The agreement establishes Shell as a Founding Member of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), an extension of the collaborative projects Shell has been conducting with MIT in a variety of basic and applied research areas since 2002.

As part of its longer-term focus, the collaboration will address future and emerging technologies that demonstrate game-changing potential for the energy industry. The collaboration will focus on a broad array of existing and new oil and gas technologies, including next-generation applications in nanotechnology, biochemistry, electronics and computer modeling. Other focus areas will include research into water treatment improvements, greater fuel efficiency, new solar energy applications and enhanced catalytic technology for advanced fuel cells and smart grids. Shell and MITEI aim to develop novel sensors to detect physical and chemical properties under extreme and remote conditions.

A specific area of interest is the impact of extreme wave action on deepwater floating structures. Research aims to develop algorithms to predict hydrodynamic loads and the motions of floating installations with the goal of better understanding fracture characteristics of high-strength steel and reducing the weight of offshore installations. The collaboration will also pursue technological solutions on how to enhance the understanding of subsurface conditions.

Inspired by recent breakthroughs in pattern recognition and super-resolution data analysis, new algorithms will be developed to enhance the analysis of remote sensing data and facilitate fast extraction of geologic information from seismic data.

Research will seek more efficient simulation methods to model hydrocarbon reservoirs. Advanced signal processing techniques will be developed to improve the characterization of the subsurface through ambient noise measurements and currently unused, incoherent parts of seismic data.