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Leland Cheung

An MBA/MPA student at MIT Sloan and Harvard Kennedy School

About Leland

Leland Cheung is currently a Summer Founding Fellow at the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Project Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) helping fund America's transformational energy-related technology innovation. Leland is an MBA / MPA student at MIT Sloan and HKS living in Cambridge, MA.

Dollars Tick Upward for Clean Tech Investments

via peHUB:

Dollars Tick Upward for Clean Tech Investments

Greentech Sector                                    Total Q2 VC Funding             Number of Deals
Solar                                                                    $333.4M+                             17
Automotive and Transportation             $202.5M+                              8
Biofuels, Gasification, Cleaner Coal        $195M+                                12
Batteries, FCs, Energy Storage                 $181.5M                                10
EE, DR and Smart Grid                                 $101.4M+                              11
Lighting                                                             $47.3M                                    8
Green IT                                                            $34M                                       2
Wind and Geothermal                                 $22.2M+                                 4
Water                                                                  $16.8M+                                  4
Carbon Markets / Energy Monitoring  $16.68M                                  3
Green Buildings                                              $7.5M                                      3
Miscellaneous                                                 $14.45M                                  3
Q2 VC Totals                                                    $1,172.8M+                           85

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. 01 Jul 09 | Cleantech | Comments (0)

NAAAP Blog » Sign up is Open for Convention 2009!

via NAAAP Blog » Sign up is Open for NAAAP Convention 2009!.

Good News!

Registration for NAAAP Convention 2009 is now open. You can Register Here.

The details on the 23rd Annual NAAAP Convention:
Location: Denver, CO
Dates: August 13 – 16, 2009
Hotel: Hyatt Regency Hotel Downtown
Theme: “Leadership at New Heights: Cultivating Leaders for Today and Beyond”

The NAAAP Convention aligns to NAAAP’s vision of “We make leaders!” and further addresses the need for leaders in both the present and the future. For those who are currently in leadership roles, this is an incredible opportunity to refine and add to the tools they have and also mentor to share their experiences with others. For our future leaders, it is an opportunity to build his/her skills, learn from our leaders of today and build a network of support in the future.

Highlights:

Choose from 3 Leadership Tracks packed full of cutting edge workshops, insightful sessions, and panel discussions.
“Be the Star of Your Life: How to Get from Here to There in your Life and Career”
“From Geek-to-Chic: Adding value to your career in times of recession”
“Leadership and Philanthropy”
“Leadership Beyond Business”
“Influence through Emotions and Motivation”

Diversity Career Fair and Business Expo
Meet, greet and have on site interviews with potential employers from participating leading companies including: American Family Aramark Dell Macy’s Ratheon and many more!

2009 All-Star Special Guest Speakers include Yul Kwon, Scott Oki, Panney Wei, Vu H. Pham, Kerry Hada, David Lum, and more.

Also returning, the 2nd Annual NAAAP Leadership Institute where participants can take part in two panel discussions over a special one day workshop.

I’ve been told that we’ve already had a flury of registration and that hotel rooms are running out fast.

So Register Now!

. 01 Jul 09 | Thoughts | Comments (0)

ARPA-E funding in ACES

I don’t believe the final version of The American Clean Energy and Security Act is online yet, but I did get a chance to see what was passed on Friday.   As Mark Muro points out, there’s a decent allowance for ARPA-E in the ACES.  Quoted from the act:

ADVANCED ENERGY RESEARCH.-For vintage years 2012 through 2050, the
Administrator shall allocate 1.05 percent of the emission allowances
established under section 721(a) for the Advanced Research Project
Agency-Energy to be distributed in accordance with section 172 of the
American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.

Which supposedly works out to about $933M per year.  Compression of those numbers is expected in the Senate, but getting close to that would be great news for transformational energy-related R&D.

. 01 Jul 09 | ARPA-E | Comments (0)

The need for an ARPA-C via NYT

There was an article int he times over the weekend about how the grant system for cancer research is largely broken.  The problem is the federal agencies, over time, become increasingly geared towards the funding of low risk research.

The institute’s reviewers choose such projects because, with too little money to finance most proposals, they are timid about taking chances on ones that might not succeed. The problem, Dr. Young and others say, is that projects that could make a major difference in cancer prevention and treatment are all too often crowded out because they are too uncertain. In fact, it has become lore among cancer researchers that some game-changing discoveries involved projects deemed too unlikely to succeed and were therefore denied federal grants, forcing researchers to struggle mightily to continue.

…

“The problem in science is that the way you get ahead is by staying within narrow parameters and doing what other people are doing,” Dr. Brawley said. “No one wants to fund wild new ideas.”

via Grant System Leads Cancer Researchers to Play It Safe – Series – NYTimes.com.

It sounds like they need an ARPA program, and indeed, they did set aside money for “pioneer awards”.  Unfortunately, they didn’t allocate nearly enough money and it’s being run by the same type of risk averse people.

Granted, there’s an important role for incremental research that chips away at a problem over time.  But within a broader portfolio of investment an agency needs to allocate a significant percentage of their outlay towards high risk, high reward R&D.  An ARPA program also needs to bring in experts from the field who have real world business experience.

. 01 Jul 09 | ARPA-E, Thoughts | Comments (0)

MBA Students in Government, via Xconomy

A good friend of mine, Dr. Mahesh Konduru recently posted an article at Xconomy about the unprecendented number of MIT Sloan students working in federal agencies this summer.  It’s worth a read:

How can two such dissimilar worlds—the business schools that are the ultimate centers of capitalist education and the utilities and government offices that are the ultimate conservative workplaces—come together? Well, it turns out that we’re living in a new world in 2009.

via Are Government and Utilities the New Sexy Destinations for MBAs? | Xconomy.

As an industry switcher, working at the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) made a ton of sense – I’ve been exposed to both a broader and deeper array of energy-related technology than I could have had anywhere else.  Unfortunately I can’t talk about it and I’m making a fraction of what I would have in Boston … but the experience here has truly been invaluable.

. 30 Jun 09 | ARPA-E, MIT Sloan / HKS | Comments (0)

ORNL Review Vol. 42, No. 2, 2009

“The only technology that was absolutely essential to meeting the greenhouse gas goal was carbon capture and sequestration (CCS),” Greene says. “Similarly, advanced fossil technologies, like oil shale, coal to liquids, and environmentally safe oil drilling, were shown to be absolutely essential to meeting our oil dependence goal.”

via Both Directions at Once – ORNL Review Vol. 42, No. 2, 2009.

. 30 Jun 09 | Cleantech | Comments (0)

Anthony Woods for Congress


At a fundraiser supporting HKS alum Anthony Woods’ bid for congress. http://bit.ly/iu718

Posted by ShoZu

Tags:

. 30 Jun 09 | Politics | Comments (0)

Blogging to WordPress from FeedDemon

Configuring WordPress publishing from FeedDemon … Solved by Mitch:

When I “Blog This” same post the content appears as shown in your “Actual text” example above. In this case, it doesn’t matter which $ITEM_DESCRIPTION$ variable I use, the result is correct in both IE and FF. There must be a difference in the wp.com hosted site.

HOLD THE PHONE.. HERE IT IS!!!

https://YOURUSERNAME.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?text=$ITEM_DESCRIPTION$&popupurl=$ITEM_LINK$&popuptitle=$ITEM_TITLE$

The hosted site uses SSL and a slightly different url (post-new.php v. post.php). I remembered I had a wp.com site so I tried it and the url above works for me from FD to FF. Let me know what you get.

UPDATE: You may want to use the $ITEM_DESCRIPTION_PLAIN$ variable so you don’t get mangled angle brackets. YMMV.

via Configure blog publishing tools.

. 29 Jun 09 | Technology | Comments (0)

Susie’s Hot Sauce

Congratulations to Rosie Mcmaster of Susie’s Hot Sauce for winning the Order of the British Empire.  A group of my MIT Sloan classmates flew to Antigua for a week this past semester to consult to Rosie on her international expansion efforts.

Managing Director of Susie’s Hot Sauce, Rosemarie “Rosie” McMaster has been recognised by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2009 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

McMaster received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her contributions in public service, and was the only Antiguan and Barbudan to have obtained the award this year.

via Daily Observer Online.

Marlon Roberts, who organized the Study Tour, wrote an eloquent article in Fifteen recapping our experiences there.

. 29 Jun 09 | MIT Sloan / HKS | Comments (0)

Obama Puts U.S. Energy Innovation on Steroids

From CleanBeta – a blog I absolutely love:

Obama Puts U.S. Energy Innovation on Steroids

June 26, 2009 – 19:51

Federal funding for the entire spectrum of energy innovation will more than double over the next year as the combined impact of the FY 2010 budget request for the U.S. Department of Energy and the portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) drives funding from $3.6 billion in FY 2009 to $7.2 billion in FY 2010.

The stimulus funds are the principal force driving the spending increase. In fact, the DOE ERD&D investments in FY 2010 would decrease very slightly when compared to FY 2009, according to a new analysis by Harvard University’s Belfer Center on Energy Innovation. The slight decrease is largely due to the large amounts of stimulus funds supporting DOE deployment programs. The Harvard report concludes that these “funding amounts, coupled with the broad range of institutional innovations the administration is putting in place and movement toward putting a price on carbon emissions, will help accelerate innovation for a broad range of energy technologies.”

…

One of the most highly anticipated program that will be enabled with the stimulus funds is the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The new agency will support high-risk projects in transformational technologies and recruit companies that have not traditionally worked with the government in an effort to strengthen the integration of basic and applied research in priority areas. Increasing the funding for different types of energy storage research, providing some support for exploring opportunities in coal-to-liquids with carbon capture and storage (CCS) and coal-and-biomass-to-liquids with CCS, and reducing funding for fission RD&D are other actions that Congress could take in the short-term.

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. 29 Jun 09 | ARPA-E | Comment (1)
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