The MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative was founded in 2014 and charged by MIT President L. Rafael Reif with leading the Institute’s “drive to increase fundamental knowledge and accelerate progress towards solutions around environment, climate, and human society.” Director Fernandez will describe the work of the ESI and highlight the ways in which industry plays a critical role in a productive, sustainable and humane future for people and the planet.
Delayed optimization of environmental metrics in material design and industrial practice can lead to costly redesign and remediation needs. Higher-throughput environmental assessment tools and predictive strategies may help guide design for more economically and environmentally sustainable industrial process and practices. Plata will discuss specific examples from oil and gas development, nanomaterial synthesis, and recent efforts in improved polymers and plastics for environmental compatibility.
In this talk, I will quantify the energy storage requirements of various electrification and decarbonization scenarios. Through solving data-informed optimization models, key technological innovation opportunities will be revealed, spanning hardware, software, and business models.
An increasing body of evidence demonstrates that there is a direct correlation between global warming and the release of heavy metals into drinking and crop water supplies, and water security remains a pressing sustainability challenge in developing nations. We present a pathway to obtain ultra-stable nanofibers assembled from small molecules in water which rival the mechanical properties of nature's stiffest materials. We then decorate the surface of these nanofibers with efficient heavy metal chelators and demonstrate orders of magnitude improvement over macroscopic alternatives in use today, offering a way to miniaturize water treatment while overcoming several complications of existing strategies.
A goal of the Paris Agreement is to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. If this were achieved, global warming would slow to a rate significantly lower than 21st century warming rates, but little is known about how this would occur over time and across geographies. This work investigates this geographic variability and provides the first framework for estimating the end of rapid, anthropogenic warming.
Presenting MIT Startup Exchange Companies: - serviceMob: Making customer service access simple with AI - iQ3Connect: VR platform for collaboration - Plume Labs: Distributed sensing to map air quality - Hosta Labs: Sensing to generate 3D maps of building interiors - AirWorks: Aerial intelligent software that cuts drafting time in half
Presenting Bouygues-incubated startups: - Com'in - Flexy Moov: Electric vehicle sharing platform for companies
How do some companies thrive in an era of constant technological disruption, while others stumble? How can your company excel in using artificial intelligence, chatbots, and future technological innovations to delight your customers and dominate your competitors? Through seven years of research into digital transformation, we have identified five levers digital masters use to outperform their industry peers. They don’t just adopt technology; they build the capabilities to continuously drive technology-powered transformation. Using examples from several industries and countries, we will show you how to turn your company into a digital master.
Building a successful new venture within an existing organization is not easy. Organizations become successful by building optimized, repeatable businesses. Entrepreneurial ventures, on the other hand, require an iterative, experimental mindset, and a completely different set of skills. In this talk, we will explore how leaders can help make their organizations more entrepreneurial via the Disciplined Corporate Entrepreneurship framework. There are three parts to this framework: Strategy, Enablement, and Practice. We will discuss how C-level executives make decisions to invest in innovation, how leaders of innovation labs and initiatives can select and deploy enablement tools, and how corporate entrepreneurs can leverage organizational and entrepreneurial skills to generate net new business value and build successful ventures.