Liftoff: The Climate Project at MIT takes flight

The leaders of The Climate Project at MIT met with community members at a campus forum on Monday, helping to kick off the Institute’s major new effort to accelerate and scale up climate change solutions.

“The Climate Project is a whole-of-MIT mobilization,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said in her opening remarks. “It’s designed to focus the Institute’s talent and resources so that we can achieve much more, faster, in terms of real-world impact, from mitigation to adaptation.”

The event, “Climate Project at MIT: Launching the Missions,” drew a capacity crowd to MIT’s Samberg Center.

While the Climate Project has a number of facets, a central component of the effort consists of its six “missions,” broad areas where MIT researchers will seek to identify gaps in the global climate response that MIT can help fill, and then launch and execute research and innovation projects aimed at those areas. Each mission is led by campus faculty, and Monday’s event represented the first public conversation between the mission directors and the larger campus community.

“Today’s event is an important milestone,” said Richard Lester, MIT’s interim vice president for climate and the Japan Steel Industry Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering, who led the Climate Project’s formation. He praised Kornbluth’s sustained focus on climate change as a leading priority for MIT.

“The reason we’re all here is because of her leadership and vision for MIT,” Lester said. “We’re also here because the MIT community — our faculty, our staff, our students — has made it abundantly clear that it wants to do more, much more, to help solve this great problem.”

The mission directors themselves emphasized the need for deep community involvement in the project — and that the Climate Project is designed to facilitate researcher-driven enterprise across campus.

“There’s a tremendous amount of urgency,” said Elsa Olivetti PhD ’07, director of the Decarbonizing Energy and Industry mission, during an onstage discussion. “We all need to do everything we can, and roll up our sleeves and get it done.” Olivetti, the Jerry McAfee Professor in Engineering, has been a professor of materials science and engineering at the Institute since 2014.

“What’s exciting about this is the chance of MIT really meeting its potential,” said Jesse Kroll, co-director of the mission for Restoring the Atmosphere, Protecting the Land and Oceans. Kroll is the Peter de Florez Professor in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, a professor of chemical engineering, and the director of the Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory.

MIT, Kroll noted, features “so much amazing work going on in all these different aspects of the problem. Science, engineering, social science … we put it all together and there is huge potential, a huge opportunity for us to make a difference.”

MIT has pledged an initial $75 million to the Climate Project, including $25 million from the MIT Sloan School of Management for a complementary effort, the MIT Climate Policy Center. However, the Institute is anticipating that it will also build new connections with outside partners, whose role in implementing and scaling Climate Project solutions will be critical.

Monday’s event included a keynote talk from Brian Deese, currently the MIT Innovation and Climate Impact Fellow and the former director of the White House National Economic Council in the Biden administration.

“The magnitude of the risks associated with climate change are extraordinary,” Deese said. However, he added, “these are solvable issues. In fact, the energy transition globally will be the greatest economic opportunity in human history. … It has the potential to actually lift people out of poverty, it has the potential to drive international cooperation, it has the potential to drive innovation and improve lives — if we get this right.”

Deese’s remarks centered on a call for the U.S. to develop a current-day climate equivalent of the Marshall Plan, the U.S. initiative to provide aid to Western Europe after World War II. He also suggested three characteristics of successful climate projects, noting that many would be interdisciplinary in nature and would “engage with policy early in the design process” to become feasible.

In addition to those features, Deese said, people need to “start and end with very high ambition” when working on climate solutions. He added: “The good thing about MIT and our community is that we, you, have done this before. We’ve got examples where MIT has taken something that seemed completely improbable and made it possible, and I believe that part of what is required of this collective effort is to keep that kind of audacious thinking at the top of our mind.” 

The MIT mission directors all participated in an onstage discussion moderated by Somini Sengupta, the international climate reporter on the climate team of The New York Times. Sengupta asked the group about a wide range of topics, from their roles and motivations to the political constraints on global climate progress, and more.

Andrew Babbin, co-director of the mission for Restoring the Atmosphere, Protecting the Land and Oceans, defined part of the task of the MIT missions as “identifying where those gaps of knowledge are and filling them rapidly,” something he believes is “largely not doable in the conventional way,” based on small-scale research projects. Instead, suggested Babbin, who is the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Professor in MIT’s Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate, the collective input of research and innovation communities could help zero in on undervalued approaches to climate action.

Some innovative concepts, the mission directors noted, can be tried out on the MIT campus, in an effort to demonstrate how a more sustainable infrastructure and systems can operate at scale.

“That is absolutely crucial,” said Christoph Reinhart, director of the Building and Adapting Healthy, Resilient Cities mission, expressing the need to have the campus reach net-zero emissions. Reinhart is the Alan and Terri Spoon Professor of Architecture and Climate and director of MIT’s Building Technology Program in the School of Architecture and Planning.

In response to queries from Sengupta, the mission directors affirmed that the Climate Project needs to develop solutions that can work in different societies around the world, while acknowledging that there are many political hurdles to worldwide climate action.

“Any kind of quality engaged projects that we’ve done with communities, it’s taken years to build trust. … How you scale that without compromising is the challenge I’m faced with,” said Miho Mazereeuw, director of the Empowering Frontline Communities mission, an associate professor of architecture and urbanism, and director of MIT’s Urban Risk Lab.

“I think we will impact different communities in different parts of the world in different ways,” said Benedetto Marelli, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, adding that it would be important to “work with local communities [and] engage stakeholders, and at the same time, use local brains to solve the problem.” The mission he directs, Wild Cards, is centered on identifying unconventional solutions that are high risk and also high reward.

Any climate program “has to be politically feasible, it has to be in separate nations’ self-interest,” said Christopher Knittel, mission director for Inventing New Policy Approaches. In an ever-shifting political world, he added, that means people must “think about not just the policy but the resiliency of the policy.” Knittel is the George P. Shultz Professor and professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, director of the MIT Climate Policy Center, and associate dean for Climate and Sustainability.

In all, MIT has more than 300 faculty and senior researchers who, along with their students and staff, are already working on climate issues.

Kornbluth, for her part, referred to MIT’s first-year students while discussing the larger motivations for taking concerted action to address the challenges of climate change. It might be easy for younger people to despair over the world’s climate trajectory, she noted, but the best response to that includes seeking new avenues for climate progress.

“I understand their anxiety and concern,” Kornbluth said. “But I have no doubt at all that together, we can make a difference. I believe that we have a special obligation to the new students and their entire generation to do everything we can to create a positive change. The most powerful antidote to defeat and despair is collection action.”

Babbel Review: Why It Beats Duolingo for Serious Learners

Have you ever found yourself stumbling over words in a foreign language, embarrassment bubbling up as you struggle to express a simple thought? You’re not alone. Did you know that 75% of English speakers worldwide are non-native? Language learning can often feel like an uphill battle,…

Bridging the heavens and Earth

When Jared Bryan talks about his seismology research, it’s with a natural finesse. He’s a fifth-year PhD student working with MIT Assistant Professor William Frank on seismology research, drawn in by the lab’s combination of GPS observations, satellites, and seismic station data to understand the underlying physics of earthquakes. He has no trouble talking about seismic velocity in fault zones or how he first became interested in the field after summer internships with the Southern California Earthquake Center as an undergraduate student.

“It’s definitely like a more down-to-earth kind of seismology,” he jokingly describes it. It’s an odd comment. Where else could earthquakes be but on Earth? But it’s because Bryan finished a research project that has culminated in a new paper — published today in Nature Astronomy — involving seismic activity not on Earth, but on stars.

Building curiosity

PhD students in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) are required to complete two research projects as part of their general exam. The first is often in their main focus of research and the foundations of what will become their thesis work.

But the second project has a special requirement: It must be in a different specialty.

“Having that built into the structure of the PhD is really, really nice,” says Bryan, who hadn’t known about the special requirement when he decided to come to EAPS. “I think it helps you build curiosity and find what’s interesting about what other people are doing.”

Having so many different, yet still related, fields of study housed in one department makes it easier for students with a strong sense of curiosity to explore the interconnected interactions of Earth science.

“I think everyone here is excited about a lot of different stuff, but we can’t do everything,” says Frank, the Victor P. Starr Career Development Professor of Geophysics. “This is a great way to get students to try something else that they maybe would have wanted to do in a parallel dimension, interact with other advisors, and see that science can be done in different ways.”

At first, Bryan was worried that the nature of the second project would be a restrictive diversion from his main PhD research. But Associate Professor Julien de Wit was looking for someone with a seismology background to look at some stellar observations he’d collected back in 2016. A star’s brightness was pulsating at a very specific frequency that had to be caused by changes in the star itself, so Bryan decided to help.

“I was surprised by how the kind of seismology that he was looking for was similar to the seismology that we were first doing in the ’60s and ’70s, like large-scale global Earth seismology,” says Bryan. “I thought it would be a way to rethink the foundations of the field that I had been studying applied to a new region.”

Going from earthquakes to starquakes is not a one-to-one comparison. While the foundational knowledge was there, movement of stars comes from a variety of sources like magnetism or the Coriolis effect, and in a variety of forms. In addition to the sound and pressure waves of earthquakes, they also have gravity waves, all of which happen on a scale much more massive.

“You have to stretch your mind a bit, because you can’t actually visit these places,” Bryan says. “It’s an unbelievable luxury that we have in Earth seismology that the things that we study are on Google Maps.”

But there are benefits to bringing in scientists from outside an area of expertise. De Wit, who served as Bryan’s supervisor for the project and is also an author on the paper, points out that they bring a fresh perspective and approach by asking unique questions.

“Things that people in the field would just take for granted are challenged by their questions,” he says, adding that Bryan was transparent about what he did and didn’t know, allowing for a rich exchange of information.

Tidal resonance locking

Bryan eventually found that the changes in the star’s brightness were caused by tidal resonance. Resonance is a physical occurrence where waves interact and amplify each other. The most common analogy is pushing someone on a swing set; when the person pushing does it at just the right time, it helps the person on the swing go higher.

“Tidal resonance is where you’re pushing at exactly the same frequency as they’re swinging, and the locking happens when both of those frequencies are changing,” Bryan explains. The person pushing the swing gets tired and pushes less often, while the chain of the swing change length. (Bryan jokes that here the analogy starts to break down.)

As a star changes over the course of its lifetime, tidal resonance locking can cause hot Jupiters, which are massive exoplanets that orbit very close to their host stars, to change orbital distances. This wandering migration, as they call it, explains how some hot Jupiters get so close to their host stars. They also found that the path they take to get there is not always smooth. It can speed up, slow down, or even regress.

An important implication from the paper is that tidal resonance locking could be used as an exoplanet detection tool, confirming de Wit’s hypothesis from the original 2016 observation that the pulsations had the potential to be used in such a way. If changes in the star’s brightness can be linked to this resonance locking, it may indicate planets that can’t be detected using current methods.

As below, so above

Most EAPS PhD students don’t advance their project beyond the requirements for the general exam, let alone get a paper out of it. At first, Bryan worried that continuing with it would end up being a distraction from his main work, but ultimately was glad that he committed to it and was able to contribute something meaningful to the emerging field of asteroseismology.

“I think it’s evidence that Jared is excited about what he does and has the drive and scientific skepticism to have done the extra steps to make sure that what he was doing was a real contribution to the scientific literature,” says Frank. “He’s a great example of success and what we hope for our students.”

While de Wit didn’t manage to convince Bryan to switch to exoplanet research permanently, he is “excited that there is the opportunity to keep on working together.”

Once he finishes his PhD, Bryan plans on continuing in academia as a professor running a research lab, shifting his focus onto volcano seismology and improving instrumentation for the field. He’s open to the possibility of taking his findings on Earth and applying them to volcanoes on other planetary bodies, such as those found on Venus and Jupiter’s moon Io.

“I’d like to be the bridge between those two things,” he says.

One moment, please…

I’m working on a refresh of my personal website, what I’m calling the HD remaster. Well, I wouldn’t call it a “full” redesign. I’m just cleaning things up, and Polypane is coming in clutch. I wrote about how much …

Clever Polypane Debugging Features I’m Loving originally…

MIT OpenCourseWare sparks the joy of deep understanding

From a young age, Doğa Kürkçüoğlu heard his father, a math teacher, say that learning should be about understanding and real-world applications rather than memorization. But it wasn’t until he began exploring MIT OpenCourseWare in 2004 that Kürkçüoğlu experienced what it means to truly understand complex subject matter.

“MIT professors showed me how to look at a concept from different angles that I hadn’t before, and that helped me internalize information,” says Kürkçüoğlu, who turned to MIT OpenCourseWare to supplement what he was learning as an undergraduate studying physics. “Once I understood techniques and concepts, I was able to apply them in different disciplines. Even now, there are many equations I don’t have memorized exactly, but because I understand the underlying ideas, I can derive them myself in just a few minutes.”

Though there was a point in his life when friends and classmates thought he might pursue music, Kürkçüoğlu — a skilled violinist who currently plays in a jazz band on the side — always had a passion for math and physics and was determined to learn everything he could to pursue the career he imagined for himself.

“Even when I was 4 or 5 years old, if someone asked me, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ I would say a scientist or mathematician,” says Kürkçüoğlu, who is now a staff scientist at Fermilab in the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center. Fermilab is the U.S. Department of Energy laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. “I feel lucky that I actually get to do the job I imagined as a little kid,” Kürkçüoğlu says.

OpenCourseWare and other resources from MIT Open Learning — including courses, lectures, written guides, and problem sets — played an important role in Kürkçüoğlu’s learning journey and career. He turned to these open educational resources throughout his undergraduate studies at Marmara University in Turkey. When he completed his degree in 2008, Kürkçüoğlu set his sights on a PhD. He says he felt ready to dive right into doctoral-level research thanks to so many MIT OpenCourseWare lectures, courses, and study guides. He started a PhD program at Georgia Tech, where his research focused on theoretical condensed matter physics with ultra-cold atoms.

“Without OpenCourseWare, I could not have done that,” he says, adding that he considers himself “an honorary MIT graduate.”

Memorable courses include particle physics with Iain W. Stewart, the Otto (1939) and Jane Morningstar Professorship in Science Professor of Physics and director of the Center for Theoretical Physics; and Statistical Mechanics of Fields with Mehran Kardar, professor of physics. Learning from Kardar felt especially apt, because Kürkçüoğlu’s undergraduate advisor, Nihat Berker, was Kardar’s PhD advisor. Berker is also emeritus professor of physics at MIT.

Once he completed his PhD in 2015, Kürkçüoğlu spent time as an assistant professor at Georgia Southern University and a postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He joined Fermilab in 2020. There, he works on quantum theory and quantum algorithms. He enjoys the research-focused atmosphere of a national laboratory, where teams of scientists are working toward tangible goals.

When he was teaching, though, he encouraged his students to check out Open Learning resources.

“I would tell them, first of all, to have fun. Learning should be fun — another idea that my father always encouraged as a math teacher. With OpenCourseWare, you can get a new perspective on something you already know about, or open a course that can expand your horizons,” Kürkçüoğlu says. “Depending on where you start, it might take you an hour, a week, or a month to fully understand something. Once you understand, it’s yours. It is a different kind of joy to actually, truly understand.”

SolarWinds: IT professionals want stronger AI regulation

A new survey from SolarWinds has unveiled a resounding call for increased government oversight of AI, with 88% of IT professionals advocating for stronger regulation. The study, which polled nearly 700 IT experts, highlights security as the paramount concern. An overwhelming 72% of respondents emphasised the…

Atomos Rises Like A Phoenix – Videoguys


In his article for the Sydney Morning Herald, James Pearson highlights the incredible resurgence of video technology company Atomos, comparing its journey to a phoenix rising from the ashes. When Atomos first listed on the ASX in 2018, its stock price skyrocketed by 210% in just three days, thanks to its innovative Ninja video recorder and monitor. The Ninja product, which allowed users to record high-quality video directly from cameras, caught the attention of major tech players like Apple, which integrated its ProRes codec into Atomos devices, further fueling the company’s rapid rise.

However, Atomos faced significant challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Slowing sales, combined with a high research and development budget, led to the departure of CEO and co-founder Jeromy Young in 2021. The company struggled financially, but in 2023, Young returned, leading a bold restructuring effort. Under his leadership, Atomos launched new products like the Ninja Phone and the Sun Dragon lighting system, raising $16 million in capital. The company’s stock, which had been suspended, was relisted on the ASX and saw a significant price rally, signaling a renewed optimism for the brand’s future.

Pearson concludes that Atomos is now positioned for a strong comeback in the tech industry. With its recent innovations and a renewed focus on product development, Atomos has the potential to drive future growth and restore shareholder confidence. The launch of the Ninja Phone and Sun Dragon could be the catalyst the company needs to regain its foothold in the competitive video technology market. This remarkable turnaround story shows Atomos’ resilience and ability to adapt in a rapidly changing industry.

Read the full article by James Pearson for Sydney Morning Herald HERE

Learn more about Atomos below:

AlphaProteo: Google DeepMind’s Breakthrough in Protein Design

In the constantly evolving field of molecular biology, one of the most challenging tasks has been designing proteins that can effectively bind to specific targets, such as viral proteins, cancer markers, or immune system components. These protein binders are crucial tools in drug discovery, disease treatment,…