The MIT Energy Initiative will hold the Future Energy Systems Center Spring Workshop on May 19-20, 2026. At the workshop, you will gain insight into the Center’s latest and ongoing research.
Attendance at the Spring Workshop is restricted to Members of the Future Energy Systems Center and invited members of the MIT Community.
Agenda
| Tuesday, May 19 | |
| 8:00-8:30 am ET | Breakfast and registration |
| 8:30-8:40 am ET |
Welcome Morgan Andreae, Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center, MIT Energy Initiative |
| 8:40-9:30 am ET |
From watts to intelligence: Powering the age of artificial general intelligence Over the past fifteen years, artificial intelligence has advanced at an extraordinary pace, culminating in the emergence of Generative AI (GenAI) systems capable of high-fidelity pattern understanding and generation across text, speech, image, and multimodal data. Once confined to research settings, these systems now serve as foundational components of large-scale products and platforms, transforming how cognitive work is performed across industries and society. As a result, the prospect of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has shifted from theoretical speculation to a tangible possibility. At its core, this transformation is powered by energy: intelligence is, in effect, the result of converting energy into tokens through computation. As AI systems continue to scale, energy is emerging as a fundamental bottleneck. This keynote explores the technical and economic forces driving the current scaling paradigm, the rapidly increasing energy demands that sustain it, and the emerging constraints spanning compute infrastructure, power delivery, and system efficiency. Ruhi Sarikaya will examine how these constraints interact with scaling laws, influence architectural and system-level innovation, and ultimately shape the trajectory toward AGI over the coming decade. Ruhi Sarikaya, Vice President of Alexa AI, Amazon Moderated by: Morgan Andreae, Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center, |
| 9:30-10:45 am ET |
Energy storage: The path from innovation to grid deployment
Introduction by: Morgan Andreae, Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center, Vinicius Aguiar, Commercial Finance Manager, Form Energy Moderated by: Ruaridh Macdonald, Research Scientist, MIT Energy Initiative |
| 10:45-11:00 am ET | Break |
| 11:00 am-12:00 pm ET |
New Future Energy Systems Center Project Kickoffs Round 1
Moderated by Kate Ahern, Program Manager, Future Energy Systems Center, |
| 12:00-1:00 pm ET | Lunch |
| 1:00-2:00 pm ET |
New Future Energy Systems Center Project Kickoffs Round 2 In person only: Breakout discussions with project teams
Moderated by Kate Ahern, Program Manager, Future Energy Systems Center, |
| 2:00-2:15 pm ET | Break |
| 2:15-3:30 pm ET |
Energy and the developing world This panel will focus on the changing landscape of energy in the developing world. With multiple challenges including electricity access and low cost energy solutions, what are some of the emerging trends and opportunities in various parts of the globe? Is there an option for the developing world to industrialize differently? Panelists will examine this changing landscape from multiple angles. Deepak Divan, Founder and CTO, GridTran; Professor Emeritus, Georgia Institute of Technology Moderated by: Anuradha Annaswamy, Senior Research Scientist, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering |
| 3:30-4:30 pm ET |
Tech dashboard updates: New topics and discussion
Morgan Andreae, Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center, |
| 4:30-5:15 pm ET |
Project highlights by students and postdocs
Moderated by Kate Ahern, Program Manager, Future Energy Systems Center, |
| 5:15-7:00 pm ET | Poster viewing and reception |
| Wednesday, May 20 | |
| 8:00-9:00 am ET | Breakfast and registration |
| 9:00-10:05 am ET |
Regional energy transition challenges and opportunities: Europe
Detlef Hohl, Chief Scientist Computational and Data Science, Shell Moderated by: Pablo Duenas-Martinez, Research Scientist, MIT Energy Initiative |
| 10:05-10:15 am ET | Break |
| 10:15-11:00 am ET |
Energy transition and technology development: Overcoming the challenges ahead Matt Reeves, Technology Vice President, Low Carbon Solutions, ExxonMobil Moderated by: Morgan Andreae, Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center, |
| 11:00 am-12:00 pm ET |
Future Energy Systems Center Advisory Committee Meeting Morgan Andreae, Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center, MIT Energy Initiative Kate Ahern, Program Manager, Future Energy Systems Center, MIT Energy Initiative |
| 12:00-1:00 pm ET | Lunch |
| 1:00-2:30 pm ET Day 2 afternoon sessions will be co-presented by the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research |
Electricity prices and household affordability
Fischer Argosino, Graduate Researcher, MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research Moderated by: Christopher Knittel, Associate Dean for Climate and Sustainability, MIT Sloan School of Management |
| 2:30-3:00 pm ET | Break |
| 3:00-4:30 pm ET |
U.S. energy policy landscape: Uncertainty, inertia, and market realities
Anthony Fratto, Senior Director of Research & Analysis, American Clean Power Association Moderated by: Joshua Hodge, Executive Director, MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research; Research Director, MIT Climate Policy Center |
| 4:30-4:45 pm ET |
Closing remarks Morgan Andreae, Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center, MIT Energy Initiative Joshua Hodge, Executive Director, MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research; Research Director, MIT Climate Policy Center |
| 4:45-6:15 pm ET | Reception |
About the speakers
Vinicius Aguiar
Commercial Finance Manager, Form Energy
Kate Ahern
Program Manager, Future Energy Systems Center, MIT Energy Initiative
Kate Ahern is the Future Energy Systems Center’s program manager. She manages operations for over 40 decarbonization projects, empowering the Center’s 36 member companies to make informed, strategic decisions regarding their own decarbonization efforts. Previously, Kate worked at Harvard Business School, managing Professor Michael Porter’s Microeconomics of Competitiveness (MOC) Network and disseminating Professor Porter’s Creating Shared Value (CSV) concept through Harvard Business School MBA and Executive Education courses.
She has gained valuable experience working with an environmental consulting firm in D.C. and Cleantech Open Northeast, as well as the Department of Justice and a private law firm in D.C. Kate graduated from American University with a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies: Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics, and Government (CLEG) and received her Master’s degree in Sustainability and Environmental Management from the Harvard Extension School.
Ruby Aidun
Graduate Research Assistant, MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
Ruby Aidun is a student in the Technology and Policy Program (TPP), and a graduate research assistant in the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR). Her work with John Parsons explores the impacts of market design on the outcomes of electricity capacity markets. She holds a bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from Columbia University.
Morgan Andreae
Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center, MIT Energy Initiative
Morgan Andreae is the executive director of MITEI’s Future Energy Systems Center. Prior to joining MITEI, Andreae was the executive director of technology and innovation at Cummins where he led teams in the development of new battery, fuel cell, electrolyzer, and electric traction technologies. Over the course of his career Andreae has held a variety of roles in technology development, strategy, and product development, with a consistent focus on bringing more sustainable technology to market. Andreae holds over 25 patents on diesel, hybrid-electric, and electric powertrain technology. He has a PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT, a Masters and Bachelors in engineering from Dartmouth College, and a Bachelors in history from Haverford College.
Anuradha Annaswamy
Senior Research Scientist, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Anuradha Annaswamy is founder and director of the Active-Adaptive Control Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Her research interests span adaptive control theory and its applications to aerospace, automotive, propulsion, and energy systems as well as cyber physical systems such as Smart Grids, Smart Cities, and Smart Infrastructures. She has received best paper awards (Axelby, 1986; CSM, 2010), as well as Distinguished Member and Distinguished Lecturer awards from the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS), best paper award from the IFAC journal Annual Reviews in Control for 2021-23, and a Presidential Young Investigator award from NSF, 1991-97. She is a Fellow of IEEE and International Federation of Automatic Control. She is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni award from Indian Institute of Science. She received the IEEE Control Systems Technology Award from CSS in 2024.
Fischer Argosino
Graduate Researcher, MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
Fischer James Espiritu Argosino is a master’s student in the Technology and Policy Program with a concentration in energy economics and technologies. He is also a graduate research assistant for Christopher R. Knittel in the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. His work focuses on the impacts of renewable energy deployment, dynamic retail rates, and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) on energy affordability and poverty in the United States. His thesis argues for policy solutions that would jointly achieve an affordable and sustainable energy system. Argosino also holds a BS in mechanical engineering from the Colorado School of Mines.
Matthew Barmack
Vice President, Market & Regulatory Policy, Calpine
Matthew Barmack is vice president of market and regulatory policy at Calpine (now part of Constellation) where he focuses on market design and regulatory policy, particularly related to resource adequacy and generation resource planning. Barmack has worked on wholesale power market issues for more than 20 years. Prior to joining Calpine in 2009, Barmack worked at the Brattle Group, Analysis Group, and PG&E. At Calpine, Barmack has led advocacy related to capacity markets in California, PJM, and New England and long-term modeling of grid decarbonization. Barmack holds an AB in economics from Harvard College and a PhD in economics from MIT.
Kristin Bergmann
Associate Professor, MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences
Abner-Obed Cardona
Undergraduate Student, MIT
Ioannis Chalaris
Research Affiliate, MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium
Julia Ćwiek
Project Manager, Strategic Projects Department, ORLEN
Julia Ćwiek is a project manager in ORLEN’s Strategic Projects Department, where she is leading strategic and public affairs projects. Ćwiek was responsible for project management of ORLEN’s 2035 Strategy and works on the SMR Development Program and Downstream Decarbonization Strategy. She co-authored the “CEE Energy Outlook” – a first outlook for Central and Eastern Europe published by ORLEN and a report “Baltic Cooperation – Momentum for the Energy Transition” published by ORLEN and S&P Global. Ćwiek graduated from the London School of Economics with an MSc in European Political Economy and from the Warsaw School of Economics with a degree in European Integration. Before joining ORLEN, Ćwiek worked in energy and economic think tanks and wrote extensively on European energy policy. She also worked in the Permanent Representation of Poland to the European Union in Brussels, where she actively participated in shaping European energy and climate legislation in the Council of the European Union.
Deepak Divan
Founder and CTO, GridTran; Professor Emeritus, Georgia Institute of Technology
Deepak Divan is leading GridTran, a new company within the Endeavour Energy group of companies, to develop and build innovative DC energy infrastructure for large plants rated at 1-1,000MW and connecting to the grid at 13-35kV AC, to meet the demands of fast-growing applications such as AI datacenters, 24X7 off-grid power, generation/storage resources, electrified transportation and new industrial plants. Endeavour Energy is a leading developer of global datacenters and related energy solutions.
Divan also holds the position of Professor Emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where he served as professor and director for the Center of Distributed Energy. He is a leading researcher in the areas of power electronics, power systems, smart grids, and distributed control of power systems, with over 45 years of experience as an academic and entrepreneur. He has actively worked with DOE, ARPA-E, industry, electric utilities, and startups to develop and commercialize advanced technologies in the power and energy area, such as transmission power flow control, grid forming inverters, soft switching converters, and solid-state transformers. Divan has started or provided the technology seed for several companies, including GridBlock, GigaGrid, Innovolt, Soft Switching Technologies, Varentec & Smart Wires. He is coauthor of the book ‘Energy 2040 – Aligning Innovation, Economics and Decarbonization’, published by Springer in 2024, and recognized by Forbes magazine to be in the top 10 ‘must read’ books for 2025.
Divan is a member of the U.S. DOE’s Electricity Advisory Committee, elected Member of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors, U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and was a member of the National Academies Board on Energy and Environmental Systems and the National Academies (NASEM) Committee on The Future of Electric Power in the United States. He is the recipient of the 2024 IEEE Medal in Power Engineering, Life Fellow of the IEEE, past president of the IEEE Power Electronics Society, recipient of the 2006 IEEE William E Newell Field Medal and the 2023 IEEE Hingorani Custom Power Medal. He started and was the International Chair of the IEEE Empower a Billion Lives (EBL) recurring global competition to develop scalable energy access solutions. He was an invitee to the White House Electrification Summit in 2022 and has presented on the subject of electric grids around the world, including at the COP-22 meeting in Morocco in 2016 and the United Nations Global Solutions Summit in 2023. He received his BTech in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur in India in 1975, and his MS and PhD degrees from the University of Calgary, Canada in 1979 and 1983 respectively.
Pablo Duenas-Martinez
Research Scientist, MIT Energy Initiative
Pablo Duenas-Martinez is a research scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative, and research assistant professor at Universidad Pontificia Comillas. His research area embeds the economic and regulatory modeling and analysis, and the role of traditional and new generation technologies in shaping the energy systems of the future, in low- to high-income countries, within a carbon-constrained world. He has published on topics such as liberalization and regulation of gas and electricity markets, energy security of supply and resiliency in decarbonizing economies, impact of distributed energy resources, analysis and regulation for universal energy access, and mathematical modeling of energy systems. During his career, he has worked with power and gas utilities, as well as government and regulatory agencies, on research projects and to provide advice aimed at improving operations and investments in energy systems worldwide. He obtained his BS in industrial engineering, MS in electric power systems, and PhD in electrical engineering at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid, Spain; and received a BS in economics from the National Distance Education University in Madrid, Spain.
Chris Forsyth
Graduate Student, MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Anthony Fratto
Senior Director of Research & Analysis, American Clean Power Association
Anthony Fratto is the senior director of research and analysis at ACP. Fratto manages quantitative analysis and impact assessments of the clean energy industry. This includes policies and regulations that influence clean power deployment as well as clean power’s mark on the broader economy. Fratto’s team oversees power modeling, economic and environmental impact, supply chain, tariffs, and any sort of quantitative ”catch-all” analysis used to help inform ACP’s federal and state affairs teams, communications shop, and policy SMEs.
Prior to joining ACP, Fratto was a managing consultant at E3. He worked on asset valuation in which he quantified future revenue streams and helped clients make decisions about capital expenditures. In addition, he helped lead E3’s electricity market forecasting for Texas and the Eastern Interconnect, and oversaw long-term resource planning projects under a decarbonized world.
Fratto received his Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering and political science from the University of Utah, and a Master’s in technology and policy from MIT where he did research under MITEI & CEEPR.
Joe Geniesse
Graduate Student, MIT Department of Chemistry
Matthew Goldberg
Executive Director, Strategy, Risk & Operations Compliance, ISO New England Inc.
Matthew Goldberg has been with ISO New England, the non-profit system operator, wholesale electric market administrator and long-term planning organization for New England, for almost 25 years. He began at ISO New England as senior regulatory counsel, then formed the internal compliance group. For the last five years, Goldberg has administered ISO New England’s strategic planning process and enterprise risk management program. He is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Law, as well as Haverford College with BA in history. He is married with two children (ages 8 and 12).
Joshua Hodge
Executive Director, MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research; Research Director, MIT Climate Policy Center
Joshua Hodge is the executive director at the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), research director at the MIT Climate Policy Center as well as a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His areas of expertise include domestic and international climate and energy policy, with a focus on energy transition and renewable energy policies in the United States. Hodge’s recent work has included assisting rural electric cooperatives in the U.S. with decarbonization strategy. He is also acting executive director for the third phase of joint Harvard-MIT Roosevelt Project, as well as a member of the MIT Net-Zero by 2026 Faculty Review Committee.
Prior to his appointment as executive director at CEEPR, Hodge served for three years as deputy executive director at both CEEPR and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Before joining MIT, Hodge ran the Commodities Research and Forecasts business, Americas, at Thomson Reuters, where he managed the launch of the firm’s North American power and gas forecast modeling services. Previously, Hodge was managing director, North America, at Point Carbon where he was the firm’s first hire in the region and oversaw the launch of Point Carbon’s North American products. Hodge holds an MBA from the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia and received his undergraduate education at the University of St. Andrews (UK).
Hodge has served as a commissioner on the Commission for Energy Use and Climate Change of the City of Somerville (MA), assisted the Museum of Science, Boston with climate change programing, and mentored students at the MIT Policy Hackathon.
Detlef Hohl
Chief Scientist Computational and Data Science, Shell
Detlef Hohl holds a Master’s degree in chemistry from Technical University of Munich and a PhD in theoretical physics from Technical University of Aachen (Germany). Before joining Shell, he was senior scientist at the German National Laboratory Forschungszentrum Jülich.
Hohl spent his entire Shell career in R&D, both in the U.S. and in Europe. First in geophysical seismic imaging, then in probabilistic seismic inversion, and then he became R&D team leader for “Quantitative Reservoir Management”. From 2010-2017 he was R&D General Manager Computation and Modeling where he led a project portfolio in data analytics, computational engineering and materials science, geoscience and petroleum engineering.
Hohl was appointed Shell’s Chief Scientist for Computational and Data Science in 2017 where he oversees and guides Shell’s entire computational and computer science portfolio, including elements of Artificial Intelligence, physical systems simulation at all spatial and temporal scales, chemicals and chemical engineering modeling, future energy systems optimization, atmospheric and Earth science modeling.
Hohl has always used the largest available high-performance computers of their time to do big things that cannot be done otherwise. He is active in the academic, National laboratory and joint industry research communities, member of APS, ACM, SIAM, SPE, SEG and AGU. Hohl is adjunct professor and teaches courses at Rice University (Computational and Applied Math). He held various temporary and visiting positions at NCSA, SISSA Trieste, NIST and Stanford University. In his free time, science remains his biggest hobby.
Andreas Jagtøyen
Senior Vice President, Technology Digital and Innovation, Equinor
Andreas Jagtøyen is senior vice president for renewables and low carbon in Technology, Digital & Innovation (TDI). He leads integrated research and technology development, oversees technical and regulatory matters, and drives the development of RLC digital applications. His role includes enabling digital technologies across renewable and low-carbon operations and strengthening strategic supplier collaboration.
With more than 30 years of global operational experience in the maritime and energy industries, Jagtøyen has held several senior leadership roles within the Kongsberg Group, focusing on instrumentation, automation, simulation, and digital transformation. He has also co-founded, built, and led software and technology start-ups, contributing to innovation and commercial growth.
Jagtøyen holds a BSc in computer science from Trondheim University College. He has also participated in the prestigious Solstrand Programme, a leadership development initiative offered by AFF at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH).
Randolph Kirchain
Director, MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub
Christopher Knittel
Associate Dean for Climate and Sustainability, MIT Sloan School of Management
Christopher Knittel is the George P. Shultz Professor of Energy Economics, Professor of Applied Economics, and the Associate Dean of Climate, Energy, and Sustainability at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He directs MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, which has served as the hub for social science research on energy and the environment since the late 1970s, and is the Director of MIT’s new Climate Policy Center, which works directly with policy makers to analyze existing, proposed, and potential policy measures. Finally, Knittel is the Director of the Inventing New Policy Approaches Mission for the Climate Project at MIT.
He joined the faculty at MIT in 2011, having taught previously at UC Davis and Boston University. At MIT he teaches Energy Economics and Policy to undergraduates, MBA students, and graduate students from outside of the Sloan School of Management. Knittel received his BA in economics and political science from the California State University, Stanislaus in 1994 (summa cum laude), an MA in economics from UC Davis in 1996, and a PhD in economics from UC Berkeley in 1999.
His research focuses on understanding how consumers and firms respond to changes in the energy environment, be it from prices or regulation, and what this means for the costs and benefits of policy. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Productivity, Industrial Organization, and Energy and Environmental Economics groups. He is the co-director of NBER’s Energy and Environmental Economics group. He is the former co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics, and an associate editor of the Journal of Transportation Economics and Policy, and Journal of Energy Markets, having previously served as an associate editor of The American Economic Journal — Economic Policy and The Journal of Industrial Economics. His research has appeared in The American Economic Review, The Journal of Political Economy, The American Economic Journal, The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Journal of Industrial Economics, The Energy Journal, and other academic journals.
Ruaridh Macdonald
Research Scientist, MIT Energy Initiative
Ruaridh Macdonald is the energy systems research lead at the MIT Energy Initiative. His research explores how best to decarbonize the electricity grid and other sectors, and which technologies and policies will reduce the cost of the energy transition while ensuring grid resilience and security. He is developing novel approaches to modelling infrastructure planning which allow for larger multi-sector energy systems to be optimized over long time periods. This allows for technologies to be modelled with greater fidelity and considering interannual variation in energy supply and demand. Macdonald is a co-lead developer of the GenX, DOLPHYN, and Macro infrastructure planning models. He completed his PhD in nuclear science and engineering at MIT.
Michael A. Mehling
Deputy Director, MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
Michael Mehling is deputy director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. In his work, he focuses on climate policy design and implementation at the intersection with environmental, energy, financial market, and trade policy, and has advised decision makers in over a dozen countries, testified before or briefing legislators in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, and served as an expert in several climate litigation and arbitration cases. Previously, he was a professor at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and president of Ecologic Institute in Washington, DC. He helped pioneer several initiatives in the areas of climate law and policy, and is a founding board member of, inter alia, the Blockchain & Climate Institute (BCI) in London, the European Association of Climate Law (EACL) in Berlin, and the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition (ERCST) in Brussels. He is also founder and editor-in-chief of the Carbon & Climate Law Review (CCLR), the first academic journal focused on climate law and regulation.
Jennifer Morris
Principal Research Scientist, MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy and MIT Energy Initiative
Jennifer Morris is a principal research scientist at the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy and the MIT Energy Initiative. Her research focuses on energy-economic modeling and linkages between human and natural systems to explore multi-sector feedbacks and implications of different development, decarbonization and investment pathways. She also focuses on uncertainty, risk analysis, and decision-making in energy and environmental systems. This work involves quantifying key uncertainties (e.g. population growth, technology costs, resource availability, etc.), and applying different methodological approaches to models to formally represent such uncertainties and explore how they impact near-term decisions. Morris is a key contributor to the development of the MIT Integrated Global System Modeling (IGSM) framework, focusing on the human system component, the Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model. With this modeling framework, she develops integrated economic and climate scenarios, generates large ensembles, analyzes policy impacts, explores technology and mitigation pathways, and examines multi-sector dynamics. Morris holds a PhD in engineering systems and a MS in technology and policy from MIT.
Sergey Paltsev
Deputy Director, MIT Center for Sustainable Science and Strategy
Sergey Paltsev is a deputy director of the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy (CS3) and a senior research scientist at MIT Energy Initiative, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA. He is the lead modeler in charge of the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model of the world economy. Paltsev is an author of more than 140 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals and books in the area of energy economics, climate policy, transport, advanced energy technologies, and international trade. Paltsev was a lead author of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is a recipient of the 2012 Pyke Johnson Award (by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, USA, for the best paper in the area of planning and environment).
Additional information is available here.
Matt Reeves
Technology Vice President, Low Carbon Solutions, ExxonMobil
As the technology vice president for Low Carbon Solutions, Matt Reeves is responsible for technology development across multiple verticals in Low Carbon Solutions, including carbon capture, hydrogen, lithium and negative emissions platforms.
Prior to his current position, Reeves spent the previous four years as the new product development manager in the Low Carbon Solutions business, and responsible for development of new opportunities across the emerging business.
Reeves started with ExxonMobil as a technology deployment engineer in technology in Baytown, Texas in 1996. Over the next several years he worked between manufacturing and technology positions in Baytown, Thailand, and Rotterdam, operating facilities and deploying new technologies. In 2008, he moved to Singapore to take a business role as feedstock and optimization manager for Asia Pacific, which included new assets across in Singapore and throughout AP. In 2014, he returned to the U.S. to be the planning manager for major ventures, then moved to the Baytown Olefins Plant as the technical manager in 2015. In 2018, he took over as the basic chemicals technology manager, where he stayed until his current role in the newly formed Low Carbon Solutions business in 2021.
Christoph Reinhart
Alan and Terri Spoon Professor of Architecture and Climate, MIT Department of Architecture
Christoph Reinhart is a building scientist and architectural educator working in the field of sustainable building design and environmental modeling. At MIT, he is the inaugural Alan and Terri Spoon Professor of Architecture and Climate and head of the Sustainable Design Lab (SDL), an inter-disciplinary group with a grounding in architecture that develops design workflows, planning tools, and metrics to evaluate the environmental performance of buildings and neighborhoods. Outside of MIT, Reinhart is a managing member at Solemma, a technology company and served as strategic development advisor for MIT spinoff mapdwell until it joined Palmetto Clean Technology in 2021. Planning tools originating from SDL and Solemma are used in practice and education in over 90 countries.
Carlos Sanchez
Graduate Student, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Ruhi Sarikaya
Vice President of Alexa AI, Amazon
Ruhi Sarikaya is vice president of Alexa AI at Amazon leading a team of 700+ people. With his team, he has been building LLM based core AI capabilities around ranking, relevance, natural language understanding, dialog management, contextual understanding, proactive recommendations, personalization, self-learning, metrics, and analytics for Alexa. Prior to joining Amazon, he was a principal science manager and the founder of the language understanding and dialog systems group at Microsoft between 2011 and 2016. His group has built the language understanding and dialog management capabilities of Cortana, Xbox One, and the underlying platform. Before Microsoft, he was a research staff member and team lead in the Human Language Technologies Group at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center for ten years. Prior to IBM, he worked as a researcher at the Center for Spoken Language Research (CSLR) at University of Colorado at Boulder for two years. He received his BS degree from Bilkent University, MS degree from Clemson University, and PhD degree from Duke University, all in electrical and computer engineering. He has published over 135 technical papers in refereed journal and conference proceedings and, is inventor of over 90 granted/pending patents. He serves on the advisory boards of several universities and engineering departments and is an Adjunct Research Professor at the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is also the executive sponsor of the Amazon–UIUC partnership. Sarikaya has served in the IEEE SLTC, the general co-chair of IEEE SLT’12, publicity chair of IEEE ASRU’05, and associate editor of IEEE Trans. on Audio, Speech and Language Processing and IEEE Signal Processing Letters. He was named IEEE SPS Distinguished Industry Speaker and is an IEEE Fellow.
Juan Senga
Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and MIT Climate Policy Center
Sungho Shin
Texaco-Mangelsdorf Career Development Professor in Chemical Engineering, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering
Sungho Shin is the Texaco-Mangelsdorf Career Development Chair Assistant Professor of the Chemical Engineering Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to joining MIT, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory (supervisor: Mihai Anitescu). He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (advisor: Victor M. Zavala). He was a summer intern at Los Alamos National Laboratory (2020; worked with Carleton Coffrin and Kaarthik Sundar) and Argonne National Laboratory (2018; worked with Mihai Anitescu). He was an undergraduate researcher at Jong Min Lee’s group at Seoul National University. His research interests include model predictive control, optimization algorithms, and their applications to large-scale energy infrastructures (such as natural gas and power networks). He is the main developer of the nonlinear optimization solver MadNLP.jl and the automatic differentiation/algebraic modeling tool ExaModels.jl. He was the winner of the W. David Smith, Jr. Graduate Publication Award, AIChE Annual Meeting CAST Directors’ Student Presentation Award, IFAC ADCHEM Young Author Award, IFAC NMPC Young Author Award. He was a recipient of the Korea Presidential Science Fellowship, Kwanjeong Fellowship, and Grainger Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship.
Woojae Shin
Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Energy Initiative
Rob Stoner
Former Director, MIT Energy Initiative
Yogesh Surendranath
Donner Professor of Science, MIT Departments of Chemistryand Chemical Engineering
Yogesh (Yogi) Surendranath is the Donner Professor of Science with appointments in the Departments of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He holds dual bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and physics from the University of Virginia and a PhD in inorganic chemistry from MIT, obtained under the direction of Professor Daniel Nocera. After receiving his PhD, Surendranath undertook postdoctoral studies as a Miller Research Fellow at UC Berkeley, under the direction of Professor Paul Alivisatos. In 2013, he launched his independent research program at MIT. The Surendranath group aims to address frontier challenges in energy conversion and sustainability by controlling interfacial reactivity at the molecular level.
Nicolas Tselentis
Graduate Student, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering
Dominic White
Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy
Dominic White earned an undergraduate and Honors degree in economics at the University of Western Australia and received his PhD from Auckland University of Technology. His doctoral research used input-output datasets (which describe the connections among industries) and economy-wide modeling to examine the economic and land-use-change implications of plastic use and climate change policies. This included an estimation of plastic use in industries in the U.S., the potential impacts of a shift from conventional clothing to clothing made without plastics or synthetic chemicals, and an analysis of the inclusion of both permanent and production forestry in the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme. At CS3, White’s research has used economy-wide modeling to investigate the impacts of extreme weather events and environmental policies on different regions in the U.S.
Anthony Wong
Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy
Anthony Y. H. Wong is currently a postdoctoral associate at Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy, MIT. He received his PhD degree from Boston University, focused on atmosphere-biosphere interaction and air quality. At MIT, he focuses on the investigating the environmental impacts of low carbon alternative fuels (e.g. hydrogen, ammonia), and applying machine learning to accelerate air quality modeling. His work on the climate and air quality impacts from ammonia-powered ships was selected as one of the highlight papers from Environmental Research Letters in 2024.
Justin Zhou
Graduate Student, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science