Earlier this year, five Climate Project-Deshpande Center Momentum Grants were awarded.
The 2025 Momentum Grants are a joint initiative between the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS), and the MIT Climate Project.
Recipients and Projects
Yet-Ming Chiang, Emissionless Smelting of Critical Minerals
Nearly every technology driving the global energy transition depends on a growing supply of critical minerals, yet producing these metals today accounts for roughly 10% of global industrial energy use. Emissionless smelting offers a low-temperature, closed-loop alternative that uses metal reductants instead of carbon to extract critical metals from sulfide or oxide ores. At scale, this would enable domestic, zero-emission production of critical minerals essential for the energy transition.
Ariel Furst, Scaleup of Biological Rare Earth Element Recovery
Rare earth elements (REEs) are essential to technologies ranging from computer hard drives to radar systems, but the US currently lacks a domestic supply chain for these materials due to the cost and difficulty of their processing. This project consists of a biseparations approach to REE isolation and recovery that could decrease the cost of their production by over 90%. The method avoids the use of harsh solvents while also avoiding the costs conventionally associated with biotechnologies.
Zachary Smith, Scalable Solvent-Separation Membranes
This project aims to develop and scale solvent-stable membranes that can replace thermal separations, eliminating energy-intensive distillation and solvent waste in industries where these processes still account for about 8% of global energy consumption. Building on the same kind of breakthrough that transformed seawater desalination, this work could dramatically reduce energy use and emissions in some of the hardest-to-clean industrial sectors.
Yogesh Surendranath, Wireless Lithium Extraction
Today’s direct lithium extraction (DLE) methods face a fundamental tradeoff: they can either be very good at selectively pulling lithium from brines or be practical to scale up, but not both at the same time. Many also produce lithium in a form that requires additional energy-intensive refining, often in overseas supply chains. This project addresses those gaps by achieving high selectivity and simple scalability while producing battery-ready lithium carbonate with minimal environmental impact.
Andrew Whittle, Early Harmful Algae Detection
Harmful algal blooms cause $13 billion in damage globally each year, and current detection methods are slow or inaccurate, with 30–50% false positives that can cost aquaculture facilities $15,000–40,000 per unnecessary treatment. This project provides an early-warning system that detects blooms at very low concentrations and accurately classifies harmful algae with over 85% accuracy, protecting ecosystems and millions of dollars in aquatic stock.
We are also delighted to announce that one of our Climate Project Mission Directors, Benedetto Marelli, is the recipient of a Deshpande HEALS grant for his work across climate, agriculture, and health.
His project aims to validate chito_tre — a bio-based seed coating made from upcycled chitosan and trehalose — that delivers plant growth-promoting bacteria to specialty crops like tomatoes and strawberries. By preserving beneficial microbes on seeds, chito_tre reduces fertilizer, water, and pesticide use by up to 20% while increasing yields by at least 25%. This grant will support field trials at UC South Coast Research & Extension Center (UC SCREC, California), where the chito_tre technology can provide profit gains of about $5,000/ha for tomatoes and up to $40,000/ha for strawberries through a scalable, low-cost (<$3/ha) technology.
Learn more about the Deshpande Center Momentum Grants.