MIT boasts an unmatched legacy of uniting interdisciplinary teams to address urgent issues — consider the advancement of radar during World War II, or spearheading the global coalition that decoded the human genome — yet the dilemma of climate change may necessitate a level of cooperation unlike anything previously seen at MIT.
“Addressing climate change transcends merely creating new technologies or improved models. It involves establishing fresh partnerships across the campus and beyond — among scientists and economists, architects and data analysts, policymakers and physicists, anthropologists and engineers, and more,” remarked MIT Vice President for Energy and Climate Evelyn Wang to an enthusiastic gathering of faculty, students, and staff on May 6. “Each of us possesses a fragment of the solution — but only collectively can we grasp the entirety.”
Despite heavy rainfall, around 300 members of the campus community packed the atrium in the Tina and Hamid Moghadam Building (Building 55) for a spring event hosted by Wang and the Climate Project at MIT. This initiative aims to harness the full capabilities of MIT to confront climate change, which Wang characterized as one of the pivotal challenges of our time — and one of its greatest prospects.
“It urges us to reconsider how we energize our world, how we construct, how we exist — and how we collaborate,” Wang stated. “And there is no better institution than MIT to spearhead such an audacious, integrated endeavor. Our culture of inquiry, rigor, and relentless experimentation renders us uniquely equipped to transcend boundaries — to dismantle silos and create something innovative.”
The Climate Project is structured around six missions, thematic domains where MIT aspires to make a substantial impact, ranging from industry decarbonization to novel policy strategies to designing resilient urban environments. The faculty leaders of these missions posed challenges to the audience before mingling among them to exchange perspectives and to discuss community inquiries and suggestions.
Wang and the Climate Project team were accompanied by several research groups, startups, and MIT offices currently engaged in pertinent work related to energy and climate. For instance, the MIT Office of Sustainability demonstrated efforts to utilize the MIT campus as a living laboratory; MIT spinouts like Forma Systems, focused on creating high-performance, low-carbon building solutions, and Addis Energy, which envisions harnessing the earth as a reactor for producing clean ammonia, showcased their innovations; and attendees learned about ongoing projects within MIT labs, including DebunkBot, an AI-powered chatbot designed to influence attitudes toward conspiracies, developed by David Rand, the Erwin H. Schell Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Benedetto Marelli, an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and leader of the Wild Cards Mission, indicated that the energy and enthusiasm that permeated the room were inspiring — yet the individual interactions were equally significant.
“I was particularly delighted to see so many students attending. I also conversed with other faculty, engaged with staff from across the Institute, and connected with representatives from external companies eager to collaborate with MIT,” Marelli noted. “You could observe connections forming throughout the room, which is precisely what we require as we generate momentum for the Climate Project.”