ClimateX will transition into the MIT Climate portal, a gateway to the work happening across MIT on climate change, as well as a place for worldwide discussion and learning.
MIT's Climate Portal emerged from a two-year prototyping of a platform for online learning and collaboration called ClimateX. After winning an MIT Climate CoLab contest (see ClimateX proposal), two MIT alumni (Rajesh Kasturirangan and Dave Damm-Luhr) began a partnership in Summer 2016 with the MIT Office of Open Learning to explore ways to engage people both within MIT and in the wider world. At that time, Rajesh and Dave were joined by Curt Newton, for whom ClimateX combined his work in Open Learning with his passion for climate action.
Rajesh, Dave and Curt collaborated to give the content on ClimateX the voice and shape it has today - one of the most widely circulated podcasts about climate change, video interviews, numerous posts and opinion pieces, and prospective project partnerships with groups outside of MIT. Other parts of ClimateX's original proposal - such as promoting green careers or helping people find each other to collaborate and take action together - remain aspirations that we will pursue at MIT and beyond.
ClimateX has been fortunate to have tremendous support from Open Learning -- in particular, from the Hive team of Mark Brown, Laura Howells, Nick Covaleski, Mikaela Joyce, Laura Fronius and Kelly McCann, which developed and refined the web platform, built a social media presence, produced written interviews, and helped build collaborations with other MIT climate groups. We are also thankful to Sanjay Sarma, VP of Open Learning, for bringing us into the fold, and to the office of the Vice President of Research, especially Tom Kiley and Maria Zuber.
As ClimateX outgrew its initial mandate, it has a found a new home in the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), MIT’s cross-institutional effort to leverage the Institute’s strengths to create solutions to today’s environmental challenges.
As a collaboration between MIT ESI and MIT Open Learning, with support from the MIT Office of the Vice President for Research, ClimateX will transition into the MIT Climate portal, a gateway to the work happening across MIT on climate change, as well as a place for worldwide discussion and learning. Here, you can dig into the cutting-edge climate science and action emerging from MIT and beyond, ask questions of experts, and engage in a global dialogue with people around the world.
The MIT Climate portal will remain an open platform and we encourage you to continue to stay involved and help build this global climate change community.
Thank you for being a part of ClimateX – now the MIT Climate portal – with us, together.
Warm regards,
Rajesh Kasturirangan, Dave Damm-Luhr, and Curt Newton
and the MIT Open Learning and MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative teams
