Professor Desirée Plata

School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Climate and Energy

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

In this talk, Plata explores the paths for sustainable innovation in materials and chemistry to transition our economy toward environmentally restorative systems. Through real-world examples—tackling plastic pollution, reducing methane emissions, and advancing carbon storage—Plata will highlight the power and limits of computational discovery, the role of green chemistry, and the challenges of scaling carbon removal and emissions reductions technologies in today’s financial landscape. Join us for a dive into the future of sustainable innovation and the race to make it a reality.

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). 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.