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McGill Energy Leaders Program
Step Into Complexity. Drive Systemic Change Across the Energy Landscape.
The McGill Energy Leaders Program (MEL) is an intensive, experiential accelerator for the McGill Energy Centre’s graduate students, researchers, and emerging change-makers ready to leverage the university ecosystem to advance the energy transition.
How to Apply
- Deadline: Submit your completed application by September 18, 2026, 11:55 pm.
- Questions on the application form:
Preview application form - Process: Complete the online application form to share your academic background, current research or ecosystem engagement, and your interdisciplinary perspective. Selected candidates will be invited for a 30-minute structured interview to evaluate alignment, coachability, and capacity to navigate ambiguity.
The Transition is Systemic. Our Approach Must Be Too.
Energy transition is no longer just a challenge of developing better technology or formulating cleaner fuels; it is a deeply complex puzzle that spans scientific, technical, social, economic, and environmental dimensions.
Breakthrough research and knowledge frequently stall inside academic silos because it lacks the regulatory pathways, viable financial models, public trust, or stakeholder alignment needed for real-world deployment.
Groundbreaking research is only the first step. We don’t just need scientists working on isolated laboratory breakthroughs (vital as they are!); we need collaborative changemakers from all disciplines to connect those discoveries with the social, regulatory, and industrial networks that make transition possible.
Your Sandbox: Unlocking McGill Energy’s full potential
MEL is a real-world leadership laboratory. For this cohort, your "sandbox" is centered on this core strategic challenge:
"How might student leaders unlock the full potential of McGill Energy’s talent, research, networks, assets, and activities to catalyze greater societal impact around energy transition challenges?"
Rather than studying hypothetical cases, you will work in interdisciplinary teams to identify the systemic barriers and enabling conditions surrounding high-potential energy transition pathways.
By looking at this challenge through the lens of your own research projects and academic interests, you will explore how your work connects with, and can be amplified by, the McGill and Montreal communities to increase our collective impact on the energy landscape. Together, you will design and test new organizational capacities, practices, and frameworks needed to unlock McGill energy’s long-term potential and expand its societal impact.
What You Will Gain
By joining the MEL, you will take the role of a Fellow, acting as a co-creator of institutional and social innovation. Throughout the program, you will:
- Develop Your Systems Leadership: Learn to map complex institutional landscapes, identify high-leverage intervention points, and design practical approaches that strengthen McGill energy’s long-term impact.
- Connect Your Research to Systemic Impact: Examine your academic work or disciplinary interests through a 360-degree lens to identify the barriers preventing promising ideas from reaching their full potential.
- Receive 1:1 Executive Coaching: Take part in personalized coaching cycles designed to help you navigate ambiguity, connect the team’s work with your own goals, and strengthen your leadership practice.
- Activate McGill energy’s Strategic Network: Gain direct, curated access to the Centre’s network of executives, decision-makers, policymakers, academic pioneers and ecosystem actors. You will engage with these high-level actors not just to network, but to help shape new forms of energy collaboration.
- Pitch at Demo Day: Share your team’s proposed intervention with university leaders, industry partners, public officials, administrators, and potential funders or sponsors who can help institutionalize, support, or scale the work.
Who Should Apply?
We are building a highly collaborative, interdisciplinary cohort of approximately 10–12 McGill Energy graduate trainees and post-doctoral researchers.
- Target Profiles: McGill Master’s, PhD, Post-Doc, and advanced undergraduate students working under the supervision of a McGill energy member.
To reflect the interdisciplinary membership of the McGill Energy Centre across all faculties and units, we actively recruit a rich diversity of profiles. While the Centre is rooted in engineering and science, we are also looking for candidates from all academic fields, including but not limited to Law, Public Policy, Management, Economics, the Social Sciences, the Humanities, Health, Environmental Sciences, Architecture, and Urban Planning.
We warmly welcome applicants from any discipline who are eager to bring their unique perspective to the energy transition. This full coverage of perspectives is essential to ensure a true 360-degree systems view of the socio-technical, ecological, and human dimensions of the energy transition.
- The Mindset: We are looking for doers, collaborators, and translators. If you are comfortable navigating ambiguity, open to learning, and committed to helping sustainable energy innovation make a tangible difference in society, this program is for you.
FAQ's:
How is the MEL different from a standard energy class or student club?
The MEL is hands-on rather than theoretical. You won't find a syllabus, exams, or pre-packaged "right answers" here. Instead of studying hypothetical cases, you’ll work directly within the McGill Energy Centre’s active ecosystem, navigating real technical limits, regulatory barriers, institutional dynamics, funding priorities, and stakeholder alignment. In this program, you act as a "Fellow" rather than a traditional student. This means you and your team will work as co-creators, taking ownership of shared challenges and driving real-world capacity-building projects forward between our scheduled workshops.
What is the time commitment?
Expect to invest an average of 4 to 6 hours per week overall. Aside from our scheduled workshops, the program is designed with high flexibility, allowing you and your team to fit project collaboration and stakeholder outreach around your own academic and personal schedules. To sustain cohort momentum and peer trust, Fellows must attend at least 80% of all mandatory sessions.
What are the mandatory dates?
The program is structured to respect your academic calendar, focusing on intensive full-day sessions in the Fall to build systems frameworks and transitioning to shorter, highly targeted strategic meetups in the Winter to focus on project execution.
- Phase 1 (Fall - Full-Day Immersive Workshops): Bootcamp (Oct. 8 & Oct. 9), Workshop 1 (Oct. 30), Workshop 2 (Nov. 20), Workshop 3 (Dec. 11)
- Phase 2 (Winter - 3h Strategic Meetups): Jan. 29, Feb. 26, Apr. 2, Pitch Day training – April 30
- Demo Day: April 9, 2027 (May 2027)
Will my project continue after Demo Day?
Demo Day is a launchpad, not a finish line. Ongoing transitional support is fully integrated into the McGill Energy Leaders Program and is provided to all Fellows at absolutely no cost, ensuring complete compliance with McGill's equity and accessibility principles. Funded by a dedicated program budget for alumni development, the MEL Project Office assists teams in evaluating their next steps, identifying potential funding pathways, and coordinating strategic handoffs to faculty sponsors or McGill energy leadership.
Beyond the formal program timeline, graduation marks your transition into a lifelong, self-driven community of practice. Fellows are invited to stay connected as permanent Friends of the Program, joining a passionate network of energy transition advocates. This status grants you ongoing, privileged access to our exclusive stakeholder networks, guest events, and collaborative ecosystem to help them continue driving systemic energy transition solutions.
Because these systemic solutions can take many shapes, several post-program outcomes are possible and equally valid. A project might evolve into a startup, integrate directly into McGill energy’s operations, transition to a future cohort for further development, or reach an intentional and well-documented conclusion. Whatever the trajectory, you will leave the program with stronger systems literacy, an expanded professional network, and practical experience navigating complex change.
Is this program credited or paid?
No. MEL is neither a paid position nor a credit-bearing academic course. However, it offers personalized executive coaching, access to a high-level professional network, and the opportunity to build a concrete portfolio of real-world systems work that can strengthen your future academic and professional trajectory.
Program Partners
The McGill Energy Leaders Program partners:
McGill energy: The University’s hub for interdisciplinary research, innovation, partnerships, knowledge mobilization, and outreach on sustainable energy. McGill energy brings together a diverse community of researchers from across faculties to offer a 360-degree perspective on today's energy challenges.
Rhizome Strategies: An innovation agency specializing in systems transformation, providing strategic expertise, ecosystem mobilization, and executive coaching necessary to guide changemakers through complex societal challenges.
TD Bank: Our foundational partner helps nurture progress and support change for a more inclusive and sustainable tomorrow.
Questions?
If you have any inquiries regarding the program, eligibility, or the application process, please reach out to us at mec-cem [at] mcgill.ca.
