Desiree Plata
School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Climate and Energy 
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

 

Accelerating Sustainable Innovation to Build a Restorative Economy 

Abstract:
Faced with the pressures of a changing climate and economy, this talk will highlight major needs in material and chemical innovation to transition the economy to environmentally restorative systems. Specifically, Plata will emphasize the role of high throughput discovery, and where computation can and cannot support sustainable design. Specific topics will include: (1) polymer fate in natural systems to drive innovation, (2) methane emissions mitigation using natural materials, green chemistry, and heterogeneous catalysis, and (3) establishing a bioeconomy to promote reduced carbon emissions while meeting the needs of advanced materials. The importance of the pace of discovery and constraints of financial systems on rapid technology scaling will also be discussed. 

Bio: 
Desirée Plata’s research seeks to maximize technology’s benefit to society while minimizing environmental impacts in industrially important practices through the use of geochemical tools and chemical mechanistic insights. Plata earned her doctoral degree in Chemical Oceanography and Environmental Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Joint Program in Oceanography (2009) and her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Union College in Schenectady, NY (2003). Plata is an NSF CAREER Awardee (2016), an Odebrecht-Braskem Sustainable Innovation Awardee (2015), a two-time National Academy of Engineers Frontiers of Engineering Fellow (2012, 2020), a two-time National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow (2011, 2013), a Caltech Resnick Sustainability Fellow (2017), and winner of MIT’s Junior Bose Teaching Award (2019), Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award (2021), and Perkins Graduate Advising Award (2021), and Bose Innovation Fellow (2025). Having previously served as John J. Lee Assistant Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Yale University and Associate Director for Research at the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale, Plata is now Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, Director of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, Director of the Parsons Laboratory for Environmental Science, and co-director of the MIT Superfund Research Program. Plata directs MIT’s Methane Network, serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of Spark Climate, and served on the National Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine’s Atmospheric Methane Removal study (recused). Plata is co-founder of Nth Cycle (nthcycle.com), co-founder and President of Sustainable Chemical Resource Advisors LLC, and co-founder and President of Moxair Inc.