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Iwnetim Abate is one of MIT Technology Review’s 2025 Innovators Under 35. Meet the rest of this year’s honorees . “I’m the only one who wears glasses and has eye problems in the family,” Iwnetim Abate says with a smile as sun streams in through the windows of his MIT office. “I think it’s because of the candles.” In the small town in Ethiopia where he grew up, Abate’s family had electricity, but it was unreliable. So, for several days each week when they were without power, Abate would finish his homework by candlelight. Today, Abate, 32, is an assistant professor at MIT in the department of materials science and engineering. Part of his research focuses on sodium-ion batteries, which could be cheaper than the lithium-based ones that typically power electric vehicles and grid installations. He’s also pursuing a new research path, examining how to harness the heat and pressure under the Earth’s surface to make ammonia, a chemical used in fertilizer and as a green fuel. Growing up without the ubiquitous access to electricity that many people take for granted shaped the way Abate thinks about energy issues, he says. He recalls rushing to dry out his school uniform over a fire before he left in the morning. One of his chores was preparing cow dung to burn as fuel—the key is strategically placing holes to ensure proper drying, he says. Abate’s desire to devote his attention to energy crystallized in a high school chemistry class on fuel cells. “It was like magic,” he says, to learn it’s possible to basically convert water into energy. “Sometimes science is magic, right?” Abate scored the highest of any student in Ethiopia on the national exam the year he took it, and he knew he wanted to go to the US to further his education. But actually getting there proved to be a challenge. Abate applied to US colleges for three years before he was granted admission to Concordia College Moorhead, a small liberal arts college, with a partial scholarship. To raise the remaining money, he reached out to various companies and wealthy people across Ethiopia. He received countless rejections but didn’t let that phase him. He laughs recalling how guards would chase him off when he dropped by prospects’ homes in person. Eventually, a family friend agreed to help. When Abate finally made it to the Minnesota college, he walked into a room in his dorm building and the lights turned on automatically. “I both felt happy to have all this privilege and I felt guilty at the same time,” he says. Lab notes His college wasn’t a research institute, so Abate quickly set out to get into a laboratory. He reached out to Sossina Haile , then at the California Institute of Technology, to ask about a summer research position. Haile, now at Northwestern University, recalls thinking that Abate was particularly eager. As a visible Ethiopian scientist, she gets a lot of email requests, but his stood out. “No obstacle was going to stand in his way,” she says. It was risky to t
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Original reporting: MIT Technology Review