The MIT Energy Initiative will hold the Future Energy Systems Center Spring Workshop on May 14-15, 2024.
The Center Advisory Committee meeting during the workshop will provide Member companies with a platform to express their interests and priorities and help shape the Center’s next project selection cycle.
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 14 | |
| 8:00-8:45 am ET | Breakfast and registration |
| 8:45-9:00 am ET | Welcome Randall Field, Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center, MIT Energy Initiative William H. Green, Director, MIT Energy Initiative; Professor, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering |
| 9:00-10:15 am ET |
Sustainability vs. scale: The role of bioenergy in the energy transition John Cabaniss, Deputy Director, Bioenergy Technologies Office, U.S. Department of Energy Dan MacEachran, Global Head of Biotechnology, Braskem Jennifer Morris, Principal Research Scientist, MIT Energy Initiative and MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change Steven Slome, Principal, NexantECA Gregory Stephanopoulos, W.H. Dow Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering Moderated by Sam Nejame, CEO, Promotum |
| 10:15-10:30 am ET | Break |
| 10:30 am-12:00 pm ET |
New Future Energy Systems Center project kickoffs round 1
In person only: Breakout discussions with project teams |
| 12:00-1:00 pm ET | Lunch |
| 1:00-2:30 pm ET |
New Future Energy Systems Center project kickoffs round 2
In person only: Breakout discussions with project teams |
| 2:30-3:00 pm ET | Break |
| 3:00-4:15 pm ET |
Pathways towards decarbonizing buildings in a cold climate Stephen Caldwell, Vice President, Utility of the Future Transformation, National Grid Nina Mascarenhas, Commercial Program Manager, Energy Efficiency Division, Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources Peter McPhee, Senior Director, Building Decarbonization, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center Leslie Norford, Professor of Building Technology, MIT Department of Architecture Siqi Zheng, STL Champion Professor of Urban and Real Estate Sustainability, MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning; Faculty Director, MIT Center for Real Estate Moderated by Christoph Reinhart, Alan and Terri Spoon Professor of Architecture and Climate, MIT Department of Architecture; Director, MIT Building Technology Program |
| 4:15-5:00 pm ET |
Project highlights by students and postdocs
|
| 5:00-7:00 pm ET |
Poster session and reception
|
| Wednesday, May 15 | |
| 8:00-9:00 am ET | Breakfast and registration |
| 9:00-11:00 am ET | Future Energy Systems Center Advisory Committee Meeting |
| 11:00-11:15 am ET | Break |
| 11:15 am-12:30 pm ET |
From reactor to reality: Timelines and opportunities to decarbonize with nuclear energy Rita Baranwal, Senior Vice President, Westinghouse Levi Larsen, Energy Economist, Idaho National Lab Robb Stewart, Co-founder and CEO, Boston Atomics Sarfraz Taj, Director, M&A Corporate Development & Strategic Projects, Constellation Energy Moderated by: Ruaridh Macdonald, Energy Systems Research Lead, MIT Energy Initiative |
| 12:30-1:30 pm ET | Lunch |
| 1:30-2:45 pm ET |
The challenge of carbon utilization and storage Ruben Juanes, Professor, MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth, Atmospheric, & Planetary Sciences David Morgan, Physical Scientist, National Energy Technology Laboratory Guiyan Zang, Research Scientist, MIT Energy Initiative Branko Zugic, Co-founder and CTO, Lydian Moderated by Randall Field, Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center, MIT Energy Initiative |
| 2:45-3:00 pm ET | Break |
| 3:00-4:15 pm ET |
The role of microgrids for reliability and resilience in a deeply decarbonized grid Erik Hall, Director, Energy Services & Technology, North Carolina Electric Cooperatives Christopher Irwin, Program Manager, U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity Jayant Kumar, CEO for Digital Energy Solutions, L&T Power Transmission & Distribution Mohammad Shahidehpour, Galvin Chair Professor, Illinois Institute of Technology Moderated by Anuradha Annaswamy, Founder and Director, Active-Adaptive Control Laboratory; Senior Research Scientist, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering |
| 4:15 pm ET | Closing remarks |
About the speakers
Anuradha Annaswamy
Founder and Director, Active-Adaptive Control Laboratory; 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 and Smart Cities. 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.
Annaswamy is the author of a graduate textbook on adaptive control, a co-author of a 2021 report on Future of Electric Power in the United States, and a 2023 report on the Role of Net-metering in the Evolving Electricity System, both published by National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She served as the president of CSS in 2020. She has been serving as a faculty lead in the Electric Power Systems workstream in the MIT Future Energy Systems Center since September 2021.
Annaswamy has served as the deputy editor of Annual Reviews in Control from 2016-2020. She is the co-editor of the CSS report on Impact of Control Technology (2011;2013). She was the lead editor of the CSS report “Control for societal-scale Challenges: Road Map 2030,” published in 2023. She is currently serving as the president-elect of the American Automatic Control Council. She will serve as the editor in chief of IEEE Control Systems magazine from January 2025.
Hessam Azarijafari
Deputy Director, MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub
Hessam Azarijafari is deputy director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His background is in industrial ecology and its application to construction management and engineering. As a principal investigator and researcher, Azarijafari has led various projects related to the life cycle sustainability assessment and the nexus of pavements, buildings, and vehicles. He is a voting and advisory member of several technical committees on sustainable construction and environmental assessment, including the FHWA Sustainable Pavement Working Group, NIST Consortium for Low Carbon Cement and Concrete, ACI 323 – Low-Carbon Concrete Code, and ACI 130 – Sustainability in Concrete. Azarijafari has been chairing the ACI eco-concrete competition since 2017, which aims to promote and educate undergraduate and graduate civil engineering students on life cycle sustainability. He received his PhD from the University of Sherbrooke in Canada in 2018.
Rita Baranwal
Senior Vice President, Westinghouse
Rita Baranwal leads development and deployment of the AP300™ Small Modular Reactor (SMR) at Westinghouse and has over 25 years of nuclear industry experience. Baranwal was previously chief technology officer at Westinghouse where she led the clean energy company’s global research and development on innovative nuclear solutions.
Previously, Baranwal served as chief nuclear officer at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Before joining EPRI, Baranwal served as assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in a U.S. President-appointed and Senate-confirmed role.
Baranwal is a fellow of the American Nuclear Society (ANS), and has a bachelor’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in materials science and engineering and a master’s degree and PhD in the same discipline from the University of Michigan.
John Cabaniss
Deputy Director, Bioenergy Technologies Office, U.S. Department of Energy
John Cabaniss is the deputy director of the Bioenergy Technologies Office at the U.S. Department of Energy. During his 15 years at the Department of Energy, he has led international collaborations related to energy efficiency and renewable energy and efforts to increase U.S. exports of clean energy technologies. He served as the chief of staff for Sustainable Transportation for two years before joining the Bioenergy Technologies Office in 2017. Prior to federal service, Cabaniss worked as a consultant on sustainability practices and transportation fuel policy and regulation for industry and federal clients. He holds a BS in integrated science and technology with a focus on environmental science from James Madison University.
Stephen Caldwell
Vice President, Utility of the Future Transformation, National Grid
As the VP, Utility of the Future Transformation, for National Grid’s New England business, Stephen Caldwell is responsible for strategic planning and mobilizing leaders and teams across the company to drive the decarbonization of National Grid’s gas and electric networks—including developing infrastructure investment plans, new capabilities, policy and regulatory enablers, and innovation priorities.
Caldwell has experience that spans clean energy policy, utility regulation, and corporate strategy. Caldwell is a graduate of Harvard College and holds a BA in chemistry & physics. Additionally, Caldwell was awarded a Master’s in public policy from Georgetown University.
Caldwell started his career 20 years ago in management consulting. He subsequently transitioned into a focus on the energy industry, working at a clean energy and climate policy think tank in Washington, DC, and a specialized utility regulatory consulting firm, Concentric Energy Advisors, before joining National Grid. During his nearly ten-year tenure at National Grid, he has held several positions covering clean energy policy, regulatory strategy, and business transformation, and he was Chief of Staff to National Grid’s U.S. President.
Caldwell lives in Arlington, MA, with his three children.
Sili Deng
Class of 1954 Career Development Chair Assistant Professor, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Sili Deng is the Class of 1954 Career Development Chair Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. She received her doctoral degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University. After being a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, she joined MIT as an assistant professor in 2019. Deng received the Bernard Lewis Fellowship from the Combustion Institute in 2016, Frontiers of Engineering Award from the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2021, NSF CAREER Award in 2022, and the Irvin Glassman Young Investigator Award from the Easten States Section of the Combustion Institute in 2024. Deng leads the Deng Energy and Nanotechnology Group at MIT. The group focuses on energy conversion and storage, specifically the fundamental understanding of combustion and emissions, scientific machine learning for reacting flows, carbon-neutral energetic materials, and flame synthesis of materials for catalysis and energy storage.
Chuchu Fan
Assistant Professor, MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronauticsand MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems
Chuchu Fan is an assistant professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) and (LIDS) at MIT. Before that, she was a postdoc researcher at Caltech and got her PhD from ECE at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University, Department of Automation. Her research group Realm at MIT works on using rigorous mathematics, including formal methods, machine learning, and control theory, for the design, analysis, and verification of safe autonomous systems. Fan is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, an AFOSR Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award, and the 2020 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award.
Randall Field
Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center, MIT Energy Initiative
Randall Field is executive director of the MIT Future Energy Systems Center which examines the accelerating energy transition as emerging technologies, policies, demographics, and economics reshaping the landscape of energy supply and demand. He is also executive director of MIT’s Fusion Study examining the global multidecadal dynamics of the energy transition and how fusion energy can contribute to decarbonizing global energy systems. He was previously executive director for MITEI’s Mobility Systems Center, assessing the impact of transformations in vehicle and fuel technologies, service and business models, and consumer behavior in the movement of both passengers and goods. He was also executive director for MIT’s Mobility of the Future study which produced the Insights in the Future Mobility report covering global projections of alternative fuel vehicle fleets and energy consumption, deployment of charging and fueling infrastructure, attitudes towards mobility, and the impacts of innovative technologies and business models on urban mobility. As executive director for the Conversion Research Program at MIT for 10 years, Field worked with a multidisciplinary team of researchers to explore various conversion technologies for production of alternative fuels. Prior to MIT, Field worked for Aspen Technology for 23 years. Field received a SM in chemical engineering practice from MIT and a BS in chemical engineering from Caltech.
William H. Green
Director, MIT Energy Initiative; Professor, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering
William H. Green, the Hoyt C. Hottel Professor at MIT, is a world leader in chemical kinetics, reaction engineering, prediction of chemical reactions and properties, and in development of related software. He has led many combined experimental/modeling research projects related to fuels, combustion, pyrolysis, and oxidative stability, and he invented an instrument to directly measure rate coefficients for multi-channel reactions. He developed computer methods to predict the behavior of complicated reacting mixtures, many of which are included in the open source Reaction Mechanism Generator software package, a type of AI expert system for reactive chemistry. The associated popular website rmg.mit.edu includes estimators for many chemical properties and several databases. Green co-invented several algorithms and numerical methods helpful for handling complicated chemical kinetics. His group has also developed machine-learning methods and software (ASKCOSand Chemprop) for accurately predicting the products of organic reactions and for predicting many chemical and reaction properties. Chemprop, whose recent versions were developed primarily by Green’s research group, is currently the most popular open-source chemistry software on GitHub. It is heavily used by the pharmaceutical industry, to predict the properties of proposed new drug molecules. Green also invents and analyzes technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in the transportation/fuel sector. Two of his greenhouse-gas reduction inventions are now being commercialized, one by Thiozen, a company he co-founded. Recently he has been developing and analyzing technology options for decarbonizing the freight sector, with a special interest in long-haul trucking.
Green earned his BA from Swarthmore College, and his PhD in physical chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley under the supervision of C. Bradley Moore. After postdocs at Cambridge University with Nicholas Handy and at the University of Pennsylvania with Marsha Lester, he worked for Exxon Research & Engineering for six years before joining the Chemical Engineering faculty at MIT in 1997. Green has co-authored more than 350 journal articles, which have been cited more than 23,000 times. He is a fellow of the AAAS and of the Combustion Institute, and has received the American Chemical Society’s Glenn Award in Energy & Fuel Chemistry and the AIChE’s Wilhelm Award in Reaction Engineering. He convened and organized the International Conference on Chemical Kinetics in 2011, and now serves as treasurer of that conference series. More than 20 of his former graduate or postdoctoral students are now tenured or tenure-track faculty. He previously served as the editor of the International Journal of Chemical Kinetics, as the faculty chair of MIT’s Mobility of the Future project, and as the executive officer of the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering. He was appointed director of the MIT Energy Initiative in Spring 2024.
Erik Hall
Director, Energy Services & Technology, North Carolina Electric Cooperatives
Erik Hall is the director of Energy Services & Technology at North Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives. He leads program design, development, and implementation for a growing portfolio of Distributed Energy Resources, including microgrids, battery energy storage, renewables, and behind-the-meter devices. Hall oversees a team responsible for deploying, integrating, and managing edge-of-grid resources within the organization’s Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS), focusing on upstream reliability coordination, as well as maximizing the benefits of demand reduction. Hall has a mechanical engineering degree and MBA from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He also served as a navy nuclear submarine officer for 12 years and worked for N.C. State University as the director of Energy Management and Central Utility Plant Manager.
Marija Ilić
Joint Adjunct Professor, ; Senior Research Scientist, MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems
Marija Ilić is a professor Emerita at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). She currently holds a joint appointment of adjunct professor in EECS Department and senior research scientist at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is an IEEE Life Fellow and an elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and the Academia Europaea. She was the first recipient of the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award for Power Systems in the US. She has co-authored several books on the subject of large-scale electric power systems and has co-organized an annual multidisciplinary electricity industry conference series at Carnegie Mellon with participants from academia, government, and industry. She was the founder and co-director of the Electric Energy Systems Group (EESG) at Carnegie Mellon University. Currently she is building EESG@MIT, in the same spirit as EESG@CMU. Most recently she has offered an open EdX course at MIT entitled “Principles of Modeling, Simulations and Control in Electric Energy Systems”. She is founder and chief scientist at New Electricity Transmission Solutions (NETSS), Inc, currently SmartGridz, Inc.
Christopher Irwin
Program Manager, U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity
Christopher Irwin has spent over 27 years in a diverse spectrum of high technology fields from HVAC to semiconductor manufacturing, communication networks, and Smart Grid infrastructure.
At the DOE Office of Electricity, he has managed over $1.7B in grid modernization projects. Irwin leads DOE’s Smart Grid standards and interoperability efforts, DOE’s role in the Green Button consumer data access initiative and other closed and open data topics, and the OE Dynamic Controls Program, which includes Transactive Energy.
Irwin holds a BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, and an MBA from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.
Ruben Juanes
Professor, MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth, Atmospheric, & Planetary Sciences
Ruben Juanes is a professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, where he has been since 2006. He is an expert in fluid flow through porous media and in geomechanics, and has applied his research to the fields of energy resources, carbon capture and storage, water resources, and induced seismicity. He holds graduate degrees from UC Berkeley, and is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
Jayant Kumar
CEO for Digital Energy Solutions, L&T Power Transmission & Distribution
Jayant Kumar is chief executive officer for “Digital Energy Solutions” business unit at L&T Power Transmission & Distribution (PT&D). Larsen & Toubro (L&T) is a global, multi-billion-dollar technology, engineering, construction, and financial services conglomerate specializing in engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) projects, high-tech manufacturing, digital transformation, and technology services. L&T “Digital Energy Solutions” is an integrated service provider that delivers fast, reliable, secure, and smart digital solutions for mission-critical energy system applications.
Since more than a decade, Kumar’s engagement has been in incubating and growing new businesses in the domain of electric power generation transmission & distribution. Before joining L&T, Kumar was senior director at GE Renewable where he was responsible for Smart Utility Control Rooms, Grid Automation Systems & Services, Electric Market Systems, Microgrids and Smart City. Prior to GE, Kumar worked for Alstom and Areva where he developed and delivered multiple multi-million dollar projects for most of the leading utilities in United States.
Kumar’s prior role included worldwide regions including Europe, Middle East, India, and China. Kumar has been a USA country representative in multiple forums; such as USA China Collaboration –Climate Coordination Working Committee (CCWG) and USA-India collaboration jointly led by USA DoE – India MST (Ministry of Science & Technology) for developing next generation T&D operation with high penetration of solar, storage. During his tenure at Alstom and GE, Kumar has had numerous engagements with the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Defense for $100M+ grant projects.
Levi Larsen
Energy Economist, Idaho National Lab
Levi Larsen earned an MSc degree in economics from the University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland. Presently, Larsen is employed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) as an energy economist within the Nuclear Science and Technology, Integrated Energy & Market Analysis department. In this capacity, Larsen specializes in finance centric research including cost estimation, project profitability, and impacts of tax credits on energy markets. Larsen also works closely with the Nuclear Energy Integrated Energy Systems program, with a primary focus on hydrogen production, commodity market research, and discounted cashflow analysis. During his previous position in the Biopharmaceutical industry, Larsen conducted extensive cost and profitability modeling which he continues to use in his research at INL.
Dan MacEachran
Global Head of Biotechnology, Braskem
Dan MacEachran is the global head of Biotechnology at Braskem. MacEachran is committed to the decarbonization of the petrochemical industry through the development and commercialization of renewable biotechnologies. Prior to joining Braskem in 2018, he served as the director of R&D at Greenlight Biosciences where he led the early development of Greenlight’s proprietary RNA production technology. MacEachran holds a PhD in microbiology and immunology from Dartmouth Medical School and performed his post-doctoral studies in the laboratory of Anthony Sinskey at MIT. MacEachran’s passion regarding renewable chemicals and decarbonization is rooted in his love of the outdoors and his desire to share this with his two children.
Ruaridh Macdonald
Energy Systems Research Lead, 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 also ensuring grid resilience and security. He is developing novel approaches to macro-energy system modelling, 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 and DOLPHYN macro-energy system models. He completed his PhD in nuclear science and engineering at MIT.
Nina Mascarenhas
Commercial Program Manager, Energy Efficiency Division, Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources
Nina Mascarenhas is the commercial program manager in the Energy Efficiency division at the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER). She is the DOER staff lead for the Commercial and Industrial (C&I) sector in the statewide energy efficiency planning process and oversees the technical review and policy development for the Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing program. She holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Pune, a master’s degree in integrated sustainable design from the National University of Singapore and a master’s degree in city planning from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Peter McPhee
Senior Director, Building Decarbonization, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center
Peter McPhee is the senior director for Building Decarbonization at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), an agency focused on fostering the growth of a vibrant clean energy economy in pursuit of the state’s 2050 net zero emissions obligation. Since 2013, McPhee’s focus has been on establishing low-carbon pathways for the Commonwealth’s buildings. McPhee launched MassCEC’s electrification programs and is currently facilitating the technology, policy, and market solutions necessary to support millions of buildings transitioning from fossil fuels to zero emissions technologies in the coming decades.
David Morgan
Physical Scientist, National Energy Technology Laboratory
David Morgan received a BS in physics from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1977 and a PhD in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University in 1988. Morgan worked as an environmental engineer in the remediation of old industrial sites for 24 years for a variety of engineering consulting companies including a small company where he was a co-owner. During this time, he performed human health and ecological risk assessments, fate and transport analyses of chemicals in the environment, engineering feasibility studies for the cleanup of sites, and assessments of the cost of cleanup for a variety of purposes. For the past 14 years, he has worked at the National Energy Technology Laboratory where he has overseen engineering economic analyses. He is the principal developer of the FECM/NETL CO2 Transport Cost Model, FECM/NETL CO2 Saline Storage Cost Model, the FECM/NETL Hydrogen Pipeline Cost Model, the updated FE/NETL CO2 Prophet Model, and the FE/NETL CO2 EOR Cost Model. He has performed numerous internal studies of the cost of CO2 pipeline transport and saline storage for NETL He has contributed to the development of reduced order cost models that have been incorporated into energy market models such as EIA’s National Energy Modeling System and NREL’s Regional Energy Deployment System. He also has expertise in multiphase fluid flow in the subsurface.
Jennifer Morris
Principal Research Scientist, MIT Energy Initiative and MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
Jennifer Morris is a principal research scientist at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and the MIT Energy Initiative. Much of her research focuses on energy transitions and economic development pathways as well as uncertainty and decision-making. 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 transitions, and examines multi-sector dynamics. Her uncertainty-related work involves quantifying key uncertainties and applying different methodological approaches to models in order to formally represent such uncertainties and explore how they impact near-term decisions. A key focus is evaluating risks to different investment options in energy and water and identifying those that are robust to potential risks. Morris holds a PhD in engineering systems and a MS in technology and policy from MIT.
Sam Nejame
CEO, Promotum
Sam Nejame is CEO of Promotum LLC, a life-sciences focused management consultancy. He provides go-to-market strategy, corporate/business development, technology assessment, and due diligence for investment, innovation, and growth.
Nejame’s current work focuses primarily on synthetic biology for the development of sustainable materials and the use of AI/ML for drug discovery.
Nejame has a long history with biofuels and biobased chemicals. He worked with multiple companies commercializing biobutanol–a higher energy lower hygroscopic alcohol, which better integrates into traditional refining infrastructure. His report on the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) was critical to that policy’s readoption in 2015 and he is currently a member of the Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Conference Wolfpack.
In addition, Nejame is a registered coach and business innovation expert with the European Commission.
He has mentored founding teams through the NSF’s I-Corps program at MIT, WPI, and Harvard, the Cleantech Open, and the MassBio/MassConnect accelerator (human health).
Early in his career he worked as project manager with Parsons Corporation and in biotechnology process development.
Nejame has a BS in chemical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He has consulted with the MIT Energy Initiative on issues of the bio-economy since 2010. He is an active road & MTB cyclist.
Leslie Norford
Professor of Building Technology, MIT Department of Architecture
Leslie Norford is a professor of Building Technology in the Department of Architecture at MIT. Trained as a mechanical engineer, he focuses his research and teaching on reducing building energy use and associated resource consumption and carbon emissions. His teaching includes project-based efforts to improve schools and other buildings in developing countries and to promote the use of simulation-enhanced building design workflows. He has developed fault detection and optimal control strategies for HVAC equipment and explored design options for low-energy space-conditioning systems based on the use of membranes for latent cooling. He has studied how control of HVAC systems can help electric utilities mitigate the impact of power fluctuations associated with variable renewable energy. A current effort seeks to improve passive and low-cost active space cooling by multi-objective optimization of building structural and thermal performance, the former quantified by carbon embodied in structural systems. Active internationally, he has conducted measurement campaigns and numerical analyses of building energy consumption in Russia, China, Pakistan, the UK, and Norway. His work in India, supported by MIT’s Tata Center for Technology and Design, focused on indoor and ambient air quality, with emphasis on mitigating the impact of cooking and land-clearing fires in agricultural areas that surround cities. His research in Singapore under the auspices of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology and related work with colleagues in Abu Dhabi has produced measurements and models of urban microclimates, with a focus on identifying strategies to improve human thermal comfort in outdoor urban areas.
Elsa Olivetti
Associate Dean of Engineering and Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor in Engineering, MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Elsa Olivetti is the Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor in Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), co-director of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Associate Dean with the School of Engineering. Her research focuses on reducing the significant burden of materials production and consumption through increased use of recycled and waste materials; informing the early stage design of new materials for effective scale up; and understanding the implications of policy, new technology development, and manufacturing processes on materials supply chains. Olivetti received her BS degree in engineering science from the University of Virginia in 2000 and her PhD in materials science engineering from MIT in 2007.
John Parsons
Deputy Director for Research, MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
John Parsons is the deputy director for research at MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR). His research focuses on the valuation and financing of investments in the energy industry, especially those needed for the transition to a low carbon economy, and also on the problems of risk in energy and environment markets. He was a co-director of the recent MIT study on the Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon Constrained World and continues to analyze diverse investment options in the nuclear industry. Parsons serves as an associate member of the U.S. CFTC’s Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee and has been a visiting scholar at the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He holds a BA in economics from Princeton University and a PhD in economics from Northwestern University.
Thomas Peacock
Director, MIT ENvironmental Dynamics Laboratory (ENDLab); Professor, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Thomas Peacock is the director of the ENvironmental Dynamics Laboratory (ENDLab) at MIT. His work spans fluid dynamics and physical oceanography, and incorporates field experiments across the global oceans. Peacock received a BSc in physics from Manchester University (UK) in 1994 and a DPhil in physics from Oxford University (UK) in 1998. In 2007, he received an NSF Career Award in Physical Oceanography, and in 2022 he was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society. Peacock is a leading international researcher on ocean utilization. In the past five years, his research team has conducted leading field experiments on topics ranging from deep-seabed mining to ocean carbon capture. He has been an invited expert for the World Economic Forum, the OECD, the ISA, and the UN Global Compact.
Christoph Reinhart
Alan and Terri Spoon Professor of Architecture and Climate, MIT Department of Architecture; Director, MIT Building Technology Program
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, Director of the Building Technology Program, and the 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. He is also 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.
Simon Rufer
PhD Student, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Simon Rufer is a PhD student in mechanical engineering at MIT working across the carbon value chain: from carbon capture to separations and conversion into value-added products. His current research thrusts include direct air capture, direct ocean capture, and electrochemical conversion of CO2 to ethylene and ethanol.
C. Adam Schlosser
Senior Research Scientist, MIT Center for Global Change Science; Deputy Director, MIT Joint Program on Science and Policy of Global Change
C. Adam Schlosser is currently a senior research scientist in the Center for Global Change Science, and also serves as the deputy director for the Joint Program at MIT. Prior to his appointment at MIT, Schlosser was an associate research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and a research scientist at the Center for Ocean Land Atmosphere Studies. He conducted his postdoctoral work at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. His primary interests are the modeling, prediction, and risk assessment of the natural, managed, and built water-energy-land systems using the MIT’s Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM) that includes model development of the Global Land System (GLS) and Water Resource System (WRS). Schlosser has also undertaken studies of hydrology, weather, and climate and their predictability and limits-to-prediction. In doing so, he has worked with a wide range of numerical models, ranging from process-level to global-scale models, as well as observational data for evaluation and complementary analyses. He also has participated in and led international experiments aimed to assess the performance of Earth-system model components and predictions. In earlier work, he served on the NASA Energy and Water Cycle Study (NEWS) Science Integration Team to improve our observational capabilities for monitoring and understanding the Earth’s global water and energy cycles. Other collaborative research activities include extreme events and associating potential changes and risks on the natural, managed, and built environments; water-resource risk assessments to inform mitigation and adaptation strategies; biodiversity; and renewable-energy resource and intermittency assessments.
Mohammad Shahidehpour
Galvin Chair Professor, Illinois Institute of Technology
Mohammad Shahidehpour is a University Distinguished Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). He also serves as the Bodine Chair Professor and director of the Robert W. Galvin Center for Electricity Innovation at IIT. He is a fellow of IEEE, American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Inventors, and Chinese Society of Electrical Engineering. He is a Laureate of the Khwarizmi International Award and elected Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. He is listed as a highly cited researcher on the Web of Science (ranked in the top 1% by citations demonstrating significant influence among his peers).
Steven Slome
Principal, NexantECA
Steven Slome is a principal working in NexantECA’s Insights group. He is program manager and founder of the Biorenewable Insights Program. He has also managed and worked on hundreds of projects, including due diligence, market studies, technoeconomic, and carbon intensity analyses. He is an expert in biofuels and SAF technologies in particular.
Gregory Stephanopoulos
W.H. Dow Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering
Greg Stephanopoulos is the W.H. Dow Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at MIT, and instructor of Bioengineering at Harvard Medical School (1997-). He received his BS degree from the National Technical University of Athens, MS from the U. of Florida and PhD from the U. of Minnesota, all in chemical engineering. He taught at Caltech between 1978-85, after which he was appointed professor of ChE at MIT. The primary focus of his research for the past three decades has been on metabolic engineering, the engineering of microbes for the production of fuels and chemicals. He has co-authored or –edited five books, more than 450 papers (~65,000 citations) and 60 patents, and supervised more than 140 graduate and post-doctoral students. He co-founded the journal Metabolic Engineering, and served as co-editor-in chief and Editorial Board member of ten scientific journals. For his research and educational contributions, Stephanopoulos has been recognized with more than 25 national and international awards. He has honorary doctorate degrees from the Technical University of Denmark (2005), the National Technical University of Athens (2015), and the Technical University of Dortmund (2019). In 2011 he was selected as the Eni Prize winner for Renewable and non-Conventional Energy and in 2016 he won the Eric and Sheila Samson $1m Prime Minister Prize (Israel). Stephanopoulos has served on the Board of Directors and as president of AIChE (2016). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea, and the Academy of Athens.
Robb Stewart
Co-founder and CEO, Boston Atomics
Robb Stewart leads Boston Atomics, a nuclear R&D and consulting company. He is an engineer with a problem-solution mindset and a mission to unlock our abundant clean energy future. Through half a decade at GE, he built a reputation for identifying gaps that prevented adoption of new technologies and building bridges across them.
He went to MIT to find the barriers preventing faster adoption of our largest source of zero-emission power: nuclear energy. His PhD in the cost of advanced nuclear led him to co-found Boston Atomics, where he deploys technology to bring down cost.
Through reconciling disparate fields: civil and nuclear engineering, Stewart co-invented a novel reactor concept, with a unique approach to exploiting modular construction techniques for nuclear systems. This concept became the subject of a $5M DOE research consortium.
Sarfraz Taj
Director, M&A Corporate Development & Strategic Projects, Constellation Energy
For over two decades, Sarfraz Taj has been involved in research and commercial initiatives leading the development and execution of a diverse portfolio of projects. In his current role, he helps realize the growth objectives of Constellation through M&A of clean technology assets/companies. Taj’s experience spans across nuclear, hydrogen, and gas/CCGT/CT/LNG. In previous roles, Taj led global business development supporting international clients in the development of new and improvement of existing nuclear power programs; and worked in Exelon’s subsidiary power sales, marketing, and trading business in the Strategy & Innovation group, responsible for setting global strategy for Exelon. Taj earned Senior Reactor Operator certification from Braidwood Station. His nuclear industry experience includes nuclear fuels, transient analysis, core reload analysis, thermal hydraulics and neutronics modeling, and spent fuel management; engineering roles supporting reactors across Constellation’s fleet; and project and asset management. Taj held research positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Center for Plasma-Material Interactions and at Argonne National Laboratory in the Computational Physics & Hydrodynamics division. His research efforts included investigations into edge localized modes plasma physics in support of verifying theoretical models that would ultimately lead to the development of technologies that are used for commercial plasma lithography. Taj earned a BS in nuclear, plasma & radiological engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the University of Chicago–Booth School of Business. Taj serves on the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of The Civic Federation.
Guiyan Zang
Research Scientist, MIT Energy Initiative
Guiyan Zang is a research scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative, where her research includes techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle analysis (LCA) on ammonia production and application, clean hydrogen and ethylene production, bio-methanol production, and carbon capture for hard-to-abate industries. Before MIT, she spent three years working for Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) as a postdoctoral scholar and then as an energy system analyst. At ANL, her research was energy conversion system design, TEA, and LCA, in particular, decarbonization for industrial processes, synthetic fuel/chemicals production, and waste material conversions. She developed the e-fuel pathways in GREET software and earned two Impact Argonne Awards. She holds a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Iowa.
Siqi Zheng
STL Champion Professor of Urban and Real Estate Sustainability, MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning; Faculty Director, MIT Center for Real Estate
Siqi Zheng is the STL Champion Professor of Urban and Real Estate Sustainability at the Center for Real Estate and Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is the faculty director of the MIT Center for Real Estate. She established the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab in 2019, and is the director of her lab. She is also the faculty chair of MIT Climate and Real Estate Research Consortium and MIT Asia Real Estate Initiative. Zheng is currently the second vice president of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, and the former president of the Asian Real Estate Society (2018-2019) (and is on its Board now). She is the co-editor of the Journal of Regional Science, and former co-editor of Environmental and Resource Economics (on its Scientific Advisory Board now). She is on the editorial board of Real Estate Economics, Journal of Housing Economics, and Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. Zheng’s field of specialization is urban and environmental economics and policy, including climate change and real estate, sustainable urbanization, and urbanization in emerging economies.
Branko Zugic
Co-founder and CTO, Lydian
Branko Zugic is a co-founder at Lydian where he serves as the CTO and leads technology development for the company’s novel electrothermal CO2-to-fuels process. Prior to starting Lydian, he was the director of R&D at Open Water Power, an MIT spinout developing an aluminum-water battery technology for underwater power application (acquired by L3 Technologies in 2017). His earlier academic career was focused on applied materials development for energy applications including hydrogen production, biofuels, and green chemistry. This included a postdoctoral associate position at Harvard University (chemistry), a PhD from Tufts (chemical engineering), and a BS from WPI (chemical engineering).