MIT Professor Yet-Ming Chiang has been named to the 2023 Time 100 Climate list, the magazine’s inaugural tally of the 100 most influential climate leaders in business. The list, currently online, will be featured on the cover of the magazine’s December 4 print issue.
“Pleased to join 99 other like-minded individuals on the 2023 #TIME100Climate list, including my friend and Form Energy co-founder Mateo Jaramillo!” wrote Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, on his LinkedIn page. Chiang is also affiliated with the Materials Research Laboratory.
According to Time, the individuals named to the list “are making significant progress in fighting climate change by creating business value.” In addition to Chiang, other people named to the list include Bill Gates, filmmaker James Cameron, John Kerry, and Jigar Shah, Director of the Loan Programs Office, U.S. Department of Energy.
Chiang has been a professor at MIT for 38 years. During that time, he’s co-founded several start-ups based on his discoveries in materials science. The Time 100 Climate list called out two in particular: Sublime Systems, which aims to decarbonize cement making, and Form Energy, which is developing a new battery technology.
Time asked each of the people named to its list a few questions related to the broader issues associated with climate change.
For example, Chiang was asked about the single most important action “the public, or a specific company or government, needs to take in the next year to advance the climate agenda?” His response: “We need to start scaling some of the decarbonization technologies that have been in the pipeline. When it comes to cleantech, if it won’t scale, it doesn’t matter. This is a team sport—companies large and small, and governments state and federal, need to work together to get these new technologies out there where they can have impact.”
For the other questions Chiang was asked and his responses, go to this link.