Iwnetim Abate

Research

Professor Iwnetim Abate’s research integrates electrochemistry, condensed matter physics, and earth sciences to develop advanced materials and systems for energy storage, computing, and mining technologies. His group focuses on understanding and controlling chemical redox reactions at material interfaces. One focus is designing sustainable materials for next-generation batteries and extending battery principles, such as ion insertion in layered materials, to create controllable magnetic and electronic states for future computing.

Another focus involves manipulating the chemical and physical behavior of complex interfaces in chemical and electrochemical systems to advance novel, low-carbon, resource-efficient mining technologies. This includes pioneering chemical reactions like geological hydrogen production and ammonia synthesis. By integrating theory, computation, and experimentation, Professor Abate’s work provides a mechanistic understanding across scales, from atomic interactions to system-level behavior.

Biography

Abate is the Chipman Career Development Professor and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. He earned his PhD at Stanford University and served as both Miller and Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Berkeley. Before his Ph.D., he conducted research at IBM Almaden and Los Alamos National Laboratory for two years.

Professor Abate has been recognized as one of MIT Technology Review‘s Innovators Under 35 (TR35), Chemical & Engineering News’ “Talented 12,” a Bose Fellow at MIT, and a Young Investigator Award recipient by the International Society for Solid State Ionics. He is the principal investigator on an ARPA-E-funded project for geological hydrogen and co-founded Addis Energy to commercialize his group’s invention of a low-emission process for producing ammonia, known as geological ammonia, which offers significantly lower emissions and competitive costs compared with current industrial methods.

Outside the lab, Professor Abate is a co-founder and president of SciFro, a nonprofit that empowers African youth to tackle local challenges through scientific research and innovation. SciFro is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the American Physical Society.