How MIT's new climate center stands out

Zoom in: The new school, established with a $25 million endowment, will employ professors and postgraduate students to produce policy-relevant research on shorter timescales, while also pursuing more typical, long-term peer-reviewed work.

• For example, Christopher Knittel, who will direct the new MIT Climate Policy Center, and a graduate student were recently involved in completing an analysis of the Big WIRES Act put forward by Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) and Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.).

Between the lines: Knittel told Axios that too often, policy-applicable work lacks incentives for academics.

• "Their job and their promotions are based on pushing the academic frontier of their discipline, and not necessarily translating that research into policy relevance," he said.
• In this new entity, researchers will be evaluated on their policy engagement, which aims to be bipartisan, rather than strictly more typical academic achievements, Knittel said.
• Policy metrics can be the number of briefs written and bills informed, along with the contact hours spent with lawmakers, Knittel said.