Event Videos

IPCC’s October 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 ˚C (IPCC 2018) is a stark reminder of the global climate-change threat and a strongly motivating call to abate it.

While the challenges keep growing, our tools to green the economy have never been greater. What is critical today is to rapidly scale up the ‘solutions science’ of technical, economic, social, and equitable social and policy approaches that are in keeping with the IPCC 1.5 guideline.

To accomplish this seemingly impossible set of objectives, an aggressive innovation-to-action pipeline is needed, not just in resource-rich economies like California, but in some of the poorest places on the planet. This push of use-inspired, mission-driven research and scale-up will depend on California like never before. Testing and implementing new technologies that benefit the disadvantaged, not just the affluent, building carbon-smart infrastructure, and preserving and repairing degraded and under-protected natural areas all must rise rapidly to local and global agendas.

Dr. Daniel M. Kammen is Professor of Energy at the University of California, Berkeley since 1999, where he holds appointments in the Energy and Resources Group (and serves as chair), the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Department of Nuclear Engineering. Kammen is the founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL; http://rael.berkeley.edu). He has served as Director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center and has founded or is on the board of over 10 companies, having served the State of California and US federal government in expert and advisory capacities.

Dr. Kammen is a coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He was appointed to the first Environment and Climate Partnership for the Americas (ECPA) and a Fellow by Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton in April 2010.

He has authored or co-authored 12 books, written more than 300 peer-reviewed journal publications, testified more than 40 times to U.S. state and federal congressional briefings and has provided various governments with more than 50 technical reports. He also served for many years on the Technical Review Board of the Global Environment Facility. He is a frequent contributor to or commentator in international news media, including Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Financial Times. He hosted the Discovery Channel series ‘Ecopolis, and had appeared on NOVA, and on ’60 Minutes’ twice.

Dr. Kammen received his undergraduate (Cornell A., B. ’84) and graduate (Harvard M. A. ’86, Ph.D. ’88) in Physics. After postdoctoral work at Caltech and Harvard, he was professor and Chair of the Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at Princeton University from 1993 – 1998. During 2010-2011 he served as the World Bank Group’s Chief Technical Specialist for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency and provided strategic leadership on policy, technical, and operational fronts.

What have been the key battery technology breakthroughs to get us to where we are now? What are some new opportunities for large-scale energy storage & what's MIT doing? What are some key lessons for startups to be successful in the battery industry?

Energy storage will play an increasingly important role in a decarbonized world. From electric vehicles to grid resiliency, batteries will impact the ultimate success of numerous industries that are critical to a low carbon society. Professor Yet-Ming Chiang, one of the world’s most prominent researchers in energy storage, will give a personal perspective on some of the challenges and opportunities for better and cheaper energy storage.

From a historical perspective, battery performance has improved steadily, but now the divergent needs for batteries in high energy density applications such as EVs (and, coming soon, electric aviation), and those for grid storage, which emphasizes ultra-low cost and earth-abundant materials, are becoming clear. He will give examples of emerging innovations that may address these different needs, including solid-state and other batteries that use alkali metal electrodes, and approaches that make use of the most widely available electroactive elements. The expectation is that the audience will come away with a realistic but exciting roadmap of possible areas of innovation for energy storage.

Finally, he will conclude with his personal experiences in building battery enterprises. Battery technologies are notoriously difficult to scale given high technology risk and high development costs. Yet-Ming will share some of the unique lessons learned at startups he has co-founded, including A123, 24M, and most recently Form Energy.

Prof. Chiang's research focuses on the design, synthesis, and characterization of advanced inorganic materials and related devices. Current topics include new cathode and anode materials for lithium ion batteries, phase transformations in electroactive materials, electrochemical device design, electrochemical-to-mechanical energy conversion, self-assembling colloids, and the stability and defect chemical properties of interfaces in inorganic materials.

Eddan Katz - WEF, Project Lead, AI & Machine Learning
Timnit Gebru - Google, Senior Research Scientist
Paula Goldman - Salesforce, Chief Ethical and Humane Use Officer
Jake Seid - Stone Bridge Ventures, Managing Director

The 2019 MIT AI Conference (https://www.mitcnc.org/events/mit-ai-conference-2019/), the 3rd edition of this annual conference, focused on the Future of Computing - the rise of Artificial Intelligence and how innovators are leveraging AI to drive new use cases and achieve better outcomes across industries.

Ted Goldstein - Anthem, Chief AI Officer
Anmol Madan - Livongo, Chief Data Scientist
Afsana Akhter - SkinIQ, Co-founder

The 2019 MIT AI Conference (https://www.mitcnc.org/events/mit-ai-conference-2019/), the 3rd edition of this annual conference, focused on the Future of Computing - the rise of Artificial Intelligence and how innovators are leveraging AI to drive new use cases and achieve better outcomes across industries.

Jocelyn Goldfein - Zetta Venture Partners, Managing Director
Teddy Lee - OneSignal, Head of Growth

The 2019 MIT AI Conference (https://www.mitcnc.org/events/mit-ai-conference-2019/), the 3rd edition of this annual conference, focused on the Future of Computing - the rise of Artificial Intelligence and how innovators are leveraging AI to drive new use cases and achieve better outcomes across industries.

MIT AI Conference 2019 "AI Idol" Startup Pitch Competition

The 2019 MIT AI Conference (https://www.mitcnc.org/events/mit-ai-conference-2019/), the 3rd edition of this annual conference, focused on the Future of Computing - the rise of Artificial Intelligence and how innovators are leveraging AI to drive new use cases and achieve better outcomes across industries.

Kelley Rivoire - Stripe, Head of Data

The 2019 MIT AI Conference (https://www.mitcnc.org/events/mit-ai-conference-2019/), the 3rd edition of this annual conference, focused on the Future of Computing - the rise of Artificial Intelligence and how innovators are leveraging AI to drive new use cases and achieve better outcomes across industries.

Julie Choi - Intel Corporation, VP of Artificial Intelligence Products and Research Marketing

The 2019 MIT AI Conference (https://www.mitcnc.org/events/mit-ai-conference-2019/), the 3rd edition of this annual conference, focused on the Future of Computing - the rise of Artificial Intelligence and how innovators are leveraging AI to drive new use cases and achieve better outcomes across industries.

Manolis Kellis - MIT, Professor

The 2019 MIT AI Conference (https://www.mitcnc.org/events/mit-ai-conference-2019/), the 3rd edition of this annual conference, focused on the Future of Computing - the rise of Artificial Intelligence and how innovators are leveraging AI to drive new use cases and achieve better outcomes across industries.

Tom Kochan - MIT Sloan School of Management, Professor

The 2019 MIT AI Conference (https://www.mitcnc.org/events/mit-ai-conference-2019/), the 3rd edition of this annual conference, focused on the Future of Computing - the rise of Artificial Intelligence and how innovators are leveraging AI to drive new use cases and achieve better outcomes across industries.