“MIT Sloan was my initial and sole preference,” remarks MIT graduate student David Brown. After obtaining his BS in chemical engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Brown dedicated eight years serving as a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army, where he held the positions of platoon leader and troop commander. 

Now in the concluding year of his MBA, Brown has co-established a climate technology company — Helix Carbon — alongside Ariel Furst, an MIT assistant professor in the Chemical Engineering Department, and Evan Haas MBA ’24, SM ’24. Their ambition: eliminate the carbon emissions of hard-to-decarbonize sectors like ironmaking, polyurethanes, and olefins by producing competitively priced, carbon-neutral fuels straight from waste carbon dioxide (CO₂). It’s a bold initiative; they aim to scale the enterprise sufficiently to achieve a gigaton per year effect on CO₂ emissions. They have laboratory space off campus, and after graduating, Brown will assume a full-time role as chief operating officer.

“What I appreciated about the Army was that I felt each day the work I engaged in was significant or influential in some manner. I desired that to persist and believed that the optimal way to create the largest possible positive effect was to apply my operational expertise gained from the military to bridge the gap between the laboratory and market impact.”

The subsequent photo essay captures a glimpse of what an average day for Brown has entailed as an MIT student.