This summer, the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) supported 27 students’ energy research through its Energy Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). The UROP students conducted research in many areas related to the energy transition, including energy storage, fusion, grid planning, and electricity pricing.
The students gained hands-on experience working with faculty, graduate students, postdocs, and research scientists from across the Institute to address pressing energy challenges and advance the energy transition.
MITEI’s Energy UROP is offered throughout the academic year, but the summer UROP includes additional programming to support professional development and aid students in building connections within the energy and climate space. “Over the summer, our Energy UROP students deepen their understanding of how their research fits into the larger energy transition and showcase their impact,” said Rowan Elowe, assistant director of education at MITEI.
Throughout the summer, MITEI hosted community lunches—which are occasionally open to other energy and climate UROPs—to connect students with experts and leaders in the energy field from campus and beyond. Speakers included Daniel Frey, professor of mechanical engineering and chair of the MITEI Energy Minor Oversight committee; Dillin Meloni, president of the MIT Energy and Climate Club; and Andrew Inglis, venture builder at MIT Proto Ventures.
Students prepared research posters for Energizing@MIT: MITEI’s Annual Research Conference held in September, where they had the opportunity to speak directly with participants from academia, industry, and government about their findings. Through this experience, students strengthened their ability to communicate the real-world impacts of their work to a variety of audiences.
Since the program began in 2008, MITEI and its member companies and donors have supported more than 1,105 UROP projects.
Meet the 2025 summer cohort:
Xander Backus ’26, Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making, Mathematics
Project: Acoustic holograms via physics simulation
Pratik Bhandari ’26, Computer Science, Economics, and Data Science
Project: Optimal power generation mix with renewables and energy storage
Connor Bushnell ’27, Nuclear Science and Engineering
Project: Fusion waste performance analysis
Colin Clark ’26, Electrical Engineering and Physics
Project: Automation of optical methods for nuclear track detection
Theodore Dahl ’28, Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering with Computing
Project: Time-series clustering for efficient energy grid planning
Noah Fensterheim ’28, Undecided
Project: Hodoscope optimizations for a magnetic electron recoil gamma rsy Spectrometer of the SPARC tokamak
Jessica Giang ’26, Mechanical Engineering
Project: Automated metal recycling and sorting
Adam Gilbert-Diamond ’27, Mathematics
Project: Profitability of thermal energy system with varied electricity price model parameters
Sage Gilbert-Diamond ’26 (Wellesley), Materials Science and Engineering
Project: Cutting costs for copper recycling with sensor fusion
Lucy Gray ’27, Mechanical Engineering
Project: Power extraction for ocean wave energy technology
Amelia How ’27, Materials Science and Engineering
Project: Hydrogen embrittlement prevention in Ti and Zr alloys
Jia Yuan (Amy) Hu ’26, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Project: DyMonDS digital twin for modeling basic outcomes in electricity markets
Caroline Jiang ’28, Mechanical Engineering
Project: How well can high temperature superconductor tape materials diffuse heat under self-ion irradiation in-situ
Jeewoo Kang ’27, Electrical Engineering
Project: Current collapse measurements of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs at temperatures up to 500°C
Jackson Kay ’27, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Project: ML research for autonomous accelerated materials discovery device
Ronaldo Lee ’28, Materials Science and Engineering
Project: Using Bayesian optimization to control and optimize parameters for slot-die coating of FAPbI-based perovskite solar cells
Audrey Lin ’28, Electrical Engineering with Computing
Project: Fabrication of flexible, conductive MOF arrays for chemical gas sensing
Eda Lozada ’27, Chemistry
Project: Hafnium Oxynitride cluster expansion ground state search
Elijah Mhrous ’27, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Project: Stabilizing interconnected microgrids by tweaking line capacitance
Lucas Ospina ’26, Chemical Engineering
Project: Analysis of nanoscale energy transfer mechanisms in solution-state perovskite nanocrystals
Tananya Prankprakma ’26, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Project: End use of agricultural waste: Fuel or carbon storage?
Robert Romani ’28, Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making
Project: Quantifying the energy saving potentials in MIT classrooms
Fiona Shangguan ’27, Chemical Engineering
Project: Synthesizing and tuning 2D perovskite materials to advance energy efficiency
Janina Shivdasani ’26 (Wellesley), Economics
Project: Climate policy ecosystem mapping
Anoushka Tamhane ’28, Climate Systems Science and Engineering, Mathematical Economics
Project: Understanding solar and storage allocation in the current Massachusetts grid
Megan Tian ’27, Computer Science and Engineering
Project: Towards autonomous wind farm maintenance: Optimizing uncertainty communication in human-robot teams
Edwin Trejo ’27, Materials Science and Engineering
Project: Optimizing nickel dewetting on glassy carbon substrate