When Wuwei Mo enrolled in a UC Berkeley Master of Engineering program in 2022, he arrived with a clear conviction that materials science held the key to protecting the environment. Today, as an engineer at Mitico — a carbon capture startup on a mission to make industrial CO2 removal affordable and green — that conviction has become his life’s work. The path from Berkeley classrooms to a carbon capture lab was not a straight line, but looking back, Wuwei can trace almost every step to his time at Cal.
Wuwei’s Time in the MEng
Wuwei chose the Fung Institute MEng program deliberately. In his final year of undergrad, he had been exposed to materials science and was struck by how novel materials could contribute to environmental protection. He had already decided to pursue a master’s degree abroad to go deeper into the field. What drew him to Berkeley was that the MEng program didn’t require him to choose between technical depth and professional breadth.
“The MEng program is tailored to my future career,” he says, “because the leadership courses teach students how to manage business and also personal relationships with colleagues.”
The program brings together technical specialization with leadership, business, marketing, and management skills. For Wuwei, that combination was the point: “With the combination of the leadership courses and the technical courses in the MEng and [my prior undergraduate degree in] chemical engineering, I can understand how to apply this knowledge in my future career.”
The most formative part of Wuwei’s Berkeley MEng experience was, without a doubt, the capstone project. His topic was carbon capture — the same field he works in today.
Working alongside mechanical engineers from different concentrations, Wuwei’s team explored what the carbon capture field was actually like — its current state, its challenges, and its opportunities. “The capstone provided me with insights into what the field is really like,” he said. “With that information, I basically knew what to do.” That knowledge led him to Mitico.
The project also taught him about working across disciplines. His teammates came from entirely different engineering backgrounds, and getting to a shared understanding required deliberate communication. “
We learned how to communicate in a smart way so that everyone can understand,” he says, “I’m also practicing the same in my workplace right now.”
Reflecting on his Berkeley years, Wuwei is candid about a realization that only came after graduation. During the program, the coursework was tough, he was searching for jobs, and the value of the leadership curriculum wasn’t apparent at the time.
“At the time, I didn’t even realize how the program was helping me,” he admits. “But now, from my experience in the workplace, I realize how these courses really helped me a lot. This reflection really helps me understand how the courses are well-designed.”
The shift in perspective centers on one core insight. “I used to think technical correctness — my chemical engineering and materials science knowledge — was the only important thing,” he says. “But leadership is also playing a very important role, because we are always working with people from different backgrounds. We have to make sure the message we’re conveying is understandable for everyone. Otherwise, people will never appreciate it, and we won’t be a good team.”
Bringing Carbon Capture to Reality
Mitico is developing what it describes as an accessible solution to mitigate the impact of industrial carbon emissions on people and the environment. The company’s technology collects and purifies CO2 at the source — post-combustion, before it enters the atmosphere — and is suited for flue gases from boilers, turbines, and industrial processes with CO2 concentrations between 3 percent and 18 percent.
At the core of the technology is a chemical sorbent made from basic, earth-abundant, and environmentally friendly materials, packed into conventional temperature-operated packed bed reactor systems. The emphasis is on making carbon capture affordable in both capital and operating costs, simple to integrate, and low in environmental impact with no hazardous byproducts.
For Wuwei, the connection to Mitico’s mission runs back to his first year of undergrad, when he became aware of how climate change was affecting nature and daily life. “That leap has been with me until now,” he says. “That’s one of the reasons I joined Mitico.”
Wuwei sees steady progress in carbon capture’s future, with breakthroughs still ahead. Government support, he says, is a critical part of the equation. For startups like Mitico, it translates directly into funding that enables R&D and gets projects off the ground. In the US, policy instruments like the 45Q incentive are a major driver of deployment. In Canada, a refundable CCUS Investment Tax Credit covers certain expenditures for eligible carbon capture projects — and Mitico has been working with Canadian administrations to use that funding, including deploying a carbon capture unit at a host site to test and improve its technology. “All of the world is working on it,” Wuwei says of the broader global push. “It just takes time to grow fast.”
His own goals are grounded in engineering. “I will try to expand my job scope — not just focusing on operating the carbon capture systems we already have, but helping to design more efficient and more universal carbon capture systems that will help with our R&D progress,” he says. “My job as an engineer is to bring carbon capture into reality.”
And his advice for current MEng students reflects what the capstone gave him. “They should put more focus on the capstone project, because it is a mini reflection of the future career world. Try your best to build more relationships with the industry partners — your advisors, your external stakeholders. It will really benefit people in finding their jobs.”