In December 2025, the Climate Project invited MIT Principal Investigators to submit bold, integrative proposals that advanced solutions to one of the defining challenges of our time: building well-being for people and the planet. This RFP is now supporting projects that take a community-centered, systems-based approach, recognizing that climate impacts are experienced where people live and work, and that durable solutions must integrate science, engineering, policy, finance, social sciences, and humanities.
The inaugural call focused on three initial frontiers where global systems intersect directly with community well-being: Building Coastal Resilience, Decarbonizing Ports and Shipping, and Designing Data Centers of the Future.
Recently, the Climate Project announced 21 recipients and over $3.5 million in funding. Below is a list of the Principal Investigators and their projects, organized by frontier.
Building Coastal Resilience
- Tanja Bosak, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences: Probing Microbial Interactions to Improve the Monitoring and Reduction of Methane Emissions from Coastal Wetlands
- Raffaele Ferrari, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences: AI-Emulators to Advance Coastal Resilience Planning
- Heidi Nepf, Civil and Environmental Engineering: Measurement and Methods to Support Blue Carbon and Coastal Resilience Credits
- Mariana Popescu, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Architecture: Hierarchical Knitted Textiles for Coastal Restoration: Engineering Dual-Function Biodegradable Systems for Guided Seedling Establishment and Sediment Capture
- Justin Steil, Urban Studies and Planning: Building Coastal Resilience through Climate-Conscious Zoning and Building Codes
- Skylar Tibbits, Architecture: Growing Shorelines: Sediment-Guided Coastal Resilience in Boston Harbor
- Michael Triantafyllou, Mechanical Engineering: AI Optimized Wave Energy Dissipation Structures: Unparalleled Wave Attenuation via Vorticity Enhancement - Reef Inspired Device (WAVE-RID)
- Brandon Weissbourd, Biology: Pathways for Controlling Larval Settlement Across Species
Decarbonizing Ports and Shipping
- Andrew Babbin, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences: Ecological Safe-Operating Limits for Ammonia Fuel Adoption for Global Shipping
- Yet Ming Chiang, Materials Science and Engineering: Light-Metal Fuel Cells and Electrolyzers for Zero-Emissions, Cost-Competitive Marine Shipping
- Alexander Slocum, Mechanical Engineering: Hybrid Rapid Swap + Fast Charge Electrification of Vehicle Fleets at Ports and Beyond
Designing Data Centers of the Future
- Gang Chen, Mechanical Engineering: Heat Transformer for Data Center Waste Heat Reuse
- Christina Delimitrou, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science: Redesigning The System Stack to Enable Sustainable Clouds
- Neil Gershenfeld, Media Arts and Sciences: Superconductor Electronics for High Efficiency Data Centers
- Holly Samuelson, Architecture: Thermal Commons: A Design Framework for Data Center Waste Heat Recovery as Community Infrastructure in Affordable Housing
- Sungho Shin, Chemical Engineering: Sub-Minute Flexibility Market for Data Center Load Fluctuations
- Andy Sun, Management: Data Centers as Community Assets: A Multi-Objective Planning Framework for Co-Optimizing Siting, Storage, and Community Benefits
- Vivienne Sze, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science: Designing Efficient AI Multi-Accelerator Systems for Next-generation Data Centers
- Olivier de Weck, Aeronautics and Astronautics: Integrated System Modeling for Designing Green Data Centers in Space
Cross-Cutting Areas
- Noelle Selin, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences: Building a Flexible, Actionable Systems Toolkit (B-FAST) to Inform Climate Action
- Catherine Wolfram, Management: Industrial Decarbonization Systems for Emerging Markets: Plant-Level Marginal Abatement Cost Curves, Carbon Pricing Design, and Innovation Signals