Boston Globe Honors MIT Game Changers
The Globe Magazine’s 2015 Game Changers list “highlights people, businesses, movements, and, yes, robots pushing the limits of innovation.” Among this year’s honorees are numerous MIT faculty and...
View ArticleThe Water-Food-Energy Nexus
Providing sustainable supplies of water, food, and energy are deeply interrelated challenges. “It’s a major focus for researchers today as we realize the dependency of each of these systems upon the...
View ArticleSlideshow: How MIT Students and Alumni Are Tackling Water and Food Challenges
Anywhere people face challenges related to water and food—which is to say, just about everywhere—you are likely to find MIT students and recent alumni building projects and companies around creative...
View ArticleStartup 24M Aims to Disrupt the Lithium Ion Battery Industry
A stealthy startup is making headlines with its claim that it has developed a new type of lithium ion battery—one that is dramatically less expensive and safer than anything currently on the market....
View ArticleWhen It Comes to Energy, How Clean Is Clean—and How Fast?
Clean energy technologies in areas like solar and wind energy often have a long development timeline, and Jessika Trancik wants to cut to the chase. With predictive computer models—not unlike those...
View ArticleA Clear Path Towards More Efficient Solar Technology
What does the future of solar energy look like? “Ideally, it doesn’t look like anything,” Miles Barr SM ’08, PhD ’12 tells National Geographic. His company, Ubiquitous Energy, has a vision to cover...
View ArticleGot (Fresh) Milk? A Solution for Rural India
An MIT alumnus’s company is helping farmers in India get their milk to market before it spoils, thanks to a new method of energy storage. Cofounded by Sorin Grama SM ’07, Promethean Power Systems...
View ArticleSolar Breakthroughs, Powered by MIT
By 2050, it’s estimated that the global population will swell to 9.6 billion people. A major challenge of our time will be providing enough energy to power the planet. Solar energy, the most abundant...
View ArticleMIT Announces a Plan for Action on Climate Change
On October 21, MIT’s senior officers released the Institute’s plan for action on climate change. In a letter, President L. Rafael Reif offered his thanks to members of the Climate Change Conversation...
View ArticleUsing Microbes to Clean Up Oil Spills
Catherine Drennan, a professor of chemistry and biology, likes to wax poetic about the complex chemistry of microbes. “I think they’re elegant and beautiful,” she says. Of course, she also sees their...
View ArticleSolar Heat on Demand
If you’re facing down the winter blues, this clean energy news will give you the warm fuzzies: MIT researchers are developing a polymer that can store the sun’s energy as a chemical reaction and later...
View ArticleMIT and India Connect on Environmental Solutions
The rapid growth that has made India one of the world’s most dynamic economies also poses a number of challenges related to its environmental health. To the MIT community, these are opportunities for...
View ArticlePossibilities Abound for the Thinnest, Lightest Solar Cells Ever Made
Grown in a vacuum at room temperature, and one-fiftieth the thickness of a human hair, these are nothing like the rooftop and roadside solar cells you’ve seen in the past. In fact, you might hardly...
View ArticleCampus Microgrids Provide Big Benefits
Universities have long relied on microgrids—small, on-site power plants—to reliably power their campuses. As the need to reduce carbon emissions increases, institutions, including MIT, are leading the...
View ArticleThe Head of the Class
Last August, an MIT team published a paper with a conceptual design for an “affordable, robust, compact” (ARC) tokamak fusion reactor. Nuclear fusion, the reaction that powers the sun, could offer a...
View ArticleLooking Forward to Fusion
Controlled fusion power has been a tantalizing prospect for decades, promising a source of endless carbon-free energy for the world. Unfortunately, persistent technical challenges have kept that...
View ArticlePower Forward
Meeting the growing energy needs of our technological age while addressing global climate change is a daunting undertaking. That’s why the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) continually draws together wide...
View Article
