Aurelia Butler

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    Study helps pinpoint areas where microplastics will accumulate

    The accumulation of microplastics in the environment, and within our bodies, is an increasingly worrisome issue. But predicting where these ubiquitous particles will accumulate, and therefore where remediation efforts should be focused, has been difficult because of the many factors that contribute to their dispersal and deposition.New research from MIT shows that one key factor in determining where microparticles are likely to build up has to do with the presence of biofilms. These thin, sticky biopolymer layers are shed by microorganisms and can accumulate on surfaces, including along sandy riverbeds or seashores. The study found that, all other conditions being equal, microparticles are less likely to accumulate in sediment infused with biofilms, because if they land there, they are more likely to be resuspended by flowing water and carried away.The open-access findings appear in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, in a paper by MIT postdoc Hyoungchul Park and professor of civil and environmental engineering Heidi Nepf. “Microplastics are definitely in the news a lot,” Nepf says, “and we don’t fully understand where the hotspots of accumulation are likely to be. This work gives a little bit of guidance” on some of the factors that can cause these particles, and small particles in general, to accumulate in certain locations.Most experiments looking at the ways microparticles are transported and deposited have been conducted over bare sand, Park says. “But in nature, there are a lot of microorganisms, such as bacteria, fungi, and algae, and when they adhere to the stream bed they generate some sticky things.” These substances are known as extracellular polymeric substances, or EPS, and they “can significantly affect the channel bed characteristics,” he says. The new research focused on determining exactly how these substances affected the transport of microparticles, including microplastics.The research involved a flow tank with a bottom lined with fine sand, and sometimes with vertical plastic tubes simulating the presence of mangrove roots. In some experiments the bed consisted of pure sand, and in others the sand was mixed with a biological material to simulate the natural biofilms found in many riverbed and seashore environments.Water mixed with tiny plastic particles was pumped through the tank for three hours, and then the bed surface was photographed under ultraviolet light that caused the plastic particles to fluoresce, allowing a quantitative measurement of their concentration.The results revealed two different phenomena that affected how much of the plastic accumulated on the different surfaces. Immediately around the rods that stood in for above-ground roots, turbulence prevented particle deposition. In addition, as the amount of simulated biofilms in the sediment bed increased, the accumulation of particles also decreased.Nepf and Park concluded that the biofilms filled up the spaces between the sand grains, leaving less room for the microparticles to fit in. The particles were more exposed because they penetrated less deeply in between the sand grains, and as a result they were much more easily resuspended and carried away by the flowing water.“These biological films fill the pore spaces between the sediment grains,” Park explains, “and that makes the deposited particles — the particles that land on the bed — more exposed to the forces generated by the flow, which makes it easier for them to be resuspended. What we found was that in a channel with the same flow conditions and the same vegetation and the same sand bed, if one is without EPS and one is with EPS, then the one without EPS has a much higher deposition rate than the one with EPS.”Nepf adds: “The biofilm is blocking the plastics from accumulating in the bed because they can’t go deep into the bed. They just stay right on the surface, and then they get picked up and moved elsewhere. So, if I spilled a large amount of microplastic in two rivers, and one had a sandy or gravel bottom, and one was muddier with more biofilm, I would expect more of the microplastics to be retained in the sandy or gravelly river.”All of this is complicated by other factors, such as the turbulence of the water or the roughness of the bottom surface, she says. But it provides a “nice lens” to provide some suggestions for people who are trying to study the impacts of microplastics in the field. “They’re trying to determine what kinds of habitats these plastics are in, and this gives a framework for how you might categorize those habitats,” she says. “It gives guidance to where you should go to find more plastics versus less.”As an example, Park suggests, in mangrove ecosystems, microplastics may preferentially accumulate in the outer edges, which tend to be sandy, while the interior zones have sediment with more biofilm. Thus, this work suggests “the sandy outer regions may be potential hotspots for microplastic accumulation,” he says, and can make this a priority zone for monitoring and protection.“This is a highly relevant finding,” says Isabella Schalko, a research scientist at ETH Zurich, who was not associated with this research. “It suggests that restoration measures such as re-vegetation or promoting biofilm growth could help mitigate microplastic accumulation in aquatic systems. It highlights the powerful role of biological and physical features in shaping particle transport processes.”The work was supported by Shell International Exploration and Production through the MIT Energy Initiative. More

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    AI stirs up the recipe for concrete in MIT study

    For weeks, the whiteboard in the lab was crowded with scribbles, diagrams, and chemical formulas. A research team across the Olivetti Group and the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) was working intensely on a key problem: How can we reduce the amount of cement in concrete to save on costs and emissions? The question was certainly not new; materials like fly ash, a byproduct of coal production, and slag, a byproduct of steelmaking, have long been used to replace some of the cement in concrete mixes. However, the demand for these products is outpacing supply as industry looks to reduce its climate impacts by expanding their use, making the search for alternatives urgent. The challenge that the team discovered wasn’t a lack of candidates; the problem was that there were too many to sort through.On May 17, the team, led by postdoc Soroush Mahjoubi, published an open-access paper in Nature’s Communications Materials outlining their solution. “We realized that AI was the key to moving forward,” notes Mahjoubi. “There is so much data out there on potential materials — hundreds of thousands of pages of scientific literature. Sorting through them would have taken many lifetimes of work, by which time more materials would have been discovered!”With large language models, like the chatbots many of us use daily, the team built a machine-learning framework that evaluates and sorts candidate materials based on their physical and chemical properties. “First, there is hydraulic reactivity. The reason that concrete is strong is that cement — the ‘glue’ that holds it together — hardens when exposed to water. So, if we replace this glue, we need to make sure the substitute reacts similarly,” explains Mahjoubi. “Second, there is pozzolanicity. This is when a material reacts with calcium hydroxide, a byproduct created when cement meets water, to make the concrete harder and stronger over time.  We need to balance the hydraulic and pozzolanic materials in the mix so the concrete performs at its best.”Analyzing scientific literature and over 1 million rock samples, the team used the framework to sort candidate materials into 19 types, ranging from biomass to mining byproducts to demolished construction materials. Mahjoubi and his team found that suitable materials were available globally — and, more impressively, many could be incorporated into concrete mixes just by grinding them. This means it’s possible to extract emissions and cost savings without much additional processing. “Some of the most interesting materials that could replace a portion of cement are ceramics,” notes Mahjoubi. “Old tiles, bricks, pottery — all these materials may have high reactivity. That’s something we’ve observed in ancient Roman concrete, where ceramics were added to help waterproof structures. I’ve had many interesting conversations on this with Professor Admir Masic, who leads a lot of the ancient concrete studies here at MIT.”The potential of everyday materials like ceramics and industrial materials like mine tailings is an example of how materials like concrete can help enable a circular economy. By identifying and repurposing materials that would otherwise end up in landfills, researchers and industry can help to give these materials a second life as part of our buildings and infrastructure.Looking ahead, the research team is planning to upgrade the framework to be capable of assessing even more materials, while experimentally validating some of the best candidates. “AI tools have gotten this research far in a short time, and we are excited to see how the latest developments in large language models enable the next steps,” says Professor Elsa Olivetti, senior author on the work and member of the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering. She serves as an MIT Climate Project mission director, a CSHub principal investigator, and the leader of the Olivetti Group.“Concrete is the backbone of the built environment,” says Randolph Kirchain, co-author and CSHub director. “By applying data science and AI tools to material design, we hope to support industry efforts to build more sustainably, without compromising on strength, safety, or durability.In addition to Mahjoubi, Olivetti, and Kirchain, co-authors on the work include MIT postdoc Vineeth Venugopal, Ipek Bensu Manav SM ’21, PhD ’24; and CSHub Deputy Director Hessam AzariJafari. More

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    Mary Robinson urges MIT School of Architecture and Planning graduates to “find a way to lead”

    “Class of 2025, are you ready?”This was the question Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, posed to the graduating class at the school’s Advanced Degree Ceremony at Kresge Auditorium on May 29. The response was enthusiastic applause and cheers from the 224 graduates from the departments of Architecture and Urban Studies and Planning, the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, and the Center for Real Estate.Following his welcome to an audience filled with family and friends of the graduates, Sarkis introduced the day’s guest speaker, whom he cited as the “perfect fit for this class.” Recognizing the “international rainbow of graduates,” Sarkis welcomed Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and head of the Mary Robinson Foundation — Climate Justice to the podium. Robinson, a lawyer by training, has had a wide-ranging career that began with elected positions in Ireland followed by leadership roles in global causes for justice, human rights, and climate change.Robinson laced her remarks with personal anecdotes from her career, from with earning a master’s in law at nearby Harvard University in 1968 — a year of political unrest in the United States — to founding The Elders in 2007 with world leaders: former South African President Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid and human rights activist Desmond Tutu, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.She described an “early lesson” in recounting her efforts to reform the laws of contraception in Ireland at the beginning of her career in the Irish legislature. Previously, women were not prescribed birth control unless they were married and had irregular menstrual cycles certified by their physicians. Robinson received thousands of letters of condemnation and threats that she would destroy the country of Ireland if she would allow contraception to be more broadly available. The legislation introduced was successful despite the “hate mail” she received, which was so abhorrent that her fiancé at the time, now her husband, burned it. That experience taught her to stand firm to her values.“If you really believe in something, you must be prepared to pay a price,” she told the graduates.In closing, Robinson urged the class to put their “skills and talent to work to address the climate crisis,” a problem she said she came late to in her career.“You have had the privilege of being here at the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT,” said Robinson. “When you leave here, find ways to lead.” More

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    Study: Climate change may make it harder to reduce smog in some regions

    Global warming will likely hinder our future ability to control ground-level ozone, a harmful air pollutant that is a primary component of smog, according to a new MIT study.The results could help scientists and policymakers develop more effective strategies for improving both air quality and human health. Ground-level ozone causes a host of detrimental health impacts, from asthma to heart disease, and contributes to thousands of premature deaths each year.The researchers’ modeling approach reveals that, as the Earth warms due to climate change, ground-level ozone will become less sensitive to reductions in nitrogen oxide emissions in eastern North America and Western Europe. In other words, it will take greater nitrogen oxide emission reductions to get the same air quality benefits.However, the study also shows that the opposite would be true in northeast Asia, where cutting emissions would have a greater impact on reducing ground-level ozone in the future. The researchers combined a climate model that simulates meteorological factors, such as temperature and wind speeds, with a chemical transport model that estimates the movement and composition of chemicals in the atmosphere.By generating a range of possible future outcomes, the researchers’ ensemble approach better captures inherent climate variability, allowing them to paint a fuller picture than many previous studies.“Future air quality planning should consider how climate change affects the chemistry of air pollution. We may need steeper cuts in nitrogen oxide emissions to achieve the same air quality goals,” says Emmie Le Roy, a graduate student in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) and lead author of a paper on this study.Her co-authors include Anthony Y.H. Wong, a postdoc in the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy; Sebastian D. Eastham, principal research scientist in the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy; Arlene Fiore, the Peter H. Stone and Paola Malanotte Stone Professor of EAPS; and senior author Noelle Selin, a professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) and EAPS. The research appears today in Environmental Science and Technology.Controlling ozoneGround-level ozone differs from the stratospheric ozone layer that protects the Earth from harmful UV radiation. It is a respiratory irritant that is harmful to the health of humans, animals, and plants.Controlling ground-level ozone is particularly challenging because it is a secondary pollutant, formed in the atmosphere by complex reactions involving nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds in the presence of sunlight.“That is why you tend to have higher ozone days when it is warm and sunny,” Le Roy explains.Regulators typically try to reduce ground-level ozone by cutting nitrogen oxide emissions from industrial processes. But it is difficult to predict the effects of those policies because ground-level ozone interacts with nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds in nonlinear ways.Depending on the chemical environment, reducing nitrogen oxide emissions could cause ground-level ozone to increase instead.“Past research has focused on the role of emissions in forming ozone, but the influence of meteorology is a really important part of Emmie’s work,” Selin says.To conduct their study, the researchers combined a global atmospheric chemistry model with a climate model that simulate future meteorology.They used the climate model to generate meteorological inputs for each future year in their study, simulating factors such as likely temperature and wind speeds, in a way that captures the inherent variability of a region’s climate.Then they fed those inputs to the atmospheric chemistry model, which calculates how the chemical composition of the atmosphere would change because of meteorology and emissions.The researchers focused on Eastern North America, Western Europe, and Northeast China, since those regions have historically high levels of the precursor chemicals that form ozone and well-established monitoring networks to provide data.They chose to model two future scenarios, one with high warming and one with low warming, over a 16-year period between 2080 and 2095. They compared them to a historical scenario capturing 2000 to 2015 to see the effects of a 10 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions.Capturing climate variability“The biggest challenge is that the climate naturally varies from year to year. So, if you want to isolate the effects of climate change, you need to simulate enough years to see past that natural variability,” Le Roy says.They could overcome that challenge due to recent advances in atmospheric chemistry modeling and by taking advantage of parallel computing to simulate multiple years at the same time. They simulated five 16-year realizations, resulting in 80 model years for each scenario.The researchers found that eastern North America and Western Europe are especially sensitive to increases in nitrogen oxide emissions from the soil, which are natural emissions driven by increases in temperature.Due to that sensitivity, as the Earth warms and more nitrogen oxide from soil enters the atmosphere, reducing nitrogen oxide emissions from human activities will have less of an impact on ground-level ozone.“This shows how important it is to improve our representation of the biosphere in these models to better understand how climate change may impact air quality,” Le Roy says.On the other hand, since industrial processes in northeast Asia cause more ozone per unit of nitrogen oxide emitted, cutting emissions there would cause greater reductions in ground-level ozone in future warming scenarios.“But I wouldn’t say that is a good thing because it means that, overall, there are higher levels of ozone,” Le Roy adds.Running detailed meteorology simulations, rather than relying on annual average weather data, gave the researchers a more complete picture of the potential effects on human health.“Average climate isn’t the only thing that matters. One high ozone day, which might be a statistical anomaly, could mean we don’t meet our air quality target and have negative human health impacts that we should care about,” Le Roy says.In the future, the researchers want to continue exploring the intersection of meteorology and air quality. They also want to expand their modeling approach to consider other climate change factors with high variability, like wildfires or biomass burning.“We’ve shown that it is important for air quality scientists to consider the full range of climate variability, even if it is hard to do in your models, because it really does affect the answer that you get,” says Selin.This work is funded, in part, by the MIT Praecis Presidential Fellowship, the J.H. and E.V. Wade Fellowship, and the MIT Martin Family Society of Fellows for Sustainability. More

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    Imaging technique removes the effect of water in underwater scenes

    The ocean is teeming with life. But unless you get up close, much of the marine world can easily remain unseen. That’s because water itself can act as an effective cloak: Light that shines through the ocean can bend, scatter, and quickly fade as it travels through the dense medium of water and reflects off the persistent haze of ocean particles. This makes it extremely challenging to capture the true color of objects in the ocean without imaging them at close range.Now a team from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has developed an image-analysis tool that cuts through the ocean’s optical effects and generates images of underwater environments that look as if the water had been drained away, revealing an ocean scene’s true colors. The team paired the color-correcting tool with a computational model that converts images of a scene into a three-dimensional underwater “world,” that can then be explored virtually.The researchers have dubbed the new tool “SeaSplat,” in reference to both its underwater application and a method known as 3D gaussian splatting (3DGS), which takes images of a scene and stitches them together to generate a complete, three-dimensional representation that can be viewed in detail, from any perspective.“With SeaSplat, it can model explicitly what the water is doing, and as a result it can in some ways remove the water, and produces better 3D models of an underwater scene,” says MIT graduate student Daniel Yang.The researchers applied SeaSplat to images of the sea floor taken by divers and underwater vehicles, in various locations including the U.S. Virgin Islands. The method generated 3D “worlds” from the images that were truer and more vivid and varied in color, compared to previous methods.The team says SeaSplat could help marine biologists monitor the health of certain ocean communities. For instance, as an underwater robot explores and takes pictures of a coral reef, SeaSplat would simultaneously process the images and render a true-color, 3D representation, that scientists could then virtually “fly” through, at their own pace and path, to inspect the underwater scene, for instance for signs of coral bleaching.“Bleaching looks white from close up, but could appear blue and hazy from far away, and you might not be able to detect it,” says Yogesh Girdhar, an associate scientist at WHOI. “Coral bleaching, and different coral species, could be easier to detect with SeaSplat imagery, to get the true colors in the ocean.”Girdhar and Yang will present a paper detailing SeaSplat at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). Their study co-author is John Leonard, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.Aquatic opticsIn the ocean, the color and clarity of objects is distorted by the effects of light traveling through water. In recent years, researchers have developed color-correcting tools that aim to reproduce the true colors in the ocean. These efforts involved adapting tools that were developed originally for environments out of water, for instance to reveal the true color of features in foggy conditions. One recent work accurately reproduces true colors in the ocean, with an algorithm named “Sea-Thru,” though this method requires a huge amount of computational power, which makes its use in producing 3D scene models challenging.In parallel, others have made advances in 3D gaussian splatting, with tools that seamlessly stitch images of a scene together, and intelligently fill in any gaps to create a whole, 3D version of the scene. These 3D worlds enable “novel view synthesis,” meaning that someone can view the generated 3D scene, not just from the perspective of the original images, but from any angle and distance.But 3DGS has only successfully been applied to environments out of water. Efforts to adapt 3D reconstruction to underwater imagery have been hampered, mainly by two optical underwater effects: backscatter and attenuation. Backscatter occurs when light reflects off of tiny particles in the ocean, creating a veil-like haze. Attenuation is the phenomenon by which light of certain wavelengths attenuates, or fades with distance. In the ocean, for instance, red objects appear to fade more than blue objects when viewed from farther away.Out of water, the color of objects appears more or less the same regardless of the angle or distance from which they are viewed. In water, however, color can quickly change and fade depending on one’s perspective. When 3DGS methods attempt to stitch underwater images into a cohesive 3D whole, they are unable to resolve objects due to aquatic backscatter and attenuation effects that distort the color of objects at different angles.“One dream of underwater robotic vision that we have is: Imagine if you could remove all the water in the ocean. What would you see?” Leonard says.A model swimIn their new work, Yang and his colleagues developed a color-correcting algorithm that accounts for the optical effects of backscatter and attenuation. The algorithm determines the degree to which every pixel in an image must have been distorted by backscatter and attenuation effects, and then essentially takes away those aquatic effects, and computes what the pixel’s true color must be.Yang then worked the color-correcting algorithm into a 3D gaussian splatting model to create SeaSplat, which can quickly analyze underwater images of a scene and generate a true-color, 3D virtual version of the same scene that can be explored in detail from any angle and distance.The team applied SeaSplat to multiple underwater scenes, including images taken in the Red Sea, in the Carribean off the coast of Curaçao, and the Pacific Ocean, near Panama. These images, which the team took from a pre-existing dataset, represent a range of ocean locations and water conditions. They also tested SeaSplat on images taken by a remote-controlled underwater robot in the U.S. Virgin Islands.From the images of each ocean scene, SeaSplat generated a true-color 3D world that the researchers were able to virtually explore, for instance zooming in and out of a scene and viewing certain features from different perspectives. Even when viewing from different angles and distances, they found objects in every scene retained their true color, rather than fading as they would if viewed through the actual ocean.“Once it generates a 3D model, a scientist can just ‘swim’ through the model as though they are scuba-diving, and look at things in high detail, with real color,” Yang says.For now, the method requires hefty computing resources in the form of a desktop computer that would be too bulky to carry aboard an underwater robot. Still, SeaSplat could work for tethered operations, where a vehicle, tied to a ship, can explore and take images that can be sent up to a ship’s computer.“This is the first approach that can very quickly build high-quality 3D models with accurate colors, underwater, and it can create them and render them fast,” Girdhar says. “That will help to quantify biodiversity, and assess the health of coral reef and other marine communities.”This work was supported, in part, by the Investment in Science Fund at WHOI, and by the U.S. National Science Foundation. More

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    A day in the life of MIT MBA student David Brown

    “MIT Sloan was my first and only choice,” says MIT graduate student David Brown. After receiving his BS in chemical engineering at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Brown spent eight years as a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army, serving as a platoon leader and troop commander. Now in the final year of his MBA, Brown has co-founded a climate tech company — Helix Carbon — with Ariel Furst, an MIT assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Evan Haas MBA ’24, SM ’24. Their goal: erase the carbon footprint of tough-to-decarbonize industries like ironmaking, polyurethanes, and olefins by generating competitively-priced, carbon-neutral fuels directly from waste carbon dioxide (CO2). It’s an ambitious project; they’re looking to scale the company large enough to have a gigaton per year impact on CO2 emissions. They have lab space off campus, and after graduation, Brown will be taking a full-time job as chief operating officer.“What I loved about the Army was that I felt every day that the work I was doing was important or impactful in some way. I wanted that to continue, and felt the best way to have the greatest possible positive impact was to use my operational skills learned from the military to help close the gap between the lab and impact in the market.”The following photo essay provides a snapshot of what a typical day for Brown has been like as an MIT student.

    8:30 a.m. — “The first thing on my schedule today is meeting with the Helix Carbon team. Today, we’re talking about the results from the latest lab runs, and what they mean for planned experiments the rest of the week. We are also discussing our fundraising plans ahead of the investor meetings we have scheduled for later this week.”

    10:00 a.m. — “I spend a lot of time at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. It’s the hub of entrepreneurship at MIT. My pre-MBA internship, and my first work experience after leaving the Army, was as the program manager for delta v, the premier startup accelerator at MIT. That was also my introduction to the entrepreneurship ecosystem at MIT, and how I met Ariel. With zero hyperbole I can say that was a life-changing experience, and really defined the direction of my life out of the military.”

    10:30 a.m. — “In addition to working to fund and scale Helix Carbon, I have a lot of work to do to finish up the semester. Something I think is unique about MIT is that classes give a real-world perspective from people who are actively a participant on the cutting edge of what’s happening in that realm. For example, I’m taking Climate and Energy in the Global Economy, and the professor, Catherine Wolfram, has incredible experience both on the ground and in policy with both climate and energy.”

    11:00 a.m. — “When I arrived at MIT Sloan, I was grouped into my cohort team. We navigated the first semester core classes together and built a strong bond. We still meet up for coffee and have team dinners even a year-and-a-half later. I always find myself inspired by how much they’ve accomplished, and I consider myself incredibly lucky for their support and to call them my friends.”

    12 p.m. — “Next, I have a meeting with Bill Aulet, the managing director of the Trust Center, to prepare for an entrepreneurship accelerator called Third Derivative that Helix Carbon got picked up for. Sustainability startups from all over the U.S. and around the world come together to meet with each other and other mentors in order to share progress, best practices, and develop plans for moving forward.”

    12:30 p.m. — “Throughout the day, I run into friends, colleagues, and mentors. Even though MIT Sloan is pitched as a community experience, I didn’t expect how much of a community experience it really is. My classmates have been the absolute highlight of my time here, and I have learned so much from their experiences and from the way they carry themselves.”

    1 p.m. — “My only class today is Applied Behavioral Economics. I’m taking it almost entirely for pleasure — it’s such a fascinating topic. And the professor — Drazen Prelec — is one of the world’s foremost experts. It’s a class that challenges assumptions and gets me thinking. I really enjoy it.”

    2:30 p.m. — “I have a little bit of time before my next event. When I need a place that isn’t too crowded to think, I like to hang out on the couch on the sky bridge between the Tang Center and the Morris and Sophie Chang Building. When the weather is nice, I’ll head out to one of the open green spaces in Kendall Square, or to Urban Park across the street.”

    3:30 p.m. — “When I was the program manager for delta v, this was where I sat, and it’s still where I like to spend time when I’m at the Trust Center. Because it looks like a welcome desk, a lot of people come up to ask questions or talk about their startups. Since I used to work there I’m able to help them out pretty well!”

    5:00 p.m. — “For my last event of the day, I’m attending a seminar at the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center (PKG Center) as part of their IDEAS Social Innovation Challenge, MIT’s 20-plus year-old social impact incubator. The program works with MIT student-led teams addressing social and environmental challenges in our communities. The program has helped teach us critical frameworks and tools around setting goals for and measuring our social impact. We actually placed first in the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference Pitch competition thanks to the lessons we learned here!”

    7:00 p.m. — “Time to head home. A few days a week after work and class, my wife and I play in a combat archery league. It’s like dodgeball, but instead of dodgeballs everyone has a bow and you shoot arrows that have pillow tips. It’s incredible. Tons of fun. I have tried to recruit many of my classmates — marginal success rate!”

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    How J-WAFS Solutions grants bring research to market

    For the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS), 2025 marks a decade of translating groundbreaking research into tangible solutions for global challenges. Few examples illustrate that mission better than NONA Technologies. With support from a J-WAFS Solutions grant, MIT electrical engineering and biological engineering Professor Jongyoon Han and his team developed a portable desalination device that transforms seawater into clean drinking water without filters or high-pressure pumps. The device stands apart from traditional systems because conventional desalination technologies, like reverse osmosis, are energy-intensive, prone to fouling, and typically deployed at large, centralized plants. In contrast, the device developed in Han’s lab employs ion concentration polarization technology to remove salts and particles from seawater, producing potable water that exceeds World Health Organization standards. It is compact, solar-powered, and operable at the push of a button — making it an ideal solution for off-grid and disaster-stricken areas.This research laid the foundation for spinning out NONA Technologies along with co-founders Junghyo Yoon PhD ’21 from Han’s lab and Bruce Crawford MBA ’22, to commercialize the technology and address pressing water-scarcity issues worldwide. “This is really the culmination of a 10-year journey that I and my group have been on,” said Han in an earlier MIT News article. “We worked for years on the physics behind individual desalination processes, but pushing all those advances into a box, building a system, and demonstrating it in the ocean … that was a really meaningful and rewarding experience for me.” You can watch this video showcasing the device in action.Moving breakthrough research out of the lab and into the world is a well-known challenge. While traditional “seed” grants typically support early-stage research at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 1-2, few funding sources exist to help academic teams navigate to the next phase of technology development. The J-WAFS Solutions Program is strategically designed to address this critical gap by supporting technologies in the high-risk, early-commercialization phase that is often neglected by traditional research, corporate, and venture funding. By supporting technologies at TRLs 3-5, the program increases the likelihood that promising innovations will survive beyond the university setting, advancing sufficiently to attract follow-on funding.Equally important, the program gives academic researchers the time, resources, and flexibility to de-risk their technology, explore customer need and potential real-world applications, and determine whether and how they want to pursue commercialization. For faculty-led teams like Han’s, the J-WAFS Solutions Program provided the critical financial runway and entrepreneurial guidance needed to refine the technology, test assumptions about market fit, and lay the foundation for a startup team. While still in the MIT innovation ecosystem, Nona secured over $200,000 in non-dilutive funding through competitions and accelerators, including the prestigious MIT delta v Educational Accelerator. These early wins laid the groundwork for further investment and technical advancement.Since spinning out of MIT, NONA has made major strides in both technology development and business viability. What started as a device capable of producing just over half-a-liter of clean drinking water per hour has evolved into a system that now delivers 10 times that capacity, at 5 liters per hour. The company successfully raised a $3.5 million seed round to advance its portable desalination device, and entered into a collaboration with the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, where it co-developed early prototypes and began generating revenue while validating the technology. Most recently, NONA was awarded two SBIR Phase I grants totaling $575,000, one from the National Science Foundation and another from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.Now operating out of Greentown Labs in Somerville, Massachusetts, NONA has grown to a dedicated team of five and is preparing to launch its nona5 product later this year, with a wait list of over 1,000 customers. It is also kicking off its first industrial pilot, marking a key step toward commercial scale-up. “Starting a business as a postdoc was challenging, especially with limited funding and industry knowledge,” says Yoon, who currently serves as CTO of NONA. “J-WAFS gave me the financial freedom to pursue my venture, and the mentorship pushed me to hit key milestones. Thanks to J-WAFS, I successfully transitioned from an academic researcher to an entrepreneur in the water industry.”NONA is one of several J-WAFS-funded technologies that have moved from the lab to market, part of a growing portfolio of water and food solutions advancing through MIT’s innovation pipeline. As J-WAFS marks a decade of catalyzing innovation in water and food, NONA exemplifies what is possible when mission-driven research is paired with targeted early-stage support and mentorship.To learn more or get involved in supporting startups through the J-WAFS Solutions Program, please contact jwafs@mit.edu. More

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    in Security

    Startup helps farmers grow plant-based feed and fertilizer using wastewater

    Farmers today face a number of challenges, from supply chain stability to nutrient and waste management. But hanging over everything is the need to maintain profitability amid changing markets and increased uncertainty.Fyto, founded by former MIT staff member Jason Prapas, is offering a highly automated cultivation system to address several of farmers’ biggest problems at once.At the heart of Fyto’s system is Lemna, a genus of small aquatic plants otherwise known as duckweed. Most people have probably seen thick green mats of Lemna lying on top of ponds and swamps. But Lemna is also rich in protein and capable of doubling in biomass every two days. Fyto has built an automated cropping system that uses nitrogen-rich wastewater from dairy farms to grow Lemna in shallow pools on otherwise less productive farmland. On top of the pools, the company has built what it believes are the largest agricultural robots in the world, which monitor plant health and harvest the Lemna sustainably. The Lemna can then be used on farms as a high-protein cattle feed or fertilizer supplement.Fyto’s systems are designed to rely on minimal land, water, and labor while creating a more sustainable, profitable food system.“We developed from scratch a robotic system that takes the guesswork out of farming this crop,” says Prapas, who previously led the translational research program of MIT’s Tata Center. “It looks at the crop on a daily basis, takes inventory to know how many plants there are, how much should be harvested to have healthy growth the next day, can detect if the color is slightly off or there are nutrient deficiencies, and can suggest different interventions based on all that data.”From kiddie pools to cow farmsPrapas’ first job out of college was with an MIT spinout called Green Fuel that harvested algae to make biofuel. He went back to school for a master’s and then a PhD in mechanical engineering, but he continued working with startups. Following his PhD at Colorado State University, he co-founded Factor[e] Ventures to fund and incubate startups focused on improving energy access in emerging markets.Through that work, Prapas was introduced to MIT’s Tata Center for Technology and Design.“We were really interested in the new technologies being developed at the MIT Tata Center, and in funding new startups taking on some of these global climate challenges in emerging markets,” Prapas recalls. “The Tata Center was interested in making sure these technologies get put into practice rather than patented and put on a shelf somewhere. It was a good synergy.”One of the people Prapas got to know was Rob Stoner, the founding director of the Tata Center, who encouraged Prapas to get more directly involved with commercializing new technologies. In 2017, Prapas joined the Tata Center as the translational research director. During that time, Prapas worked with MIT students, faculty, and staff to test their inventions in the real world. Much of that work involved innovations in agriculture.“Farming is a fact of life for a lot of folks around the world — both subsistence farming but also producing food for the community and beyond,” Prapas says. “That has huge implications for water usage, electricity consumption, labor. For years, I’d been thinking about how we make farming a more attractive endeavor for people: How do we make it less back-breaking, more efficient, and more economical?”Between his work at MIT and Factor[e], Prapas visited hundreds of farms around the world, where he started to think about the lack of good choices for farming inputs like animal feed and fertilizers. The problem represented a business opportunity.Fyto began with kiddie pools. Prapas started growing aquatic plants in his backyard, using them as a fertilizer source for vegetables. The experience taught him how difficult it would be to train people to grow and harvest Lemna at large scales on farms.“I realized we’d have to invent both the farming method — the agronomy — and the equipment and processes to grow it at scale cost effectively,” Prapas explains.Prapas started discussing his ideas with others around 2019.“The MIT and Boston ecosystems are great for pitching somewhat crazy ideas to willing audiences and seeing what sticks,” Prapas says. “There’s an intangible benefit of being at MIT, where you just can’t help but think of bold ideas and try putting them into practice.”Prapas, who left MIT to lead Fyto in 2019, partnered with Valerie Peng ’17, SM ’19, then a graduate student at MIT who became his first hire.“Farmers work so hard, and I have so much respect for what they do,” says Peng, who serves as Fyto’s head of engineering. “People talk about the political divide, but there’s a lot of alignment around using less, doing more with what you have, and making our food systems more resilient to drought, supply chain disruptions, and everything else. There’s more in common with everyone than you’d expect.”A new farming methodLemna can produce much more protein per acre than soy, another common source of protein on farms, but it requires a lot of nitrogen to grow. Fortunately, many types of farmers, especially large dairy farmers, have abundant nitrogen sources in the waste streams that come from washing out cow manure.“These waste streams are a big problem: In California it’s believed to be one of the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the agriculture sector despite the fact that hundreds of crops are grown in California,” Prapas says.For the last few years, Fyto has run its systems in pilots on farms, trialing the crop as feed and fertilizer before delivering to its customers. The systems Fyto has deployed so far are about 50 feet wide, but it is actively commissioning its newest version that’s 160 feet wide. Eventually, Fyto plans to sell the systems directly to farmers.Fyto is currently awaiting California’s approval for use in feed, but Lemna has already been approved in Europe. Fyto has also been granted a fertilizer license on its plant-based fertilizer, with promising early results in trials, and plans to sell new fertilizer products this year.Although Fyto is focused on dairy farms for its early deployments, it has also grown Lemna using manure from chicken, and Prapas notes that even people like cheese producers have a nitrogen waste problem that Fyto could solve.“Think of us like a polishing step you could put on the end of any system that has an organic waste stream,” Prapas says. “In that situation, we’re interested in growing our crops on it. We’ve had very few things that the plant can’t grow on. Globally, we see this as a new farming method, and that means it’s got a lot of potential applications.” More