Dear CEE Community and Friends,

This month we are excited to highlight the “The Climate Project at MIT: Launching the Missions,” a campus forum where mission leaders engaged with community members. We congratulate postdoc Meng Li on receiving a fellowship from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support the development of an underwater fish vaccine delivery method. A new filtration material developed by the Marelli lab promises to eliminate harmful “forever chemicals” from our water supply. Additionally, a new study by Prof. Jinhua Zhao reveals that EV charging stations significantly boost local business spending. Lastly, research from Prof. Josephine Carstensen and graduate student Dat Ha presents a new approach to shorten the design time of topology optimization, while the Heald and Kroll groups explore atmospheric chemical environments in the lab to improve air quality models.

Sincerely,

Ali Jadbabaie

JR East Professor

Department Head, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering

Core Faculty, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

The major effort to accelerate practical climate change solutions launches as its mission directors, including CEE Professors Benedetto Marelli and Jesse Kroll, meet the Institute community.

Postdoctoral Fellow Meng Li awarded U.S. Department of Agriculture fellowship

Meng Li, a postdoc in the Marelli Lab, received a U.S. Department of Agriculture fellowship to support her research developing a micro-needle based technology for efficient underwater fish vaccine delivery.

The material, developed by Prof. Benedetto Marelli, postdoc Yilin Zhang, and colleagues at MIT, could remove long-lasting “forever chemicals” and heavy metals from water.

Study: EV charging stations boost spending at nearby businesses

A new study co-authored by Prof. Jinhua Zhao found that, in California, opening an electric vehicle charging station boosted annual spending at nearby businesses by an average of about $1,500 in 2019 and about $400 between January 2021 and June 2023.

Automatic hyperparameter tuning of topology optimization algorithms using surrogate optimization

Drawing inspiration from hyperparameter optimization in machine learning, new research from Prof. Josephine Carstensen and graduate student Dat Ha presents a new approach to shorten the design time of topology optimization. This discovery helps speed up the total design time and can be demonstrated on various hyperparameters and objectives.

Can we achieve atmospheric chemical environments in the laboratory?

The Heald and Kroll groups developed a new approach to study how secondary organic aerosols form in laboratory conditions that mimic those of the atmosphere, leading to better models for predicting their impact on air quality and climate.

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