Disruption. It’s one of the most overused words in technology and innovation, but whether we like it or not, it’s here, it’s persistent, and it’s necessary. With the pandemic as status quo for two years, its disruptions continue to reverberate, revealing weaknesses across the global supply chain and beyond. Climate change is also disrupting the world economy, and in response, the world increasingly shows a willingness to address these challenges by disrupting the way we do business now and in the future. Underneath all of this lies technology – a disruptive force in and of itself, but also a key part of the global reaction to these unavoidable disruptions.
Both historically and currently, MIT has played a key role in studying and responding to disruption. In manufacturing industries, we are helping to design resilient supply chains, flexible and automated plants and equipment, sustainable transportation alternatives for distribution, immersive technologies to enable global collaboration, and many other innovations well-suited to the present “new normal” in which change is the only certainty.
In this focused one-day event, the MIT Industrial Liaison Program and MIT Startup Exchange, in partnership with our industrial members and the MIT innovation ecosystem, will examine the state of manufacturing today, what we have learned in the past two years (and more), and where things might go in the future. We’ll hear from MIT faculty and researchers, MIT-connected startups, and industry experts, all of us working together to seek a new normal.
Decarbonizing Chemical Manufacturing Yogesh Surendranath Donner Professor of Science, MIT Department of Chemistry
The chemical industry is the major source of carbon emissions, requiring new technologies for disruptive decarbonization. The direct and selectivity electrochemical synthesis of commodity chemicals from CO2 could play a key role in decarbonizing chemical manufacturing. However, many key chemicals are accessible over a narrow range in electrochemical potential, requiring general design principles for controlling kinetic branching in these reactions. We have uncovered the central role of the reaction environment in facilitating selective CO2 reduction at electrode surfaces and have employed electrolyte design to alter the mechanistic profile of chemical synthesis. Our latest findings in this area will be discussed.
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