrophysics to the laboratory, Datta sometimes experiments in a lab closer to home — the kitchen — where he often challenges himself to duplicate a recipe he has recently tried at a favorite restaurant. His stated ambition could apply to his sustainability work as well as to his pursuit of understanding plasma.

      “The goal is to try and make it better,” he says. “I try my best to get there.”

      Datta’s work has been funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation, National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Department of Energy. More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Energy

      Exploring new sides of climate and sustainability research

      by

      When the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) launched its Climate and Sustainability Scholars Program in fall 2022, the goal was to offer undergraduate students a unique way to develop and implement research projects with the strong support of each other and MIT faculty. Now into its second semester, the program is underscoring the value of fostering this kind of network — a community with MIT students at its core, exploring their diverse interests and passions in the climate and sustainability realms.Inspired by MIT’s successful SuperUROP [Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program], the yearlong MCSC Climate and Sustainability Scholars Program includes a classroom component combined with experiential learning opportunities and mentorship, all centered on climate and sustainability topics.“Harnessing the innovation, passion, and expertise of our talented students is critical to MIT’s mission of tackling the climate crisis,” says Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering, Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and chair of the MCSC. “The program is helping train students from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds to be effective leaders in climate and sustainability-focused roles in the future.”

      “What we found inspiring about MIT’s existing SuperUROP program was how it provides students with the guidance, training, and resources they need to investigate the world’s toughest problems,” says Elsa Olivetti, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering and MCSC co-director. “This incredible level of support and mentorship encourages students to think and explore in creative ways, make new connections, and develop strategies and solutions that propel their work forward.”The first and current cohort of Climate and Sustainability Scholars consists of 19 students, representing MIT’s School of Engineering, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, School of Science, School of Architecture and Planning, and MIT Sloan School of Management. These students are learning new perspectives, approaches, and angles in climate and sustainability — from each other, MIT faculty, and industry professionals.Projects with real-world applicationsStudents in the program work directly with faculty and principal investigators across MIT to develop their research projects focused on a large scope of sustainability topics.

      “This broad scope is important,” says Desirée Plata, MIT’s Gilbert W. Winslow Career Development Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering, “because climate and sustainability solutions are needed in every facet of society. For a long time, people were searching for a ‘silver bullet’ solution to the climate change problems, but we didn’t get to this point with a single technological decision. This problem was created across a spectrum of sociotechnological activities, and fundamentally different thinking across a spectrum of solutions is what’s needed to move us forward. MCSC students are working to provide those solutions.”

      Undergraduate student and physics major M. (MG) Geogdzhayeva is working with Raffaele Ferrari, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Oceanography in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and director of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate, on their project “Using Continuous Time Markov Chains to Project Extreme Events under Climate.” Geogdzhayeva’s research supports the Flagship Climate Grand Challenges project that Ferrari is leading along with Professor Noelle Eckley Selin.

      “The project I am working on has a similar approach to the Climate Grand Challenges project entitled “Bringing computation to the climate challenge,” says Geogdzhayeva. “I am designing an emulator for climate extremes. Our goal is to boil down climate information to what is necessary and to create a framework that can deliver specific information — in order to develop valuable forecasts. As someone who comes from a physics background, the Climate and Sustainability Scholars Program has helped me think about how my research fits into the real world, and how it could be implemented.”

      Investigating technology and stakeholders

      Within technology development, Jade Chongsathapornpong, also a physics major, is diving into photo-modulated catalytic reactions for clean energy applications. Chongsathapornpong, who has worked with the MCSC on carbon capture and sequestration through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), is now working with Harry Tuller, MIT’s R.P. Simmons Professor of Ceramics and Electronic Materials. Louise Anderfaas, majoring in materials science and engineering, is also working with Tuller on her project “Robust and High Sensitivity Detectors for Exploration of Deep Geothermal Wells.”Two other students who have worked with the MCSC through UROP include Paul Irvine, electrical engineering and computer science major, who is now researching American conservatism’s current relation to and views about sustainability and climate change, and Pamela Duke, management major, now investigating the use of simulation tools to empower industrial decision-makers around climate change action.Other projects focusing on technology development include the experimental characterization of poly(arylene ethers) for energy-efficient propane/propylene separations by Duha Syar, who is a chemical engineering major and working with Zachary Smith, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering; developing methods to improve sheet steel recycling by Rebecca Lizarde, who is majoring in materials science and engineering; and ion conduction in polymer-ceramic composite electrolytes by Melissa Stok, also majoring in materials science and engineering.

      Melissa Stok, materials science and engineering major, during a classroom discussion.

      Photo: Andrew Okyere

      Previous item
      Next item

      “My project is very closely connected to developing better Li-Ion batteries, which are extremely important in our transition towards clean energy,” explains Stok, who is working with Bilge Yildiz, MIT’s Breene M. Kerr (1951) Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering. “Currently, electric cars are limited in their range by their battery capacity, so working to create more effective batteries with higher energy densities and better power capacities will help make these cars go farther and faster. In addition, using safer materials that do not have as high of an environmental toll for extraction is also important.” Claire Kim, a chemical engineering major, is focusing on batteries as well, but is honing in on large form factor batteries more relevant for grid-scale energy storage with Fikile Brushett, associate professor of chemical engineering.Some students in the program chose to focus on stakeholders, which, when it comes to climate and sustainability, can range from entities in business and industry to farmers to Indigenous people and their communities. Shivani Konduru, an electrical engineering and computer science major, is exploring the “backfire effects” in climate change communication, focusing on perceptions of climate change and how the messenger may change outcomes, and Einat Gavish, mathematics major, on how different stakeholders perceive information on driving behavior.Two students are researching the impact of technology on local populations. Anushree Chaudhuri, who is majoring in urban studies and planning, is working with Lawrence Susskind, Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning, on community acceptance of renewable energy siting, and Amelia Dogan, also an urban studies and planning major, is working with Danielle Wood, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics and media arts and sciences, on Indigenous data sovereignty in environmental contexts.

      “I am interviewing Indigenous environmental activists for my project,” says Dogan. “This course is the first one directly related to sustainability that I have taken, and I am really enjoying it. It has opened me up to other aspects of climate beyond just the humanity side, which is my focus. I did MIT’s SuperUROP program and loved it, so was excited to do this similar opportunity with the climate and sustainability focus.”

      Other projects include in-field monitoring of water quality by Dahlia Dry, a physics major; understanding carbon release and accrual in coastal wetlands by Trinity Stallins, an urban studies and planning major; and investigating enzyme synthesis for bioremediation by Delight Nweneka, an electrical engineering and computer science major, each linked to the MCSC’s impact pathway work in nature-based solutions.

      The wide range of research topics underscores the Climate and Sustainability Program’s goal of bringing together diverse interests, backgrounds, and areas of study even within the same major. For example, Helena McDonald is studying pollution impacts of rocket launches, while Aviva Intveld is analyzing the paleoclimate and paleoenvironment background of the first peopling of the Americas. Both students are Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences majors but are researching climate impacts from very different perspectives. Intveld was recently named a 2023 Gates Cambridge Scholar.

      “There are students represented from several majors in the program, and some people are working on more technical projects, while others are interpersonal. Both approaches are really necessary in the pursuit of climate resilience,” says Grace Harrington, who is majoring in civil and environmental engineering and whose project investigates ways to optimize the power of the wind farm. “I think it’s one of the few classes I’ve taken with such an interdisciplinary nature.”

      Shivani Konduru, electrical engineering and computer science major, during a classroom lecture

      Photo: Andrew Okyere

      Previous item
      Next item

      Perspectives and guidance from MIT and industry expertsAs students are developing these projects, they are also taking the program’s course (Climate.UAR), which covers key topics in climate change science, decarbonization strategies, policy, environmental justice, and quantitative methods for evaluating social and environmental impacts. The course is cross-listed in departments across all five schools and is taught by an experienced and interdisciplinary team. Desirée Plata was central to developing the Climate and Sustainability Scholars Programs and course with Associate Professor Elsa Olivetti, who taught the first semester. Olivetti is now co-teaching the second semester with Jeffrey C. Grossman, the Morton and Claire Goulder and Family Professor in Environmental Systems, head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and MCSC co-director. The course’s writing instructors are Caroline Beimford and David Larson.  

      “I have been introduced to a lot of new angles in the climate space through the weekly guest lecturers, who each shared a different sustainability-related perspective,” says Claire Kim. “As a chemical engineering major, I have mostly looked into the technologies for decarbonization, and how to scale them, so learning about policy, for example, was helpful for me. Professor Black from the Department of History spoke about how we can analyze the effectiveness of past policy to guide future policy, while Professor Selin talked about framing different climate policies as having co-benefits. These perspectives are really useful because no matter how good a technology is, you need to convince other people to adopt it, or have strong policy in place to encourage its use, in order for it to be effective.”

      Bringing the industry perspective, guests have presented from MCSC member companies such as PepsiCo, Holcim, Apple, Cargill, and Boeing. As an example, in one class, climate leaders from three companies presented together on their approaches to setting climate goals, barriers to reaching them, and ways to work together. “When I presented to the class, alongside my counterparts at Apple and Boeing, the student questions pushed us to explain how can collaborate on ways to achieve our climate goals, reflecting the broader opportunity we find within the MCSC,” says Dana Boyer, sustainability manager at Cargill.

      Witnessing the cross-industry dynamics unfold in class was particularly engaging for the students. “The most beneficial part of the program for me is the number of guest lectures who have come in to the class, not only from MIT but also from the industry side,” Grace Harrington adds. “The diverse range of people talking about their own fields has allowed me to make connections between all my classes.”Bringing in perspectives from both academia and industry is a reflection of the MCSC’s larger mission of linking its corporate members with each other and with the MIT community to develop scalable climate solutions.“In addition to focusing on an independent research project and engaging with a peer community, we’ve had the opportunity to hear from speakers across the sustainability space who are also part of or closely connected to the MIT ecosystem,” says Anushree Chaudhuri. “These opportunities have helped me make connections and learn about initiatives at the Institute that are closely related to existing or planned student sustainability projects. These connections — across topics like waste management, survey best practices, and climate communications — have strengthened student projects and opened pathways for future collaborations.

      Basuhi Ravi, MIT PhD candidate, giving a guest lecture

      Photo: Andrew Okyere

      Previous item
      Next item

      Having a positive impact as students and after graduation

      At the start of the program, students identified several goals, including developing focused independent research questions, drawing connections and links with real-world challenges, strengthening their critical thinking skills, and reflecting on their future career ambitions. A common thread throughout them all: the commitment to having a meaningful impact on climate and sustainability challenges both as students now, and as working professionals after graduation.“I’ve absolutely loved connecting with like-minded peers through the program. I happened to know most of the students coming in from various other communities on campus, so it’s been a really special experience for all of these people who I couldn’t connect with as a cohesive cohort before to come together. Whenever we have small group discussions in class, I’m always grateful for the time to learn about the interdisciplinary research projects everyone is involved with,” concludes Chaudhuri. “I’m looking forward to staying in touch with this group going forward, since I think most of us are planning on grad school and/or careers related to climate and sustainability.”

      The MCSC Climate and Sustainability Scholars Program is representative of MIT’s ambitious and bold initiatives on climate and sustainability — bringing together faculty and students across MIT to collaborate with industry on developing climate and sustainability solutions in the context of undergraduate education and research. Learn about how you can get involved. More