Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Yet-Ming Chiang likes to fish. And it was through fishing, back in the early 1990s, that he started to notice that the New England waters were warming. “We used to catch lobster in Cape Cod,” said Chiang, in a call from his office with a Japanese style fish print of a striped bass he’d caught behind him. “Now we catch mahi-mahi. It’s really nuts.”

That glimpse of the real-world impact of climate change, with tropical and subtropical fish appearing in waters where they don’t belong, was pivotal for Chiang, who has used his research lab to cofound 10 startups. Eight of them are focused on energy and sustainability, including Form Energy, which has raised nearly $1 billion for its iron-air battery products, and Sublime Systems, which in April received $87 million from the Department of Energy to build a commercial plant to make low-carbon cement.

As the climate crisis has become increasingly urgent, Chiang’s research and his ability to spin out real-world applications from it offers hope, and landed him a spot on Forbes’ inaugural Sustainability Leaders list. He holds some 110 patents and has written more than 300 scientific articles in fields like battery technology and electrochemical production of industrial materials. Perhaps more important, he has used that research to launch companies to replace current carbon-based technologies with commercially scalable green and low-carbon alternatives. To date, his startups have raised more than $2.5 billion to build batteries, decarbonize cement and find more environmentally friendly ways to mine the critical minerals that are key to electrification. He is not CEO of any of these startups, but he often maintains a role, for example as chief science officer at both Form Energy and Sublime Systems.

“People worry about, can you do something by 2050, and what if you can’t. Let’s not spend time worrying about it. There’s plenty to do. I’m an optimist,” Chiang said. “It’s not as if we arrive........

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