Tuesday, November 15th, 2016

Time	Event
12:00a	Turning greenhouse gas into gasoline A new catalyst material developed by chemists at MIT provides key insight into the design requirements for producing liquid fuels from carbon dioxide, the leading component of greenhouse gas emissions. The findings suggest a route toward using the world’s existing infrastructure for fuel storage and distribution, without adding net greenhouse emissions to the atmosphere. The new catalyst takes the process only through its first stage — converting carbon dioxide (CO2) to carbon monoxide (CO), explains assistant professor of chemistry Yogesh Surendranath, the senior researcher on a new study describing the advance. But that’s a key initial step toward converting CO2 to other chemicals including fuels, he says; there are already established methods for converting CO and hydrogen to a variety of liquid fuels and other products. The study appears this week in the international chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie. Its authors are Youngmin Yoon, a graduate student at MIT; Anthony Shoji Hall, a former MIT postdoc who is now a professor of materials science at Johns Hopkins University; and Surendranath, who is the Paul M. Cook Career Development Assistant Professor at MIT. “The problem in CO2 conversion is how to selectively convert it,” Surendranath says. While this basic molecule can form the basis of virtually any carbon-based chemistry, the tricky part is to create a system in which CO2 consistently converts to a single end-product that can then be further processed into the desired material. The new system, he says, provides just that kind of selective, specific conversion pathway — and, in fact, a whole range of such pathways. And if the hydrogen and CO are produced using solar or wind-generated power, the entire process could be carbon neutral. Tunable conversion “What you want is a tunable catalyst,” he says, and that’s just what this team developed, in the form of a highly porous silver electrode material. Depending on the exact formulation of this material, he says, it’s possible to design variations of this catalyst where “each one may be designed for a different application.” The researchers learned that by tuning the dimensions of the material’s pores they could get the system to produce the desired proportion of CO in the end-product. Most efforts to “tune” the selectivity of silver catalysts for CO production have focused on varying the surface active site chemistry. However, with this formulation, a material called a silver inverse opal, it is the pore structure of the material that determines the effect. “What we found was very simple,” Surendranath says. “You can tune the pore dimensions to tune the selectivity and activity of the catalyst, without modifying the surface active site chemistry.” Honeycomb structure The porous material can be made by depositing tiny polystyrene beads on a conductive electrode substrate, then electrodepositing silver on the surface, then dissolving away the beads, leaving pores whose size is determined by that of the original beads. Because of the way spheres naturally organize themselves when packed together, this method produces a honeycomb-like structure of hexagonal cells, Surendranath explains. It turns out that varying the thickness of this porous catalyst produces a double effect: As the porous inverse opal get thicker, the catalyst more strongly promotes the production of CO from CO2 by up to three times, while also suppressing an alternative reaction, the production of H2 (hydrogen gas), by as much as tenfold. Using this combined effect, production of CO can be easily varied to make up anywhere from 5 to 85 percent of the reaction’s output. The study’s results provide fundamental insights that may be applicable to designing other catalyst materials for fuel production from CO2. This advance represents just one step in the conversion of carbon dioxide into usable fuels, and the initial demonstration is just at a small laboratory scale. So, much work still remains for this to become a practical approach to manufacturing transportation fuels. But because the selectivity and efficiency of this initial conversion step places an upper limit on the overall efficiency of fuel production from CO2, in technical terms, Surendranath says, the work provides key fundamental insight into how to engineer carbon-neutral technologies for replacing existing fossil-fuel systems — while still being able to use all of the existing infrastructure of gas stations, delivery vehicles, and storage tanks. Ultimately, conversion plants could be connected directly to the emissions flow from fossil-fuel power plants, for example, to turn the CO2 into fuel instead of releasing it into the atmosphere at all. “We’re very optimistic” that the process can be successfully developed, Surendranath says. If so, that could represent “the closing of the anthropogenic carbon cycle,” through the use of renewably generated electricity to turn greenhouse gas emissions into fuel. In essence, he says, the net process would be doing the same thing that plants and cyanobacteria did on Earth millions of years ago to produce fossil fuels in the first place: taking carbon dioxide out of the air and converting it into more complex molecules. But in this case, instead of taking place over millennia, the process needs to be replicated very quickly in a lab or factory. “It’s the same thing that got us these fuels in the first place,” he says, “but we need to do it faster and more efficiently than natural photosynthesis.” This paper could have “huge impacts on the basic science of important reactions to produce fuels,” says Ken Sakaushi, a researcher at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, who was not involved in this research. “Recently, many works just focus on the application side and thus make less of a contribution on basic science. However, this work seems to try to contribute to this important issue on science from the basics.” Because of that, this research has “high value,” he says. The research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the MIT Department of Chemistry, and is part of the research taking place through the MIT Energy Initiative’s Low-Carbon Energy Centers, established as part of the Institute’s Plan for Action on Climate Change. (Comment on this)
11:35a	State and local governments invited to apply for funding, support on pressing policy challenges J-PAL North America, a research center at MIT, has announced that it is now accepting letters of interest from U.S. state and local governments through the J-PAL State and Local Innovation Initiative. This initiative supports state and local governments in using randomized evaluations to answer their priority policy questions. State and local governments are increasingly looking for rigorous evidence about which social programs are most effective and cost effective. The governments selected to participate in this initiative will receive flexible pilot funding of up to $100,000, pro bono technical support from J-PAL North America staff, and connections with experienced researchers from J-PAL’s network. State and local governments that have partnered with a researcher to design a high-quality randomized evaluation can later apply for additional funding, typically in the range of $250,000 to 500,000, to carry out the evaluations. “State and local governments can serve as laboratories of innovation and test out new approaches to tackling challenging social problems,” said J-PAL North America deputy director and initiative co-chair Mary Ann Bates. “By partnering state and local governments with J-PAL staff and affiliated researchers, we can build the capacity of state and local governments to generate and use rigorous evidence — and, ultimatel,y better serve their citizens.” In the inaugural round of its competition, J-PAL North America selected five state and local governments — Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Puerto Rico, Philadelphia, and Rochester — from a strong group of applicants across the United States. Together with J-PAL North America staff and researchers from J-PAL’s network, these governments will develop and test innovative approaches to increasing employment, helping people move out of poverty, expanding opportunity for young people, and finding more effective treatments for substance use disorders. “I’m thrilled that Pennsylvania will have the opportunity to participate in the J-PAL State and Local Innovation Initiative,” said Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf. “My administration is committed to using rigorous evidence to find solutions to Pennsylvania’s most urgent challenges. On behalf of the citizens of the commonwealth, I look forward to working with J-PAL’s exceptional team of researchers to learn important lessons that will support the fight against the opioid abuse and heroin use epidemic that is plaguing Pennsylvania and the nation.” Over the course of this five-year initiative, J-PAL North America will partner with at least 12 state and local governments and share the evidence generated to ensure that it reaches other state and local governments facing similar challenges. Building on a recent movement toward evidence-based policymaking, these state and local leaders will serve as a model for others across the country. “We are excited to partner with state and local policymakers who want to better understand the impact of their programs and policies and give them the tools they need to develop high-quality and policy-relevant evaluations,” said Jonathan Guryan, associate professor of human development and social policy and economics at Northwestern University and initiative co-chair. “State and local governments face many policy challenges and often don't have the staff or technical capacity to engage in evidence collection. The goal of this initiative is to help governments build the evidence base they need to tackle the challenges they identify as important to their particular jurisdiction,” said Melissa Kearney, professor of economics at the University of Maryland, non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and initiative co-chair. The deadline to submit Letters of interest is Feb. 17, 2017. Winners from this round of applications will be announced the following April. J-PAL North America will host a webinar Thursday, Dec. 8 at 1 p.m. EST to share more information about the initiative and how to apply. For more information, visit povertyactionlab.org/stateandlocal. J-PAL North America is a regional office of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). J-PAL was established in 2003 as a research center at MIT’s Department of Economics. Since then, it has built a global network of affiliated professors based at over 40 universities and regional offices in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. J-PAL North America was established with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and works to improve the effectiveness of social programs in the region through three core activities: research, policy outreach, and capacity building. (Comment on this)
2:00p	At TechCon, science-based solutions for world issues This weekend, an MIT-hosted conference convened inventive minds from around the world to learn about — and collaborate on — actionable research and innovations that can help solve global issues, such as poverty, infectious disease, and food security.    Hosted by MIT and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN), the TechCon (Technical Convening) conference brought to campus more than 100 researchers, students, entrepreneurs, innovators, development experts, and representatives of government and the private sector. From Thursday through Saturday, participants attended more than 30 sessions and workshops that focused on four general areas: enabling and building innovation ecosystems, producing actionable research, measuring impact and generating evidence, and creating the next generation of practitioners and partnerships. There was also a competition for research and startup teams, from MIT and around the world, that are developing innovative methods and technologies to fix global problems.   A primary aim of the conference, said Ticora Jones ’00, the MIT alumna who co-created HESN in 2012 and now serves as its chief, is to provide an open platform for collaborations among universities, governments, the private sector, and local communities, to better scale breakthrough ideas. “Part of what we’d like people to take away from the conference is a growing sense of community around the challenges of global development, the problems people face within poverty, and what we can do about them — what we as citizens of the globe, what we as community members, what we as universities can actually do about that, who we should be partnering with … to tackle these challenges,” Jones told MIT News. “ Now in its fifth year and held for the first time at MIT, TechCon also stresses how research can lead to global change, if conducted with an eye toward application. “That research you produce should be actionable, and targeted toward implementation,” said Jones. “That kind of work is necessary for us as a society going forward.” Several partnerships have since formed from the conference, she added. Hands-on, data-driven problem solving HESN is a partnership between the USAID’s Global Development Lab and development labs at seven universities across the globe, including two at MIT: the International Development Innovation Network (IDIN), run by D-Lab, and the Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation (CITE), run by the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. The aim is to scale science- and tech-based solutions to the world’s most challenging development problems. HESN’s mission aligns with MIT’s, said MIT President L. Rafael Reif, who offered welcoming remarks to a capacity crowd in the Wong Auditorium in Building E51. MIT’s collaboration with USAID’s HESN follows other historic partnerships between the Institute and the U.S. government, including on national defense projects during World War II and in helping NASA put a man on the moon, Reif said. In speaking about the IDIN and CITE, both founded in 2012, Reif said, “Together, these labs exemplify two things we love at MIT: hands-on, real-world problem solving, and data-driven decision-making to solve serious human problems.” IDIN engages people living in poverty to develop their own solutions to challenges they face. So far, the program has enabled 800 innovators in 62 countries to design and develop technologies and early-stage ventures. D-Lab students also work with communities to gain hands-on innovation experience. CITE provides evidence for data-driven decision making about the use of technologies in global development. For instance, using scientific findings on gaps in Indian water-filter market, mechanical engineering professor Rohit Karnik developed a low-cost water filter made out of a tree branch. CITE has also produced technical evaluations on solar lanterns, food safety, and water-test kits, among other technologies across the developing world. Saying that ingenuity is found the world over, but many times innovators don’t have the opportunity to connect, Reif concluded, “I hope this conference presents you with many chances to tap into each other’s ingenuity, to forge new partnerships, and to translate inspiration into action.” Moving from innovation to impact The wide range of session and workshop topics included: building a “lean” startup for international development; using technology to reduce food loss for small-hold farmers; launching innovation hubs in Africa; building community spaces and makerspaces around the world; using data to drive policy in low-income countries; new technologies to aid in delivering medical supplies; and the rise of mobile connectivity and mobile commerce in Africa. A keynote panel moderated by Boston Globe business columnist Scott Kirsner — which included speakers from MIT, Olin College, Georgia Tech, and the Self Employed Women’s Association of India — focused on how higher education institutions and other organizations can help tech entrepreneurs accelerate innovation ideas to market. In the discussion, the panelists identified challenges, such as significant funding gaps, that leave startups without means for growth.    Panelist Georgina Campbell Flatter, executive director of the MIT Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship and a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, said the Legatum Center — like other colleges and universities — provides funding and resources during a startup’s earliest stages, so it can quickly commercialize technologies and find the first market. But once student innovators leave school, Flatter said, it’s difficult for them to find seed funding, which is a roadblock for startups worldwide that needs to be addressed. “There is plenty of funding at later stages,” she said. “But when it comes to seed funding, that’s where I see the biggest gap right now, particularly in Africa and in the developing world.” For many researchers and entrepreneurs, however, the conference offered a means to bring their innovations to fruition. Thursday’s contest, called the Innovation Marketplace, saw 39 teams from 11 countries compete for three prizes, of $1,000, $1,500, and $2,500, in two categories: research, and products and services. For the contest, the teams — 12 in the research category and 27 in product and services — displayed posters detailing their pitches in Morss Hall. Attendees were given 10 “development dollars” to drop into envelopes at booths, as a means of voting for their favorites in both categories. The top three earners in both categories, and a couple of other prizes, were announced in the Wong Auditorium. MIT team Sensen took home the third-place prize of $1,000 in the products and services category for developing sensors and a data-analytics platform that track usage patterns and durability of products, such as wheelchairs, in developing countries — including how often they’re used, where people travel, and how often they break. One partner, an organization that provides free wheelchairs to Indonesia, is using the data to better understand which wheelchairs will better serve different populations, and to advocate for government funding.  CITE research assistant and MIT graduate student in mechanical engineering Prithvi Sundar, who is Sensen’s chief technology officer, said the conference immersed the team in “an amazing community of people who do a lot of on-the-ground work and relate to the problem. It’s a really good opportunity to get awesome feedback from these individuals, maybe find collaboration with them, and raise our awareness within the international development community, as well.” The other two winners for products and services were: PedalTap ($1,500) from Makerere University in Uganda; and Nubrix ($2,500) from the University of Pretoria in South Africa. The three research winners were: Open Source Aid Tracking ($1,000) from the College of William and Mary; Hydrogel Desalination Technique ($1,500) from Jesuit High School in Portland, Oregon; and Sustainable and Affordable Fluoride Removal (SUFR) ($2,500) from the University of California at Berkeley. SAFR and another Berkeley team, ElectroSan, also won entrance into Venture Well’s E-Team Program, which provides mentorship and funding to student entrepreneurs. A team from Makerere University, mDex, won a free technical review from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Simone Ahuja, founder of the startup Blood Orange, presented a framework for establishing partnerships between social ventures, corporations, and non-governmental organizations that's being developed with MIT’s Practical Impact Alliance. The most valuable part of the conference, she said, was “[t]he focus on not just ideas, but also how we implement and execute these ideas in complex systems and ecosystems — within large organizations, as well as multi-stakeholder partnerships — that are integral to the success of many global development initiatives.” (Comment on this)

<< Previous Day

2016/11/15 [Calendar]

Next Day >>