Background

Prior to the launch of Frontier Projects, the Mission Directors have identified two initial cross-mission themes where foundational capabilities are needed to enable mission-critical activities, and resources can be pooled to maximize impact. These themes will include elements of fundamental science, technology, community engagement, data analytics, finance, and policy (further details are provided in the cross-theme documents, linked here). These are large, broad challenges, and the research that is defined by this call will not address all aspects of these themes.

With this call, the Climate Project is soliciting Expressions of Interest from individuals or small teams of MIT researchers to contribute to these Cross-Mission themes. Based on these Expressions of Interest, Mission Directors will define sub-themes within the themes and may combine or create new teams based on capability. Teams and individuals will be selected based on interest and qualification match with subthemes. Chosen researchers will be funded to develop full proposals on transformative ideas or capabilities (further details on outcomes below). Submissions are not expected to address all aspects of a theme.

This call addresses two initial Cross-Mission themes (full details are linked here):

1. Sense, Share, and Understand seeks to develop and extend sensing, data infrastructure, and modeling that generates and shares critical information to track progress on protecting natural and human systems, including tools and methods to communicate the results to policymakers, decisionmakers, and the public to catalyze action.
2. Heat Stress and Cooling seeks to understand and advance concepts that address cooling demands with an integrated approach given dynamic health risks and potential for inequitable access to heat stress relief, by advancing critical scientific knowledge, developing low-cost, scalable cooling technologies linked to effective incentives.