About the MIT Energy Initiative

Robert C. Armstrong is MITEI’s director and the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering. A member of the MIT faculty since 1973, Armstrong served as head of the Department of Chemical Engineering from 1996 to 2007 and has directed MITEI since 2013, after serving as the organization’s deputy director from 2007-2013 with founding director Ernest Moniz. His research is focused on pathways to a low-carbon energy future.

Armstrong has been elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2020) and the National Academy of Engineering (2008). He received the 2020 AIChE Founders’ Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Chemical Engineering in honor of his landmark contributions to chemical engineering research and education, and for leadership in advancing the transition to a low-carbon future and addressing climate change. He has also been awarded AIChE’s Warren K. Lewis Award (2006), and the Professional Progress Award (1992). He is the recipient of the 2006 Bingham Medal from the Society of Rheology, which is devoted to the study of the science of deformation and flow of matter.

Armstrong was a member of MIT’s Future of Natural Gas and Future of Solar Energy study groups. He advised the teams that developed MITEI’s most recent reports, The Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World (2018) and Insights into Future Mobility (2019), and is co-chairing the new MITEI study, The Future of Storage. He co-edited Game Changers: Energy on the Move with former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

Martha Broad is MITEI’s executive director. As part of the leadership team, she works to link science, innovation and policy to transform the world’s energy systems. She has a track record of successfully partnering with business, government and nonprofit stakeholders to support the clean energy transition. At MITEI, she works closely with member companies who collaborate with MIT researchers on a spectrum of topics, including the Future Energy Systems Center.

In addition, she spearheads MITEI’s collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy to design, manage, and host the annual Clean Energy Education and Empowerment (C3E) Women in Clean Energy Symposium and serves as a C3E Ambassador.

Previously, as part of the senior management team of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), Broad led programs and studies that focused on the commercialization of clean energy technologies. By collaborating with universities and public and private partners, she helped facilitate the state’s successful installation of hundreds of megawatts of wind and solar systems.

Louis Carranza was previously vice president for strategic development at IHS, where he worked for 17 years. There, he served as executive director and co-chair of CERAWeek—one of the top five corporate leader conferences in the world—and conceived and implemented the CERAWeek partnership program. He was also co-director of the IHS scenario planning initiative. Earlier at CERA, Carranza was responsible for managing the firm’s global power practice.

Christopher Knittel is the George P. Shultz Professor of Applied Economics in the Sloan School of Management MIT. He is also the director of MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, which has served as the hub for social science research on energy and the environmental since the late 1970s. Knittel is also the deputy director for policy at MITEI and a co-director of The E2e Project, a research initiative between MIT, UC Berkeley, and the University of Chicago, to undertake rigorous evaluation of energy efficiency investments. 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.

Antje Danielson joined MITEI after eight years at Tufts University, where she directed the Tufts Institute of the Environment and was an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health. Her areas of interest are energy education and carbon capture and storage. She is also interested in research on conditions that underpin interdisciplinary research and collaborations.

Her previous roles include deputy director for sustainability at the Centre for Research into Earth Energy Systems at Durham University in the UK, where she initiated a carbon capture and storage working group. Danielson is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Council for Science and the Environment and has also served as President of the Council for Environmental Deans and Directors. She received teaching awards from Harvard University and an Exceptional Contribution Award from Durham University. In 1999/2000 she co-founded the car-sharing company Zipcar.

Antje holds a PhD in geochemistry from the Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany.

Tom Melville joined MITEI as communications director in April, 2021. Before joining MITEI, he spent nine years at Boston’s NPR news station, WBUR, leading the largest public radio station newsroom in the United States. He directed reporting teams covering politics, the environment, healthcare, education, the arts, business/innovation/technology and investigations. He joined WBUR as executive editor of content in 2011, was promoted to news director in 2013 and to executive news director in 2015. Before joining WBUR, he was news director at the nation’s largest regional news channel, New England Cable News (NECN). At NECN, Melville rose through the ranks from reporter to executive producer and to assistant news director before being named news director in 2008. He was executive producer and co-writer of an NECN documentary film on hospice care, “Look for Me Here: 299 days in the life of Nora Lenihan,” which won more than a dozen regional, national and international awards, including the George Foster Peabody Award.

He began reporting the news at a radio station in his native Newton, Massachusetts when he was 16 years old. He covered sports at the Boston Herald-American while an undergraduate at Boston University. He served in the United States Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic, teaching vegetable gardening in the public schools in the town of El Valle. He is a graduate of Boston College Law School and holds a law license in Massachusetts.

Early in his career, Melville was a news reporter covering small town government at radio stations in New Hampshire. He covered agriculture and was weekend anchor at the ABC television station in Sioux City, Iowa. He was an anchor, reporter, producer and news director at the NBC television station in White River Junction, Vermont. He covered consumer news and the courts for the NBC television station in West Palm Beach, Florida. He then moved home to Boston to become chief political reporter for NECN.

Melville was also a consultant with the Boston-area media relations firm eMedia Junction, advising nonprofit and for-profit organizations on communications strategy, media training, content creation, storytelling, and crisis communications.

Robert Stoner is the deputy director for science and technology at MITEI and founding director of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design. He is currently a member of the MIT Energy Council, the Science and Technology Committee of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and the Technical Advisory Board of the Center for the Study of Science, Technology, and Energy Policy. He is also a member of the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Global Commission to End Energy Poverty, and serves as its secretary.

Stoner is the inventor of numerous computational and ultrafast optical measurement techniques, and has built and managed successful technology firms in the semiconductor, IT, and optics industries. From 2007 through 2009, he lived and worked in Africa and India while serving in a variety of senior roles within the Clinton Foundation, including as the CEO of the Clinton Development Initiative, and director of the Clinton Climate Initiative for Africa. His present research at MIT focuses on energy storage technology and policy, and the design and optimization of energy systems and business models in the developing world. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in engineering physics from Queen’s University and PhD from Brown University in condensed matter physics.

Robert Tolu has worked for 17 years in finance and previously sponsored award administration for Harvard University and Education Development Center. At MITEI, he serves as senior fiscal officer and is responsible for overseeing all financial matters, pre- and post-award, to ensure smooth operations and minimal surprises. Robert’s extensive experience includes work with the federal government, industry, and foundation funders.