Meet the Ethiopian entrepreneur who is reinventing ammonia production

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 take on a young student with no research experience who’d only been in the US for a year, but she offered him a spot in her lab.

Abate spent the summer working on materials for use in solid oxide fuel cells. He returned for the following summer, then held a string of positions in energy-materials research, including at IBM and Los Alamos National Lab, before completing his graduate degree at Stanford and postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley.

He joined the MIT faculty in 2023 and set out to build a research group of his own. Today, there are two major focuses of his lab. One is sodium-ion batteries, which are a popular alternative to the lithium-based cells used in EVs and grid storage installations. Sodium-ion batteries don’t require the kinds of critical minerals lithium-ion batteries do, which can be both expensive and tied up by geopolitics.  

One major stumbling block for sodium-ion batteries is their energy density. It’s possible to improve energy density by operating at higher voltages, but some of the materials used tend to degrade quickly at high voltages. That limits the total energy density of the battery, so it’s a problem for applications like electric vehicles, where a low energy density would restrict range.

Abate’s team is developing materials that could extend the lifetime of sodium-ion batteries while avoiding the need for nickel, which is considered a critical mineral in the US. The team is examining additives and testing materials-engineering techniques to help the batteries compete with lithium-ion cells.

Irons in the fire

Another vein of Abate’s work is in some ways a departure from his history in batteries and fuel cells. In January, his team published research describing a process to make ammonia underground, using naturally-occurring heat and pressure to drive the necessary chemical reactions.  

Today, making ammonia generates between 1% and 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It’s primarily used to fertilize crops, but it’s also being considered as a fuel for sectors like long-distance shipping.

Abate cofounded a company called Addis Energy to commercialize the research, alongside MIT serial entrepreneur Yet-Ming Chiang and a pair of oil industry experts. (Addis means “new” in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia.) For an upcoming pilot, the company aims to build an underground reactor that can produce ammonia. 

When he’s not tied up in research or the new startup, Abate runs programs for African students. In 2017, he cofounded an organization called Scifro, which runs summer school programs in Ethiopia and plans to expand to other countries, including Rwanda. The programs focus on providing mentorship and educating students about energy and medical devices, which is the specialty of his cofounder. 

While Abate holds a position at one of the world’s most prestigious universities and serves as chief science officer of a buzzy startup, he’s quick to give credit to those around him. “It takes a village to build something, and it’s not just me,” he says.

Abate often thinks about his friends, family, and former neighbors in Ethiopia as he works on new energy solutions. “Of course, science is beautiful, and we want to make an impact,” he says. “Being good at what you do is important, but ultimately, it’s about people.”