Elsa Olivetti
Co-Director, MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium; Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Categories
Elsa Olivetti is co-director of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium and the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. Her research centers on improving the environmental and economic sustainability of materials in the context of growing global demand. Her interests span three levels of materials production: operational-level, industrial network-level and market-level strategies. She is focused on two areas with the potential for significant environmental benefits: improving the sustainability of materials through increased use of recycled and renewable materials, recycling-friendly material design, and intelligent waste disposition; and understanding the implications of substitution, dematerialization, and waste mining on materials markets. Olivetti earned a BS in engineering science from the University of Virginia, and a PhD in materials science and engineering from MIT.
Publications
- X Fu, D Beatty, G Gabrielle, G Ceder, R Roth, R Kirchain, M Bustamante, C Babbitt, E Olivetti. (2020). Perspectives on Cobalt Supply in the Face of Changing Demand. Environmental Science & Technology
- E Kim, Z Jensen, A van Grootel, K Huang, M Staib, S Mysore, H-S Chang, E Strubell, A McCallum, S Jegelka, E Olivetti. (2019). Inorganic Materials Synthesis Planning with Literature-Trained Neural Networks. Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling 60 (3), 1194-1201.
- Chaunsali, P., Uvegi, H., Traynor, B., Olivetti, E. A. (2019). Leaching Characteristics of Biomass Ash-Based Binder in Neutral and Acidic Media. Journal of Cement and Concrete Composites, Vol. 100, 92-98.
- Jensen, Z., Kim, E., Kwon, S., Gani, T., Román-Leshkov, Y., Moliner, M., Corma, A., Olivetti, E. A. (2019). A Machine Learning Approach to Zeolite Synthesis Enabled by Automatic Literature Data Extraction. ACS Central Science 5 (5), 892-899.
News
- January 28, 2021: MIT News, MIT convenes influential industry leaders in the fight against climate change.
- December 16, 2019: MIT News, Making buildings from industrial waste.
- November 5, 2019: MIT News, Materials Day talks examine the promises and challenges of AI and machine learning.
- October 7, 2019: MIT News, A new mathematical approach to understanding zeolites.