Environmental Solutions Initiative awards seed grants to advance collaborative progress on environmental challenges
How can sustainable consumption in U.S. cities be fostered? Can the ocean floor be mined in an ecologically benign way? What are the health risks associated with the mining of rare metals used in energy-efficient products like photovoltaic devices? And how can truly promising environmental solutions have a better chance of becoming real economic policies? These are some of the complex questions that researchers at MIT will now be able to tackle, with support from the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI). The initiative was established last May to inspire solutions to major environmental problems through collaborative partnership. In response to a call for research proposals, the ESI received 59 submissions. In March, the initiative awarded seed grants of up to $200,000 to nine research groups over the next two years. ESI director Susan Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, says the seed grants have...