The MIT Startup Exchange Lightning Talks and Startup Exhibit listed below are part of the full agenda for 2024 MIT Sustainability Conference - Accelerating the Transition to a Sustainable Future.
Sustainability is a broad and popular topic. Renewable energy; energy transition; recycling and the circular economy; climate and environment; water and food – these topics are quickly maturing into fields of their own. But what is next for sustainability? What lies beyond what we now consider sustainable technologies and business practices, and how will they affect your industry? What does emerging government policy suggest will be the hot sustainability topics of the future? Join MIT faculty, researchers, and startups as we review core topics like energy and climate, but also explore new ones, like digital sustainability, sustainability for the built environment, and how we teach sustainability – both to the workforce of the present and the workforce of the future.
Program Manager, MIT Startup Exchange
Ariadna Rodenstein is a Program Manager at MIT Startup Exchange. She joined MIT Corporate Relations as an Events Leader in September 2019 and is responsible for designing and executing startup events, including content development, coaching and hosting, and logistics. Ms. Rodenstein works closely with the Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) in promoting collaboration and partnerships between MIT-connected startups and industry, as well as with other areas around the MIT innovation ecosystem and beyond. Prior to working for MIT Corporate Relations, she worked for over a decade at Credit Suisse Group in New York and London, in a few different roles in event management and as Director of Client Strategy. Ms. Rodenstein has combined her experience in the private sector with work at non-profits as a Consultant and Development Director at New York Immigration Coalition, Immigrant Defense Project, and Americas Society/Council of the Americas. She also served as an Officer on the Board of Directors of the Riverside Clay Tennis Association in New York for several years. Additionally, she earned her B.A. in Political Science and Communications from New York University, with coursework at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Mexico City, and her M.A. in Sociology from the City University of New York.
Co-Founder & CEO, Electrified Thermal Solutions, Inc.
Daniel Stack is the Co-founder and CEO of Electrified Thermal Solutions, Inc. (ETS), a new technology startup that is decarbonizing industry with electrified heat. He earned his PhD in Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a specialization in energy conversion and thermal energy storage. His doctoral inventions form the foundation of ETS and its flagship product, the Joule Hive™ thermal battery. Daniel is an Activate fellow of the 2021 Boston cohort, an awardee of ARPA-E SEED, and a representative on the Long Duration Energy Storage Council. He has authored and co-authored a variety of papers on electrified thermal energy storage in academic and industry journals, and has spoken at various energy conferences, workshops and panels on repowering industrial processes and power plants with electrified thermal energy storage.
Co-Founder & CEO, 3D Architech
Kai Narita is an innovator and engineer leading the 3D printing technology development. He has a Ph.D. in Materials Science from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and received his master’s in Engineering and bachelor’s degree from the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
Co-Founder & CEO, Helix Carbon
Evan Haas is CEO & Co-Founder of Helix Carbon, an industrial decarbonization company that turns CO2 into carbon-negative industrial chemicals. Prior to Helix, he was the Senior Fellow at E14 Fund, the MIT-affiliated venture fund that invests in deep technology startups, and a consultant at BCG where he focused on military aerospace and climate technology commercialization & policy with Breakthrough Energy and the Biden Administration.Evan holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Yale University and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and MBA from MIT.
SVP of Business Development, Boston Metal
Adam Rauwerdink is the SVP of Business Development at Boston Metal, a leader in steel decarbonization technology. Rauwerdink joined Boston Metal as one of the earliest employees and has subsequently raised over $300M in equity, has developed partnerships with global industry leaders such as ArcelorMittal and BMW, and has earned countless awards for the company, including the 2023 North America Company of the Year from the Cleantech Group and the 2024 TIME100 Most Influential Companies. Prior to Boston Metal, he led global development at several utility-scale energy storage companies. Rauwerdink holds a bachelor’s in engineering from the University of Connecticut and a PhD in engineering and innovation from Dartmouth College.
Founder and CEO, Noya
Josh Santos is co-founder and CEO of Noya, an Oakland-based startup that is reversing climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Josh holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from MIT and has experience building B2B products and services from scratch, scaling technology as a Project Manager on the Tesla Model 3 program, and leading R&D teams as the first ever Program Manager for Harley Davidson’s electric vehicle division. In his free time, Josh enjoys reading and sailing in the San Francisco Bay.
Co-Founder & CEO, Sesame Sustainability
Emre Gençer is a principal research scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and Co-Founder and CEO of Sesame Sustainability.
Gencer is the lead developer and chief architect of a novel software platform called Sustainable Energy Systems Analysis Modeling Environment (SESAME), which provides comprehensive cost and sustainability assessment for the converging electric power, transportation, and industrial sectors to decision makers and technology analysts with high technological, temporal, and geospatial resolution. He was lead on the chemical storage chapter of The Future of Energy Storage report and co-lead on the thermal storage chapter.
Gencer holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University. He received both a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering and B.Sc. in Mathematics from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey.
Co-Founder, Femto Energy TEPCO Professor, MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Jacopo Buongiorno is the TEPCO Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, where he teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in thermo-fluids engineering and nuclear reactor engineering. Jacopo has published over 70 journal articles in the areas of reactor safety and design, two-phase flow and heat transfer, and nanofluid technology. For his research work and his teaching at MIT he won several awards, including, recently, the Ruth and Joel Spira Award (MIT, 2015), and the Landis Young Member Engineering Achievement Award (American Nuclear Society, 2011). He is the Director of the Center for Advanced Energy Systems (CANES), which is one of eight Low-Carbon-Energy Centers (LCEC) of the MIT Energy initiative (MITEI), as well as the Director of the MIT study on the Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World. Jacopo is a consultant for the nuclear industry in the area of reactor thermal-hydraulics, and a member of the Accrediting Board of the National Academy of Nuclear Training. He is also a member of the Naval Studies Board (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine), the American Nuclear Society (including service on its Special Committee on Fukushima in 2011-2012), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and a participant in the Defense Science Study Group (2014-2015).
Co-Founder & CEO, Emvolon
Emmanuel Kasseris is the co-founder and CEO of Emvolon, an MIT spin-off, that converts greenhouse gas emissions into carbon-negative fuels and chemicals like green methanol and green ammonia. Emmanuel has over twenty years of experience in managing advanced technology projects and raising capital in the energy industry. He has led multiple new energy technologies from concept to full-scale pilot implementation while at Chevron and ConocoPhillips. Emmanuel holds a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.
Disclaimer: MIT Startup Exchange can make introductions that ideally provide open ended discussions in order to share mutual interests and potentially create common ground that incite the parties to collaborate. MIT Startup Exchange introductions may eventually lead to mutual partnerships, but that is not in any way guaranteed by MIT, MIT Corporate Relations, MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) or MIT Startup Exchange, which takes no responsibility for these outcomes and no formal part in such discussions following our introduction. MIT Startup Exchange and its activities and events are not for purposes of soliciting investment or offering securities.