A site and and Institute we've been watching

It is hard to overstate the importance of leading educational centers in the US.  They attract the brightest from around the world, they give bricks and mortar to innovation and learning, and they offer roads in which those students can take their ideas and turn them into real companies...companies that will change the world and change it quickly.

One such leader is MIT.  In 2006 they established an energy institute that has made remarkable progress in a very short time.  If you have not read about MITEI, here's your chance. The link to their site:http://web.mit.edu

Here's the background:

About MITEI

MITEI Overview Brochure (pdf)

The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), established in September 2006, is an Institute-wide initiative designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today's energy systems.

MIT President Susan Hockfield first announced an MIT energy initiative at her inauguration in May 2005. She said, "[It is] our institutional responsibility to address the challenges of energy and the environment....Tackling the problems that energy and the environment present will require contributions from all our departments and schools...bringing scientists, engineers and social scientists together to envision the best energy policies for the future."

Here's a little more:  

MITEI's research program

The MITEI interdisciplinary research program focuses on the following:

• Innovative technologies and underlying policy analysis that will improve how we produce, distribute and consume conventional energy.
• Transformational technologies to develop alternative energy sources that can supplement and displace fossil fuels, including the economic, management, social science and policy dimensions needed for this transformation.
• Global systems to meet energy and environmental challenges through a multidisciplinary systems approach that integrates policy design and technology development.
• Tools to enable innovation, transformation and simulation of global energy systems through strategic basic research.