MIT Energy Initiative awards eight seed fund grants for early-stage MIT energy research
Eight individuals and teams from MIT were recently awarded $150,000 grants through the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Seed Fund Program to support promising novel energy research. The highly competitive annual program received a total of 82 proposals from 88 researchers representing 17 departments, labs, and centers at MIT. The applications, which came from a range of disciplines, all aim to help advance a low-carbon energy system and address key climate challenges. “The breadth of creative, interdisciplinary research proposals that we received truly reflects the Institute’s increasing focus on curbing the effects of climate change,” says MITEI Director Robert C. Armstrong, the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering. He also noted that a large number of proposals focused on energy storage, signifying the central role that these technologies will play in deep decarbonization. The winning projects will address topics ranging from hurricane-resilient smart grids and zero-emission neighborhoods to new, low-cost batteries for grid-level energy storage. Building hurricane-resilient smart grids In 2017,...