Projects

AI optimization algorithms for buildings operating as virtual power plants: enhancing efficiency and sustainability.

This project focuses on adding electrical conductivity to microporous polymers, which can provide a new mechanism for industrial processes, such as membrane-based separations, adsorption, and catalysis.

This project aims to explore the underlying basic science of an energy efficient process to decompose ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen gas. The development of a low temperature ammonia decomposition reactor would revolutionize utilization of ammonia as a hydrogen carrier, thereby facilitating the use of clean, sustainable hydrogen as a fuel.

Addressing cell-to-cell variability in battery packs is a key challenge for ensuring efficient and reliable electric vehicle (EV) operation. This project aims to develop digital twins (DTs) that accurately capture the inherent and evolving variability of cells within battery packs during EV operations. These DTs will enable an adaptive approach to optimize fast charging protocols… Read more

This research will develop robots that can learn maintenance tasks from natural human feedback, including physical intervention and verbal instructions. A key innovation is enabling a fleet of robots to intelligently coordinate when to ask for human help, allowing one operator to efficiently supervise multiple robots performing renewable energy infrastructure maintenance. By leveraging human-in-the-loop robot… Read more

Rare earth elements (REEs) are crucial components in high-tech products, particularly in green technologies such as electric vehicles and wind turbines. However, because of their physical and chemical similarities, REEs are very challenging to separate. Due to this, current REE processing techniques require multiple stages and are chemically and energy-intensive, dampening the realized environmental benefits… Read more

By bringing together and enhancing existing MIT modeling tools, this project will enable a holistic assessment of the economic, environmental and social implications of a range of plausible decarbonization and energy transition scenarios for African sub-regions, illuminating potential tradeoffs across different dimensions of sustainability. As such, this work will be able to provide important missing… Read more

This project develops DecarbAI, an AI-powered tool to modernize electric grid planning amid rising energy demand from data centers. By using large language models and machine learning to interpret regulations, climate data, and infrastructure maps, it enables faster, more adaptive planning. DecarbAI targets key bottlenecks like permitting delays and interconnection studies, helping planners align clean… Read more

Evaluation of weather impacts on power resource accreditation and incentivizing resource investment through capacity mechanisms.

Analyze impact of joint optimization of energy storage and delay-tolerant computing loads for reducing carbon and energy cost, while maintaining computing quality of service.

Assess the trade-off between the average carbon capture rate and capital/energy efficiency for reactive amine-based carbon capture plants.

This project explores how to convert sunlight and CO₂ into liquid fuels using two different methods. We aim to reach over 2% efficiency, a key step toward practical use. The goal is to create cleaner fuels that reduce fossil fuel use and carbon emissions. If successful, this approach could offer a low-cost way to make… Read more

Evaluation of system-level impacts of data centers on the power sector with a focus on optimizing location and demand response strategies and its policy implications.

Develop best practices for renewable siting across real-world decarbonization pathways in diverse climate/geographic regions with minimized risk. Reveal geophysical and regional power grid drivers of system design, with a focus on system-level cost and resilience to extremes. Synergy and impact on risk-aware decision-making for data centers.

The projects seeks to use AI tools to better model and predict plasma behavior – and in particular to predict disruptions – which is necessary in order to achieve practical fusion power generation.

Marine carbon removal technologies could help address rising atmospheric CO₂ levels, but fundamental scientific gaps in ocean carbon monitoring and modeling limit our ability to verify their climate benefits. This project tackles core scientific questions underpinning measurement, reporting, and verification through rigorous research at active technology trials, developing the scientific foundations necessary for cost-effective, operationally… Read more