Yogesh Surendranath

Here's some of the more unique ways MIT's departments, labs, and centers celebrated the holidays to end the semester.

Twenty-seven bold, interdisciplinary research projects have been selected as finalists in the first MIT Climate Grand Challenges competition. A subset will make up a portfolio of multiyear projects that will receive additional funding and other support to develop high-impact, science-based mitigation and adaptation solutions on an accelerated basis.

Polina Anikeeva, Gabriele Farina, James Fujimoto, Jeehwan Kim, Samuel Madden, Jelena Notaros, Carlos Portela, Yogesh Surendranath, and Ashia Wilson in MIT's School of Engineering won various honors in summer 2024.

Upending a long-held supposition, MIT researchers discovered that a common catalyst works by cycling between two different forms. The finding could lead to improved catalysts for industrial reactions.

Phosphorus is an essential ingredient in thousands of products, including herbicides, lithium-ion batteries, and even soft drinks. Most of this phosphorus comes from an energy-intensive process that contributes significantly to global carbon emissions.

Chemists at MIT have demonstrated an approach that increases the likelihood of finding low-cost materials that can speed up critical chemical reactions needed to convert renewable resources such as biomass into useful fuels and chemicals.

With a modest electrical pulse, chemical reactions receive a significant boost. Industries like petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals could undergo a transformative shift.

A simple new technique could boost the efficiency of some key chemical processing, by up to a factor of 100,000, MIT researchers report. The reactions are at the heart of petrochemical processing, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and many other industrial chemical processes.

MIT chemists mapped how proton-coupled electron transfers happen at the surface of an electrode. Their results could help researchers design more efficient fuel cells, batteries, or other energy technologies.

MIT faculty from the School of Engineering lead one of the Climate Grand Challenge flagship projects, the Center for Electrification and Decarbonization of Industry.

In a Climate Grand Challenge proposal called the Advanced Carbon Mineralization Initiative, MIT Assistant Professor Matej Pec studies different ways that can make rock mineralization more effective at capturing carbon and storing it underground.