The MIT-Imperial College London Seed Fund awarded $60,565 to three MIT faculty pursuing joint projects with peers at Imperial College London. The grant primarily supports travel costs for exchange between teams at MIT and Imperial College London with priority given to projects that are new or entering a new phase; that reflect a balanced collaboration between participants; and that involve undergraduate and graduate students as well as early-career scientists. An initiative of the MIT Office of the Associate Provost for International Activities and Imperial College London, the seed fund is administered by MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI).
In its inaugural year, the MIT-Imperial College London Seed Fund selected three winning projects out of 30 applications. Each team was awarded over $16,000 by MIT and an additional 13,500 pounds by Imperial College London for 18-month project periods.
The winning projects are:
Control of Interfaces for Increasing the Power Density and Durability of Solid State Batteries, a collaboration between:
- Bilge Yildiz, associate professor in the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering;
- John Kilner, professor at Imperial College London; and
- Ainara Aguadero, lecturer at Imperial College London.
Engineering Living Functional Materials, a collaboration between:
- Timothy Lu, associate professor in the MIT Departtment of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and
- Tom Ellis, senior lecturer at Imperial College London.
Photonic Quantum Information Processing, a collaboration between:
- Dirk Englund, assistant professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and
- Terence Rudolph, professor at Imperial College London.
“We were impressed by the high volume of applications we received,” says Richard Lester, MIT’s associate provost for international activities and the Japan Steel Industry Professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. “Clearly there is already a strong connection between MIT and Imperial College London — a connection that this seed fund promises to strengthen over time. As two of the world’s leading research universities, we share a passion for solving big problems through the development and application of science and technology."
The MIT-Imperial College London Seed Fund is part of the MISTI Global Seed Funds (GSF) program. Each year MISTI GSF awards over $2 million to MIT faculty collaborating with international peers, either at MIT or abroad, with the aim of developing and launching joint research projects. MISTI GSF comprises a general fund for projects in any country and several country funds.
In addition to facilitating international faculty collaborations, MISTI matches MIT students with tailored internship, research and teaching opportunities abroad and develops partnerships with leading companies, research institutes and universities around the world. MISTI is a program in the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.
