J-WAFS at MIT

The MIT Sustainability Summit 2025 will take place this spring! This event aims to educate its audience so that they can then have meaningful conversations concerning the climate crisis, advance the dialogue by asking contentious questions, and transform discourse using a solutions-oriented approach. The overall goal of this summit is to engage in conversation with peers while focusing on climate resilience and innovative solutions. Important Information Date: Friday, May 2, 2025 Location: MIT Samberg Conference Center Read more about the event here: https://lnkd.in/epKh4qNT

The MIT Energy & Climate Club will be hosting the 2024-25 MIT Energy & Climate Career Fair. This is a unique opportunity for students to meet with various representatives from sustainability and energy companies. These companies focus on many pressing environmental challenges, including solar energy, energy storage, sustainable transportation, and climate change. Important Information Date: Friday, February 21, 2025 Time: 10 am – 1 pm Location: Student Center Building Read more about the event here: https://lnkd.in/eEvPSS-K

MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative will be one of the hosts of FoodHack Boston: Translating Ingredient Innovation into Culinary Innovation, an event that will cover topics relating to the sustainable food movement. Those who attend will hear from entrepreneurs, investors, professionals, and food enthusiasts who are pioneering novel food technologies that will help meet consumers’ needs. If you are interested in networking with individuals in the sustainable food movement or investing in food-related startups, you should consider registering for this event. Important Information Date: Wednesday, February 12, 2025 Time: 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm Location: 100 Main St, Cambridge, Massachusetts  *There will be food samples! Read more about the event here: https://lu.ma/zl32ozzz

The Earth reached record-breaking high temperatures last year, which has led to intensifying floods, wildfires, and droughts. In order to combat this environmental crisis, nations not only have to decrease their greenhouse gas emissions, but also work to remove carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere. Given the urgency to solve this problem, emerging research from the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy (CS3) aims to observe multiple carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategies. One of their findings includes a low-impact, cost-effective strategy policymakers can enact: not relying on a single CDR option, but rather employing multiple, which will significantly decrease cropland and energy consumption while also minimizing food insecurity. “Diversifying CDR portfolios is the most cost-effective net-zero strategy because it avoids relying on a single CDR option, thereby reducing and redistributing negative impacts on agriculture, forestry, and other land uses, as well as on the energy sector.” – Solène Chiquier, lead author of the study and CS3 postdoc during its preparation. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gzC7A6nn

Spring 2025 marks the tenth anniversary of J-WAFS supporting MIT researchers! To begin our celebration, J-WAFS founding director Professor John Lienhard has written an introductory piece describing how J-WAFS functions and the specific goals of the program. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gfBe--fZ

The MIT Energy Conference will be held in-person at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge on March 3 and 4, 2025. This event is made possible by the MIT Energy & Climate Club and is the largest student-led energy and climate conference in North America. Participants will get the opportunity to learn about pressing climate-related issues in our world and understand how policymakers, researchers, investors, scholars, and industry professionals are working to solve them. Additionally, this conference offers many panel discussions, including one moderated by J-WAFS researcher and MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative program scientist Scott Odell. Read more about the speakers here: https://lnkd.in/eFEiSTch 

Desirée Plata, a professor of MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering and co-director of the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium (MCSC), has a unique skill set that allows her to tackle environmental challenges from the perspective of a chemist, oceanographer, engineer, and even entrepreneur. Plata is determined to solve some of the world’s most pressing environmental issues, including access to clean water and greenhouse gas emissions, by engineering novel materials and working collaboratively with departments at MIT. Plata co-founded a climate- and energy-related startup, Moxair, that eliminates methane emissions from dairy farms. “My main motivator, and what I envision for the future, is trying to make our chemical processes and industries compatible with human and ecological health.” – Desirée Plata. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eeTaHTue

Built from technology developed in J-WAFS director John Lienhard’s lab, Gradiant, an MIT spinout, is making strides in reducing industrial wastewater. Gradiant works with some of the largest companies, including Coca-Cola, Tesla, and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, to build tailored water treatment solutions that combine desalination, sustainable chemical treatments, and membrane filtrations. Additionally, Gradiant helps global companies reuse approximately 2 billion gallons of water, thus saving 2 billion gallons of freshwater from being withdrawn. “We work with ultra-contaminated water, and we can also provide ultrapure water for use in areas like chip fabrication. Our specialty is in the extreme water challenges that can’t be solved with traditional technologies.” – Gradiant co-founder and CEO Anurag Bajpayee SM ’08, PhD ’12 Read more here: https://lnkd.in/e_cNzK89

Current J-WAFS PI Angela Belcher has been awarded the esteemed National Medal of Technology and Innovation. This is the nation's highest honor for scientists and engineers, and is an incredible accomplishment. Belcher was recognized for her innovative work developing novel materials for integral applications, which include solar cells. “By harnessing the processes of nature, Angela’s innovations have impacted fields from energy to the environment to medicine.” – Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering and chief innovation and strategy officer at MIT. Read more about Belcher’s accomplishment here: https://lnkd.in/eirfXTaY

Continuing the long tradition of food science at MIT, past J-WAFS PI and professor of MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) Jeffrey Grossman is delving into the science of coffee. Grossman’s class, “Coffee Matters: Using the Breakerspace to Make the Perfect Cup," teaches students how to use electron microscopes and infrared spectrometers inside a multi-million dollar lab at MIT to study the physics and chemistry of brewing coffee. Here, students can manipulate the taste of different brews, understand how the mass of ground versus whole beans impacts the amount brewed, uncover the effects of water seepage on extraction, and more. This innovative class takes place in the MIT Breakerspace, where students are encouraged to dissect the ways existing materials work and how they can be improved. Grossman believes his coffee class offered in the Breakerspace allows MIT students to “get excited about understanding materials.” Read more here: https://lnkd.in/ecP9wpih