Recipients of first round of seed grants for MIT energy research

January 15, 2008

The following is a list of the eleven recipients of MITEI's first round of seed grants for energy research, totalling $1.4 million, and of the 6 junior faculty members who were awarded smaller Ignition grants. News story

Seed grants

Ultra-high efficiency thin film heterojunction solar cells using earth-abundant, scalable materials
Tonio Buonassisi (Mechanical Engineering) and Gerbrand Ceder (Materials Science and Engineering)

Advancing our understanding of Prochlorococcus, the Earth's smallest and most abundant photosynthetic machine
Sallie "Penny" Chisholm (Civil and Environmental Engineering and Biology)

Enzymatic control of pollutants and greenhouse gases
Catherine Drennan (Chemistry)

The health consequences of energy consumption in India
Esther Duflo and Michael Greenstone (Economics) and Amy Smith (Mechanical Engineering)

No watt left behind
Steven Leeb and James Kirtley (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and Les Norford (Architecture)

Harnessing collective intelligence to address global climate change
Thomas Malone and John Sterman (Sloan School of Management), Hal Abelson, Mark Klein and David Karger (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)

Superconducting DC power transmission and distribution
Joseph Minervini and Leslie Bromberg (Plasma Science and Fusion Center)

Characterization of phonon mean free path and thermal transport in thermoelectric materials
Keith Nelson (Chemistry) and Gang Chen (Mechanical Engineering)

Microbial synthesis of pentanol as a biofuel
Kristala Jones Prather (Chemical Engineering)

Electrochemical cell evaluation and design for MIT nanotube-enhanced ultracapacitor
Joel Schindall and John Kassakian (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and Donald Sadoway (Materials Science and Engineering)

Investigation of subsurface microbial processes during and after geological carbon sequestration
Janelle Thompson and Roman Stocker (Civil and Environmental Engineering)

Ignition grants

Towards a balance between light, heat and comfort: angularly and spectrally selective envelopes for energy-efficient buildings
Marilyne Andersen (Architecture)

Semiconductor nanowires for thermoelectric applications
Silvija Gradecak (Materials Science and Engineering)

Nitride-based electronics for high-efficiency power conversion
Tomas Palacios (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)

Demonstrating biomimetic self-repair in photoelectrochemical energy production systems
Michael Strano (Chemical Engineering)

Structural characterization of organic photovoltaics and fuel-forming catalysts via designer force fields
Troy Van Voorhis (Chemistry)

Nano-structured alloys against corrosion in advanced nuclear plants
Bilge Yildiz (Nuclear Science and Engineering)

CONTACT

Elizabeth A. Thomson, MIT News Office
Phone: 617-258-5402, E-mail: thomson@mit.edu
URL: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/mitei-list-0115.html