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      in Environment

      Transatlantic connections make the difference for MIT Portugal

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      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

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      in Environment

      MIT climate and sustainability interns consider aviation emissions and climate change

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      Over 600 MIT students are traveling abroad with the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) to intern, research, and work in organizations across 25 countries this summer. Twenty percent of the students were placed in areas related to climate and sustainability.

      Through MISTI, hundreds of MIT students travel abroad each summer to intern in companies, universities, governments, and nongovernmental organizations. Since 2018, around 20 percent of the internships and research experiences have been in areas related to climate and sustainability. MISTI has been working to increase the number of interns working on these projects by increasing the number of hosts and available grants, as well as connecting with other labs, departments, and centers across MIT to support students’ global experiences.

      For the first time this year, MISTI developed pre-departure sessions intended to help students reflect on their experiences in the wider context of sustainability and climate change. Around 90 students were invited to participate in a Canvas course and an in-person session with guest speakers. In the Canvas session, students were asked to calculate the carbon footprint of their flight to their MISTI destination and compare the results to other common daily activities. Four out of five of them expressed that the level of emissions from their flights was higher, or much higher, than they previously thought. Half of the students expressed that this was the first time they thought about their flight emissions for the summer. The students were then directed to the MIT Climate Portal website and asked to reflect on the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on the climate and the effects of climate change on economically developing countries. The Canvas exercise concluded with readings and reflections on what can be done to address the climate crisis.

      The in-person session featured David Hsu, associate professor of urban and environmental planning and co-chair of the Campus Fast Forward working group on climate education, who presented his research and work on flight emissions. He emphasized the high impact of aviation on carbon dioxide emissions and how emissions are unevenly distributed on a global scale, based on income levels and per capita bases. A small group of travelers account for most of the emissions, which is also true in academic settings where a small number of travelers have a much higher carbon footprint. Hsu also explained the School of Architecture and Planning climate action plan and how it addresses faculty and student travel. “I know it’s hard. If we at MIT want to be leaders in this area, talking about it is not enough,” he said. “We have to act. We cannot be models just by doing research; we have to be role models at all levels. Faculty, staff, and students have to change their flight habits.”

      Having completed the climate and sustainability training, Favianna Colón Irizarry, a rising second-year majoring in chemical and biological engineering, explains, “to minimize our carbon footprint, we are taught to eat consciously and use environmentally friendly products. What we are not taught is that this alone will not make a difference; we ought to sacrifice more, like flying selectively and meaningfully, to truly make an impact. MISTI’s Climate and Sustainability helped me recognize this, as well as prepare me for how I choose to proceed in my future green endeavors.”

      Also during the session, rising seniors Anushree Chaudhuri and Melissa Stok, the leads for the MIT Student Sustainability Coalition, presented their work around coordinating efforts among students and the vast landscape of groups, organizations, and entities at the Institute. They invited all interested students to join and reach out to any of the entities that could be a good fit for their interests. Chaudhuri reflected afterwards, “Sustainability is inherently interdisciplinary. Every MIT student can incorporate sustainability into their work, regardless of major, class year, or interests! I was excited to join my SSC co-lead, Melissa, in speaking with a diverse group of MISTI interns about how to explore sustainability-related academic, extracurricular, professional, and experiential opportunities at MIT and beyond. These students come from many different disciplines, so it was incredibly heartening to hear that they are all pursuing a climate-related project abroad this summer.”

      Eduardo Rivera, MISTI’s coordinator for climate and sustainability expressed that “educational experiences abroad are a fundamental part of MIT’s mission to foster global leaders to tackle the climate crisis. This summer, more than 110 students will be working around the world in solar and wind technologies, carbon capture, climate adaptation and urban planning, sustainable concrete, electric mobility, among others. We are using this opportunity to expand on the reflection part of the experiential learning cycle. The goal of these pre-departure sessions is to raise awareness and help our students reflect on the impact of their everyday activities on the climate, and to also give them resources to learn and act thoughtfully. We hope they will not only become conscious travelers, but also agents for change.”

      “This year’s climate and sustainability pre-departure training were pilot sessions, and the goal is to expand this learning experience to all MISTI students, not just those working in the fields of climate and sustainability. This will be a unique opportunity to raise awareness and expand the knowledge to over 1,000 of our students as they travel to more than 40 countries across the globe,” explains Abby MacKenzie, MIT-India coordinator who co-developed the pre-departure sessions. More

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      in Environment

      MIT speaker series taps into students’ passion for entrepreneurship and social impact.

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      Last summer, leaders of MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service (VMS) noticed a growing trend in entrepreneur applications to the program: An increasing number of aspiring founders were expressing a passion for social impact.

      VMS, which connects students and alumni with teams of mentors, hosts bootcamps, holds expert office hours, and offers an annual Demo Day, did not previously have offerings to help founders focused on this type of impact, so its leaders decided to pilot an Impact Speaker Series.

      The series, which featured experienced early-stage entrepreneurs from the MIT community and took place throughout the year, was a smashing success. In total, more than 1,200 MIT community members registered across eight events, including students at all stages of their education as well as alumni interested in making a positive impact on the world through entrepreneurship.

      “We felt an intense desire from attendees to explore entrepreneurship as a path to solve our most pressing problems,” VMS mentor and series co-Lead Paul Bosco says. “The degree to which students identified with challenges such as climate, health, sustainability, and education, rather than their major, was striking. Our goal was to help them see a path as first-time founders.”

      Now VMS is riding the momentum from the speaker series by rolling out more support services for impact-driven students, including hosting additional events, adding experienced impact entrepreneurs and social enterprise experts to its network of mentors, and connecting with more funders and executives with experience leading organizations focused on impact.

      Ultimately, VMS believes these new efforts will bolster MIT’s broader mission of translating science and innovation from its labs and classrooms into positive advances around the world.

      “Our pivot to strengthen support for founders with a passion for impact is absolutely aligned with the mission of MIT,” Bosco says. “Pursuing research and ideas with a passion for world-changing impact has always been in the DNA of MIT. A new generation of entrepreneurs is challenging us to help them hone their skills and lead organizations to build a better world.”

      Striking a chord

      Each one of VMS’ events had a different theme, from addressing general founder challenges, like first time pre-seed or nondilutive fundraising to building startup ventures in sectors like climate, health care, and education. One panel focused on helping entrepreneurs find their personal paths to success and impact, featuring founders leading impactful companies at different stages of development. Another panel discussion, titled Funding Your Path to Impact and Success, featured investors and directors of programs funding ventures delivering impact.

      “I want to encourage founders to consider driving toward a new ‘unicorn success’ model, where success is not measured in $1-billion-dollar valuations, but is based on world-changing carbon reductions, water cleanliness, lives saved, students inspired, etc.,” Ela Mirowski, a program director with the National Science Foundation, told the audience at one event.

      In total, the events featured 24 expert speakers, early-stage founders, and funders. Impact driven businesses, speakers emphasized, can take many forms. Bosco, who moderated one of the panels, says he’s heard from students and alumni interested in starting for-profit companies focused on profit and impact, what he called “dual bottom lines,” as well as students interested in starting public benefit companies, social enterprises, and traditional nonprofit organizations.

      “VMS is getting better at tapping into the different types of entrepreneurs at different stages of their journeys,” says Akshit Singla SM ’22. “It’s exactly what’s needed, and I know that because there was a huge waitlist for these events.”

      Zahra Kanji, who attended VMS’s most recent event in May and is currently director of MIT Hacking Medicine, sees the speaker series as a natural response to evolving student needs.

      “For students, I think the focus has changed a lot over the years,” Kanji said. “There used to be a lot more interest in entrepreneurship with making money as the final goal, and now it’s turned into more of a triple goal, like a public benefit corporation or something that has more impact. So, hearing key lessons learned from experts is really important — these aren’t answers you can get in a textbook.”

      Listening to the community

      Many of next year’s VMS events will be similar to the events that most resonated with the MIT community this year. VMS will also be adding an event on entrepreneurship in artificial intelligence and computing for impact. VMS is hoping to continue expanding student connections to recent founders, or what Bosco refers to as “near-peer founders,” that can relate more closely with first-time founders navigating the current startup environment.

      “Given that many new entrepreneurs are shifting to focus on impact, we need to evolve,” says VMS mentor Matt Cherian SM ’11. “I’m glad students are starting to think differently, and I’m really glad VMS is making this programming to help people think in this new way.”

      “The most notable aspect of our series was the commitment of students, including undergrads, graduates, and postdocs, pursuing their passion for impact through entrepreneurship,” Bosco says. “Many students we met exploring entrepreneurship for impact have exceptional job offers from top employers, or if they are alums they’re leaving significant positions to pursue a greater purpose in their lives. It is profoundly inspiring and an honor to help each of these founders.” More

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      in Environment

      A clean alternative to one of the world’s most common ingredients

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      Never underestimate the power of a time crunch.

      In 2016, MIT classmates David Heller ’18, Shara Ticku, and Harry McNamara PhD ’19 were less than two weeks away from the deadline to present a final business plan as part of their class MAS.883 (Revolutionary Ventures: How to Invent and Deploy Transformative Technologies). The students had connected over a shared passion for using biology to solve climate challenges, but their first few ideas didn’t pan out, so they went back to the drawing board.

      In a brainstorming session, Ticku began to reminisce about a trip to Singapore she’d taken where the burning of forests had cast a dark haze over the city. The story sparked a memory from halfway across the world in Costa Rica, where McNamara had traveled and noticed endless rows of palm plantations, which are used to harvest palm oil.

      “Besides Shara’s experience in Singapore and Harry’s in Costa Rica, palm was a material none of us had seriously thought about,” Heller recalls. “That conversation made us realize it was a big, big industry, and there’s major issues to the way that palm is produced.”

      The classmates decided to try using synthetic biology to create a sustainable alternative to palm oil. The idea was the beginning of C16 Biosciences. Today C16 is fulfilling that mission at scale with a palm oil alternative it harvests from oil-producing yeast, which ferment sugars in a process similar to brewing beer.

      The company’s product, which it sells to personal care brands and directly to consumers, holds enormous potential to improve the sustainability of the personal care and food industries because, as it turns out, the classmates had stumbled onto a massive problem.

      Palm oil is the most popular vegetable oil in the world. It’s used in everything from soaps and cosmetics to sauces, rolls, and crackers. But palm oil can only be harvested from palm trees near the equator, so producers often burn down tropical rainforests and swamps in those regions to make way for plantations, decimating wildlife habitats and producing a staggering amount of greenhouse gas emissions. One recent study found palm expansion in Southeast Asia could account for 0.75 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. That’s not even including the palm expansion happening across west Africa and South America. Among familiar creatures threatened by palm oil deforestation are orangutans, all three species of which are now listed as “critically endangered” — the most urgent status on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, a global endangered species list.

      “To respond to increasing demand over the last few decades, large palm producers usually inappropriately seize land,” Heller explains. “They’ll literally slash and burn tropical rainforests to the ground, drive out indigenous people, they’ll kill or drive out local wildlife, and they’ll replace everything with hectares and hectares of palm oil plantations. That land conversion process has been emitting something like a gigaton of CO2 per year, just for the expansion of palm oil.”

      From milliliters to metric tons

      Heller took Revolutionary Ventures his junior year as one of the few undergraduates in the Media Lab-based class, which is also open to students from nearby colleges. On one of the first days, students were asked to stand in front of the class and explain their passions, or “what makes them tick,” as Heller recalls. He focused on climate tech.

      McNamara, who was a PhD candidate in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology at the time, talked about his interest in applying new technology to global challenges in biotech and biophysics. Ticku, who was attending Harvard Business School, discussed her experience working in fertility health and her passion for global health initiatives. The three decided to team up.

      “The core group is very, very passionate about using biology to solve major climate problems,” says Heller, who majored in biological engineering while at MIT.

      After a successful final presentation in the class, the founders received a small amount of funding by participating in the MIT $100K Pitch Competition and from the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund.

      “MIT Sandbox was one of our first bits of financial support,” Heller says. “We also received great mentorship. We learned from other startups at MIT and made connections with professors whom we learned a lot from.”

      By the time Heller graduated in 2018, the team had experimented with different yeast strains and produced a few milliliters of oil. The process has gradually been optimized and scaled up from there. Today C16 is producing metric tons of oil in 50,000-liter tanks and has launched a consumer cosmetic brand called Palmless.

      Heller says C16 started its own brand as a way to spread the word about the harms associated with palm oil and to show larger companies it was ready to be a partner.

      “The oil palm tree is amazing in terms of the yields it generates, but the location needed for the crop is in conflict with what’s essential in our ecosystem: tropical rainforests,” Heller says. “There’s a lot of excitement when it comes to microbial palm alternatives. A lot of brands have been under pressure from consumers and even governments who are feeling the urgency around climate and are feeling the urgency from consumers to make changes to get away from an oil ingredient that is incredibly destructive.”

      Scaling with biology

      C16’s first offering, which it calls Torula Oil, is a premium product compared to traditional palm oil, but Heller notes the cost of palm oil today is deflated because companies don’t factor in its costs to the planet and society. He also notes that C16 has a number of advantages in its quest to upend the $60 billion palm oil industry: It’s far easier to improve the productivity of C16’s precision fermentation process than it is to improve agricultural processes. C16 also expects its costs to plummet as it continues to grow.

      “What’s exciting for us is we have these economies of scale,” Heller says. “We have the opportunity to expand vertically, in large stainless steel tanks, as opposed to horizontally on land, so we can drive down our cost curve by increasing the size of the infrastructure and improving the optimization of our strain. The timelines for improvement in a precision fermentation process are a fraction of the time it takes in an agricultural context.”

      Heller says C16 is currently focused on partnering with large personal care brands and expects to announce some important deals in coming months. Further down the line, C16 also hopes to use its product to replace the palm oil in food products, although additional regulations mean that dream is still a few years away.

      With all of its efforts, C16 tries to shine a light on the problems associated with the palm industry, which the company feels are underappreciated despite palm oil’s ubiquitous presence in our society.

      “We need to find a way to reduce our reliance on deforestation products,” Heller says. “We do a lot of work to help educate people on the palm oil industry. Just because something has palm oil in it doesn’t mean you should stop using it, but you should understand what that means for the world.” More

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      in Environment

      Preparing Colombia’s cities for life amid changing forests

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      It was an uncharacteristically sunny morning as Marcela Angel MCP ’18, flanked by a drone pilot from the Boston engineering firm AirWorks and a data collection team from the Colombian regional environmental agency Corpoamazonia, climbed a hill in the Andes Mountains of southwest Colombia. The area’s usual mountain cloud cover — one of the major challenges to working with satellite imagery or flying UAVs (unpiloted aerial vehicles, or drones) in the Pacific highlands of the Amazon — would roll through in the hours to come. But for now, her team had chosen a good day to hike out for their first flight. Angel is used to long travel for her research. Raised in Bogotá, she maintained strong ties to Colombia throughout her master’s program in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). Her graduate thesis, examining Bogotá’s management of its public green space, took her regularly back to her hometown, exploring how the city could offer residents more equal access to the clean air, flood protection and day-to-day health and social benefits provided by parks and trees. But the hill she was hiking this morning, outside the remote city of Mocoa, had taken an especially long time to climb: five years building relationships with the community of Mocoa and the Colombian government, recruiting project partners, and navigating the bureaucracy of bringing UAVs into the country. Now, her team finally unwrapped their first, knee-high drone from its tarp and set it carefully in the grass. Under the gathering gray clouds, the buzz of its rotors joined the hum of insects in the trees, and the machine at last took to the skies.

      From Colombia to Cambridge

      “I actually grew up on the last street before the eastern mountains reserve,” Angel says of her childhood in Bogotá. “I’ve always been at that border between city and nature.” This idea, that urban areas are married to the ecosystems around them, would inform Angel’s whole education and career. Before coming to MIT, she studied architecture at Bogotá’s Los Andes University; for her graduation project she proposed a plan to resettle an informal neighborhood on Bogotá’s outskirts to minimize environmental risks to its residents. Among her projects at MIT was an initiative to spatially analyze Bogotá’s tree canopy, providing data for the city to plan a tree-planting program as a strategy to give vulnerable populations in the city more access to nature. And she was naturally intrigued when Colombia’s former minister of environment and sustainable development came to MIT in 2017 to give a guest presentation to the DUSP master’s program. The minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo (now the Colombian ambassador to the United States), introduced the students to the challenges triggered by a recent disaster in the city of Mocoa, on the border between the lowland Amazon and the Andes Mountains. Unprecedented rainstorms had destabilized the surrounding forests, and that April a devastating flood and landslide had killed hundreds of people and destroyed entire neighborhoods. And as climate change contributed to growing rainfall in the region, the risks of more landslide events were rising. Murillo provided useful insights into how city planning decisions had contributed to the crisis. But he also asked for MIT’s support addressing future landslide risks in the area. Angel and Juan Camilo Osorio, a PhD candidate at DUSP, decided to take up the challenge, and in January 2018 and 2019, a research delegation from MIT traveled to Colombia for a newly-created graduate course. Returning once again to Bogotá, Angel interviewed government agencies and nonprofits to understand the state of landslide monitoring and public policy. In Mocoa, further interviews and a series of workshops helped clarify what locals needed most and what MIT could provide: better information on where and when landslides might strike, and a process to increase risk awareness and involve traditionally marginalized groups in decision-making processes around that risk. Over the coming year, a core team formed to put the insights from this trip into action, including Angel, Osorio, postdoc Norhan Bayomi of the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI) and MIT Professor John Fernández, director of the ESI and one of Angel’s mentors at DUSP. After a second visit to Mocoa that brought into the fold Indigenous groups, environmental agencies, and the national army, a plan was formed: MIT would partner with Corpoamazonia and build a network of community researchers to deploy and test drone technology and machine learning models to monitor the mountain forests for both landslide risks and signs of forest health, while implementing a participatory planning process with residents. “What our projects aim to do is give the communities new tools to continue protecting and restoring the forest,” says Angel, “and support new and inclusive development models, even in the face of new challenges.”

      Lifelines for the climate

      The goal of tropical forest conservation is an urgent one. As forests are cut down, their trees and soils release carbon they have stored over millennia, adding huge amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Deforestation, mainly in the tropics, is now estimated to contribute more to climate change than any country besides the United States and China — and once lost, tropical forests are exceptionally hard to restore. “Tropical forests should be a natural way to slow and reverse climate change,” says Angel. “And they can be. But today, we are reaching critical tipping points where it is just the opposite.” This became the motivating force for Angel’s career after her graduation. In 2019, Fernández invited her to join the ESI and lead a new Natural Climate Solutions Program, with the Mocoa project as its first centerpiece. She quickly mobilized the partners to raise funding for the project from the Global Environmental Facility and the CAF Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, and recruited additional partners including MIT Lincoln Laboratories, AirWorks, and the Pratt Institute, where Osorio had become an assistant professor. She hired machine learning specialists from MIT to begin design on UAVs’ data processing, and helped assemble a local research network in Mocoa to increase risk awareness, promote community participation, and better understand what information city officials and community groups needed for city planning and conservation. “This is the amazing thing about MIT,” she says. “When you study a problem here, you’re not just playing in a sandbox. Everyone I’ve worked with is motivated by the complexity of the technical challenge and the opportunity for meaningful engagement in Mocoa, and hopefully in many more places besides.” At the same time, Angel created opportunities for the next generation of MIT graduate students to follow in her footsteps. With Fernández and Bayomi, she created a new course, 4.S23 (Biodiversity and Cities), in which students traveled to Colombia to develop urban planning strategies for the cities of Quidbó and Leticia, located in carbon-rich and biodiverse areas. The course has been taught twice, with Professor Gabriella Carolini joining the teaching team for spring 2023, and has already led to a student report to city officials in Quidbó recommending ways to enhance biodiversity and adapt to climate change as the city grows, a multi-stakeholder partnership to train local youth and implement a citizen-led biodiversity survey, and a seed grant from the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium to begin providing both cities detailed data on their tree cover derived from satellite images. “These regions face serious threats, especially on a warming planet, but many of the solutions for climate change, biodiversity conservation, and environmental equity in the region go hand-in-hand,” Angel says. “When you design a city to use fewer resources, to contribute less to climate change, it also causes less pressure on the environment around it. When you design a city for equity and quality of life, you’re giving attention to its green spaces and what they can provide for people and as habitat for other species. When you protect and restore forests, you’re protecting local bioeconomies.”

      Bringing the data home

      Meanwhile, in Mocoa, Angel’s original vision is taking flight. With the team’s test flights behind them, they can now begin creating digital models of the surrounding area. Regular drone flights and soil samples will fill in changing information about trees, water, and local geology, allowing the project’s machine learning specialists to identify warning signs for future landslides and extreme weather events. More importantly, there is now an established network of local community researchers and leaders ready to make use of this information. With feedback from their Mocoan partners, Angel’s team has built a prototype of the online platform they will use to share their UAV data; they’re now letting Mocoa residents take it for a test drive and suggest how it can be made more user-friendly. Her visit this January also paved the way for new projects that will tie the Environmental Solutions Initiative more tightly to Mocoa. With her project partners, Angel is exploring developing a course to teach local students how to use UAVs like the ones her team is flying. She is also considering expanded efforts to collect the kind of informal knowledge of Mocoa, on the local ecology and culture, that people everywhere use in making their city planning and emergency response decisions, but that is rarely codified and included in scientific risk analyses. It’s a great deal of work to offer this one community the tools to adapt successfully to climate change. But even with all the robotics and machine learning models in the world, this close, slow-unfolding engagement, grounded in trust and community inclusion, is what it takes to truly prepare people to confront profound changes in their city and environment. “Protecting natural carbon sinks is a global socio-environmental challenge, and one where it is not enough for MIT to just contribute to the knowledge base or develop a new technology,” says Angel. “But we can help mobilize decision-makers and nontraditional actors, and design more inclusive and technology-enhanced processes, to make this easier for the people who have lifelong stakes in these ecosystems. That is the vision.” More

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      in Energy

      Powering the future in Mongolia

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

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

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

      Engineers who think like anthropologists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Making of khorkhog

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

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

      The distance between two points

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

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

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

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

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

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      in Energy

      Arina Khotimsky ’23 awarded 2023 Michel David-Weill Scholarship

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      Arina Khotimsky ’23 was selected for the 2023 Michel David-Weill scholarship, awarded each year to one student from the United States in a master’s program at Sciences Po in France who exemplifies the core values embodied by its namesake: excellence, leadership, multiculturalism, and high achievement. This fall Khotimsky will enter the master’s program in international energy, which is part of Sciences Po’s Paris School of International Affairs. The program aims to provide a holistic understanding of energy issues, across disciplines and across all energy sources.

      Khotimsky graduated this year from MIT with a major in materials science and engineering, and minors in energy studies and in French.

      Asked what drew her to her major, Khotimsky talked about her love of the outdoors. Seeing effects of climate change on the world around made her made her want to explore solutions. “I settled on material science and engineering because there’s so many different applications: whether it be solar power, developing different battery materials and chemistries, or some other technology. Getting that technical background at MIT can help me understand how we can implement solutions around the world, with diverse cultures in mind.”

      One of Khotimsky’s material sciences professors, Polina Anikeeva, observes that “Arina possesses the spirit of creativity, optimism, and unparalleled work ethic — all necessary ingredients to solve energy and climate challenges of our century.”

      Khotimsky is well aware of the big stakes in discussions around energy policy. She explains, “We have to cooperate internationally to make a dent in carbon emissions. The United States is historically the biggest CO2 emitter and has a large role to play to transition to a more sustainable future.”

      Her interest in studying climate change solutions on a world scale also converged with her interest in studying other languages and cultures. Her main language studies at MIT have been in French, although she also speaks Russian and beginner Chinese.

      Due to her achievement in MIT French classes, Khotimsky was one of nine students selected for a two-week cultural immersion program in Paris last June, led by MIT Professor Bruno Perreau. Perreau also had her in class last fall, and spoke about the energy and commitment she brought to class, describing her as “one of my very best students since I started to teach 22 years ago.” Khotimsky is excited to be living in France for her master’s program and putting her French skills to work.

      Khotimsky’s impressive undergraduate career has also included being co-president of the MIT Energy and Climate Club, and participating in the MIT delegation to 2022 Conference of the Parties summit (COP27) of the United Nations in Egypt last November. She also participated in the NEET Decarbonizing Ulaanbaatar project, traveling to Mongolia in Independent Activities Period 2023 with a group of students and instructors to work on clean heating technologies for traditional ger homes.

      In addition to her academic work and other extracurricular activities, Khotimsky was also a member of the MIT women’s rowing team. She walked onto the team as a first-year student, making it into the Varsity 8 boat for her senior season. Holly Metcalf, MIT women’s varsity openweight rowing coach, explains, “Being on the rowing team has in many ways become a metaphor for what Arina has come to study … She realized that rowing is about so much more than physics — it is about who one must become as an individual to contribute to the sum of mental and physical strength of the entire team.” Khotimsky was recognized on May 22 by the Patriot League, who named her the 2023 Patriot League Women’s Rowing Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

      Looking ahead, Khotimsky envisions her future involving international energy negotiations or policy. “The master’s degree I’m pursuing in international relations will help me develop skills to communicate with stakeholders from around the world and figure out how to implement solutions globally.” More

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      in Environment

      Advancing material innovation to address the polymer waste crisis

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      Products made from polymers — ranging from plastic bags to clothing to cookware to electronics — provide many comforts and support today’s standard of living, but since they do not decompose easily, they pose long-term environmental challenges. Developing polymers, a large class of materials, with a more sustainable life cycle is a critical step in making progress toward a green economy and addressing this piece of the global climate change crisis. The development of biodegradable polymers, however, remains limited by current biodegradation testing methods.

      To address this limitation, a team of MIT researchers led by Bradley D. Olsen, the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser (1960) Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, has developed an expansive biodegradation dataset to help determine whether or not a polymer is biodegradable.

      Their findings were recently published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), in a paper titled “High-Throughput Experimentation for Discovery of Biodegradable Polyesters.” The MIT team is led by Olsen and PhD candidates Katharina A. Fransen and Sarah H. M. Av-Ron, and also includes postdoc Dylan J. Walsh and undergraduate students Tess R. Buchanan, Dechen T. Rota, and Lana Van Note.

      “Despite polymer waste being a known and significant contributor to the climate crisis, the study of polymer biodegradation has been limited to a small number of polymers because current biodegradation testing methods are time- and resource-intensive,” says Olsen. “This limited scope slows new material innovation, so we are working to open that up to a much broader portfolio of materials.”

      Unique high-throughput approach

      The dataset Olsen’s team has developed, with support from the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC), the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS), and DIC Corporation, includes more than 600 distinct polyester chemistries.

      “The ingenuity of our work is pushing the screening to be high-throughput, which accelerates the pace of discovery,” says Av-Ron. High-throughput synthesis methods enable large quantities of samples to be screened rapidly, identifying products with the desired property or function you are looking for. In this case, the high-throughput approach was conducted using a method called clear-zone assay, which detects polymer biofragmentation and identifies polymer degrading bacteria. The biodegradation dataset can then lead to structure-property relationships, a concept central to materials science and engineering, where relationships between the chemical detail and property can be established, and used to build a biodegradation prediction model. When developing these models to predict biodegradation, the researchers were interested in looking into the potential linearity and nonlinearity of the relationships between structure and biodegradability.

      “We consider our scientific breakthrough to be having this large dataset, and the qualitative relationships and predictive models such a substantial  amount of data enabled,” adds Av-Ron. “It was captivating to figure out how to integrate the high complexity of polymer chemical representation with predictive machine-learning models. I was very excited to get a validation accuracy of 82 percent for one representation/model combination. With additional data we might be able to improve our predictions even more.”

      The team’s work focuses largely on polyesters; the development of biodegradable polyesters presents a key opportunity for addressing the polymer sustainability crisis and reducing the environmental burden of the polymer life cycle.

      One strain of bacteria, many chemistries

      The biodegradation test that these data create is accessible and cost-effective to put in place; initial industry feedback has been positive. The datasets are also more reproducible than many other standards in this space.

      “With our method, there is one strain of bacteria, so you know exactly what you’re testing,” says Av-Ron. This speaks to the uniqueness of the team’s approach.

      “When polymers are developed, normally the strength of the material is examined first, and then once the material is developed, whether or not it biodegrades comes second,” says Fransen.

      Olsen and his team are examining the opposite — developing the biodegradability screen first, to help filter and focus what to look for in a material. This way, the team’s infrastructure can assess a lot of different options, quickly.

      “There has been big movement recently in developing sustainable polymers,” concludes Fransen, “and having something like this that is quick, tangible, and relatively inexpensive, could add a lot of value to that community.”

      Fransen received a 2022 J-WAFS Fellowship for this work, and she and Av-Ron together won second place in the 2022 J-WAFS World Food Day Student Video Competition, as this research can be applied to creating more sustainable food packaging. More