HACK

A(i)

THON

MIT ENERGY & CLIMATE HACK

NOV 10–12, 2023

Congrats to the 2023 winners

FIRST PLACE

Unbiased Cathode

The lack of efficient tools to evaluate materials' usability in production early-on in the development process is one of the core problems slowing down innovation in the battery industry.

Our solution, Unbiased Cathode, enables researchers to assess the supply chain implications of battery materials before development begins, hence reducing the lab-to-production timeline. The platform deploys a pipeline that encompasses trust-worthy LLMs, along with ML models for Text Sentiment Analysis and Web scraping combined with state of the art paradigms that focus on LLMs for supply chain optimisation.

View pitch deck

  • Alessandro Fumi

    Alessandro Fumi

    MBA Candidate, MIT Sloan School of Business

    LinkedIn

  • Amal Nammouchi

    PhD in Energy & AI, Karlstad University

    LinkedIn

  • Amaury De Bock

    Amaury De Bock

    MBA Candidate, MIT Sloan School of Business

    LinkedIn

  • Cyrine Chaabani

    Cyrine Chaabani

    PhD Candidate in AI, Technical University of Munich

    LinkedIn

  • Robbie Lee V

    Robbie Lee V

    MBA Candidate, MIT Sloan School of Business

    LinkedIn

HACK 2023: AI AND CLIMATE

Climate change is a massive, complex challenge. It requires the processing and management of large-scale data and systems—problems that Artificial Intelligence is best suited to tackle. Simply put, AI has the potential to supercharge our solutions and help combat global warming. Join us this fall to take on the challenge together.

TOPIC

Fight climate change with AI

THE EVENT

Nov 10–12, 2023
MIT Campus, Cambridge, MA
Virtual option also available

PARTICIPATION

Join with a pre-formed team or find your teammates on the first day.

HACKATHON FOCUS AREAS

While we welcome participants to apply AI to an array of different problems in the climate space, we are most excited about three focus areas.

ENERGY MARKETS

Power generation, power consumption and flexibility services. Be ready to look from the generators side on how to diversify their energy portfolio or how to develop and implement decentralized energy systems. Or take a look at how to help the house owners to equip their smart homes with demand response systems and the modern energy saving tools.  

TRANSPORTATION

Electric Vehicles, battery technologies and advanced routing systems are reshaping transportation with their low carbon emissions. AI optimizes charging station locations and usage times, ensures energy-saving travel routes. Let’s get together to idea how we can empower a more sustainable transportation future.

FARMS AND FORRESTS

Saving forests from fires, preventing deforestation, encouraging biodiversity and empowering precision farming. Robotics and AI-driven machinery are employed to harvest, deliver water, fertilizers, and pesticides, reducing wastage and environmental impact. Join if you’re excited to ideate on further solutions in agriculture and help to protect and enrich our forests. 

SPONSORS

Build brand recognition, connect with top-tier hackers, and solve the world’s toughest climate problems with talent from top institutions such as MIT, Harvard University, Oxford University, the University of Toronto, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and more.

Google

Access the advanced capabilities of Google’s large language models like PaLM 2 with the PaLM API. Use it to build generative AI applications for use cases like content generation, dialog agents, summarization, classification, and more.

Avangrid

Avangrid serves the energy needs of over seven million people in the Northeast, operate across 24 states and have built 8.7 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity. Whether we are generating clean, renewable energy from the sun and wind, creating a smarter, more reliable and resilient grid, or building the first large-scale offshore wind facility in the U.S., everything we do as a company is focused on creating a more sustainable, equitable future.

Crusoe

Crusoe is on a mission to align the future of computing with the future of the climate. As builders and operators of clean computing infrastructure, Crusoe reduces both the costs and the environmental impact of the world’s expanding digital economy. By unlocking stranded sources of energy to power artificial intelligence, crypto, and other high performance computing applications, Crusoe is creating the future of compute-intensive innovation that reduces emissions rather than adds to them.

Foothill Ventures

Foothill Ventures is an $200M technology-focused venture fund based in Los Altos, California. We make seed and A-round investments in B2B technology startups across software, life sciences, and frontier tech. Over the past decade, Foothill has built a cross-disciplinary, multi-sector fund dedicated to technical innovation. As one of the most active early-stage deep tech investors in the Silicon Valley, Foothill Ventures has made seed-stage, highly successful bets on at least one subsequent unicorn each year, and continues to be highly active in deep tech investments in fields such as AI, energy, manufacturing, neuroscience, battery science and automaton, to empower the next-gen technology in the U.S. and around the world.

Foothill Ventures

Koidra specializes in climate-smart automation solutions, leveraging advanced AI and IoT to enhance sustainability and efficiency in industrial processes. Our smart systems, rooted in science and technology, empower manufacturing and high-tech greenhouses to exceed their production goals with reduced environmental impact.

Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric is a global leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation. Schneider’s purpose is to empower all to make the most of our energy and resources, bridging progress and sustainability for all.

Ironwood

Ironwood Forestry is a private forestry company providing field forestry support services in Arizona. By synergizing new technology with traditional "boots on the ground" forestry, we unlock new potential for forest restoration in the Southwest. Our first innovation - the Mark I Paint Sprayer - has enabled increased efficiency and overwhelming cost savings. Since then, we have succeeded in integrating aerial and mobile LiDAR into forest restoration on public land. We are now well positioned to solve increasingly difficult and complex problems related to forest management.

First Solar

Founded in 1999, First Solar is a leading American solar technology company and global provider of responsibly produced eco-efficient solar modules advancing the fight against climate change. The company is unique among the world’s ten largest solar manufacturers for being the only US-headquartered company and not manufacturing in China. First Solar’s advanced thin film photovoltaic (PV) modules represent the next generation of solar technologies, providing a competitive, high-performance, lower-carbon alternative to conventional crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV panels.

Mitra Chem

Mitra Chem is a Silicon Valley startup, innovating and commercializing iron-based cathode materials to enable mass-market electrification in transportation and energy storage. Mitra Chem's goal is to shorten development timelines for cathode materials by > 90% by leveraging machine learning accelerated R&D and vertically integrated process optimization.

Climate Ledger

Climate Ledger is an opensource concept to create a more impactful way of tracking the climate impact and liability that countries and companies are accruing as the continue to emit greenhouse gas emissions and delay achieving net and gross zero emissions. We need to better account for the time value of climate action.

CORE AI APPLICATIONS

Climate catastrophe is coming. AI technology is more powerful than ever to fight it.

PREDICTION

Use AI to improve prediction algorithms. AI is excellent at analyzing historical data—particularly from different data sources—to find patterns and provide foresight.

PROCESSING UNSTRUCTURED DATA

From numerical data to satellite imagery, AI brings scale and efficiency to analyzing large amounts of unstructured data.

OPTIMIZING REAL WORLD SOLUTIONS

AI can enable critical systems, such as building temperature automation and power prices, to more effectively make decisions to increase efficiency and drive down cost.

ACCELERATION OF DISCOVERY

Within the realm of research and experimentation, AI can cut down the number of experiment and design cycles to help us find the next big breakthroughs.

 FAQs

  • If you are at least 18 years old and are a student (undergraduate, graduate or MBA), you can attend. Signups will be posted early September!

  • Teams can be formed with up to 4 people. Don’t worry if you do not have a team before the event. There will be time to meet fellow hackers and form teams during pre-hacking events the first week of November.

  • Hackers will be able to participate either in-person or virtually, to their convenience. We will use email, Slack, and live Zoom events to make the virtual experience as rewarding as possible.

  • Nope! Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, the event is free for all participants. However, registration is limited to students only.

  • Applications will open up soon 👀!

  • Food will be provided free of charge for the time of the hackathon. Limited travel reimbursements will be available, however we cannot guarantee that we will be able to cover all travel costs for all in-person hackers. Travel reimbursement information will be sent out following the event, and the final amount will depend on how many in-person participants apply for reimbursement.

    Unfortunately due to COVID precautions, we are unable to offer housing on MIT’s campus this year to in-person participants.

  • You can go visit our sponsorship page HERE to find out more, or can contact our team directly HERE.

  • Equal shares of any prize money won will be paid to each individual on a winning team. The individual recipients of prize money will be responsible for the tax implications of their winnings. Note that prize payments are treated as income by MIT and the IRS, regardless of whether the payment is made to an individual or a company. Non-U.S. citizens are taxed on their prize money up front at a rate of 30%, which is withheld from their prize checks.

  • Photographs and/or videos may be taken over the course of the Energy & Climate Hack. By entering and attending the EnergyHack, you acknowledge and agree that your likeness may be included in photos and videos of the event and used by MIT in connection with communications about the EnergyHack or in other MIT communications.

  • In short, we want the MIT Energy & Climate Hack to be as open as possible! See this document for details.