About MITEC Launchpad

The MITEC Launchpad is an initiative within the MIT Energy & Climate Club to provide MIT students the opportunity to solve real-world climate and energy problems with leading professionals in the industry.

The program was first piloted last year and is now expanding to more projects with more organizations in the 2023-2024 school year. 

Example of past projects:

  • Developing machine learning models to augment renewables project development.

  • Building a policy-informed tool to identify key entry markets for a new energy technology.

Launchpad teams work with partner companies for 6 - 10 week projects during the fall and spring semesters.

Each project consists of a graduate student team lead as an experienced project manager, three to five undergraduate students, and occasionally, the Launchpad program directors who help scope projects and can provide guidance on project direction.

Each team meets with their partner company on a weekly basis and provides a final deliverable at the end of the semester. Each student on the team has an expected time commitment of approximately five hours a week. 

For Students:

Undergraduate Students

MITEC Launchpad is an onramp for undergraduate students looking to gain experience in the energy and climate space. In addition to providing valuable outcomes to our partner companies, we work with them to ensure that students develop skills both technically and professionally. 

Technical competency targets:

  • Problem solving and formulation with limited information

  • Develop better understanding on energy/climate landscape

  • Modeling in climate topics (for some projects)

Professional competency targets:

  • Presentations / report writing

  • Communicating / reporting out to teams

  • Team collaboration

Graduate Students

MITEC Launchpad offers graduate students the opportunity to hone their project management, leadership, and mentoring skills in the role of team lead. Each project team will have one graduate student leading as an experienced project/technical manager and acting as the liaison to company management. This role is recruited from all disciplines and schools across MIT.

For Companies:

Partner companies work with MITEC Launchpad and the graduate student leader to scope out project milestones and deliverables. Over the course of the 6-10 week project, company personnel have the opportunity to engage with talented, enthusiastic MIT students and to benefit from their technical contributions. Here is what one partners had to say about their MITEC Launchpad experience:

“It was a pleasure working with highly competent, professional students eager to learn about the energy space. The power sector is undergoing a sizeable transformation so engaging with the next generation of recruits is not only enjoyable but critical for enabling the advances needed ahead.”

- Director, Series A Startup


Interested in working with us? Reach out to mitec_launchpad@mit.edu