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    Window-sized device taps the air for safe drinking water

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    Today, 2.2 billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water. In the United States, more than 46 million people experience water insecurity, living with either no running water or water that is unsafe to drink. The increasing need for drinking water is stretching traditional resources such as rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.To improve access to safe and affordable drinking water, MIT engineers are tapping into an unconventional source: the air. The Earth’s atmosphere contains millions of billions of gallons of water in the form of vapor. If this vapor can be efficiently captured and condensed, it could supply clean drinking water in places where traditional water resources are inaccessible.With that goal in mind, the MIT team has developed and tested a new atmospheric water harvester and shown that it efficiently captures water vapor and produces safe drinking water across a range of relative humidities, including dry desert air.The new device is a black, window-sized vertical panel, made from a water-absorbent hydrogel material, enclosed in a glass chamber coated with a cooling layer. The hydrogel resembles black bubble wrap, with small dome-shaped structures that swell when the hydrogel soaks up water vapor. When the captured vapor evaporates, the domes shrink back down in an origami-like transformation. The evaporated vapor then condenses on the the glass, where it can flow down and out through a tube, as clean and drinkable water.

    MIT engineers test a passive water harvester in Death Valley, CA. The window-sized setup is made from an origami-inspired hydrogel material (black) that absorbs water from the air, and releases it into tubes where researchers can collect the moisture as pure drinking water.

    Credit: Courtesy of the researchers; MIT News

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    The system runs entirely on its own, without a power source, unlike other designs that require batteries, solar panels, or electricity from the grid. The team ran the device for over a week in Death Valley, California — the driest region in North America. Even in very low-humidity conditions, the device squeezed drinking water from the air at rates of up to 160 milliliters (about two-thirds of a cup) per day.The team estimates that multiple vertical panels, set up in a small array, could passively supply a household with drinking water, even in arid desert environments. What’s more, the system’s water production should increase with humidity, supplying drinking water in temperate and tropical climates.“We have built a meter-scale device that we hope to deploy in resource-limited regions, where even a solar cell is not very accessible,” says Xuanhe Zhao, the Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. “It’s a test of feasibility in scaling up this water harvesting technology. Now people can build it even larger, or make it into parallel panels, to supply drinking water to people and achieve real impact.”Zhao and his colleagues present the details of the new water harvesting design in a paper appearing today in the journal Nature Water. The study’s lead author is former MIT postdoc “Will” Chang Liu, who is currently an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS). MIT co-authors include Xiao-Yun Yan, Shucong Li, and Bolei Deng, along with collaborators from multiple other institutions.Carrying capacityHydrogels are soft, porous materials that are made mainly from water and a microscopic network of interconnecting polymer fibers. Zhao’s group at MIT has primarily explored the use of hydrogels in biomedical applications, including adhesive coatings for medical implants, soft and flexible electrodes, and noninvasive imaging stickers.“Through our work with soft materials, one property we know very well is the way hydrogel is very good at absorbing water from air,” Zhao says.Researchers are exploring a number of ways to harvest water vapor for drinking water. Among the most efficient so far are devices made from metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs — ultra-porous materials that have also been shown to capture water from dry desert air. But the MOFs do not swell or stretch when absorbing water, and are limited in vapor-carrying capacity.Water from airThe group’s new hydrogel-based water harvester addresses another key problem in similar designs. Other groups have designed water harvesters out of micro- or nano-porous hydrogels. But the water produced from these designs can be salty, requiring additional filtering. Salt is a naturally absorbent material, and researchers embed salts — typically, lithium chloride — in hydrogel to increase the material’s water absorption. The drawback, however, is that this salt can leak out with the water when it is eventually collected.The team’s new design significantly limits salt leakage. Within the hydrogel itself, they included an extra ingredient: glycerol, a liquid compound that naturally stabilizes salt, keeping it within the gel rather than letting it crystallize and leak out with the water. The hydrogel itself has a microstructure that lacks nanoscale pores, which further prevents salt from escaping the material. The salt levels in the water they collected were below the standard threshold for safe drinking water, and significantly below the levels produced by many other hydrogel-based designs.In addition to tuning the hydrogel’s composition, the researchers made improvements to its form. Rather than keeping the gel as a flat sheet, they molded it into a pattern of small domes resembling bubble wrap, that act to increase the gel’s surface area, along with the amount of water vapor it can absorb.The researchers fabricated a half-square-meter of hydrogel and encased the material in a window-like glass chamber. They coated the exterior of the chamber with a special polymer film, which helps to cool the glass and stimulates any water vapor in the hydrogel to evaporate and condense onto the glass. They installed a simple tubing system to collect the water as it flows down the glass.In November 2023, the team traveled to Death Valley, California, and set up the device as a vertical panel. Over seven days, they took measurements as the hydrogel absorbed water vapor during the night (the time of day when water vapor in the desert is highest). In the daytime, with help from the sun, the harvested water evaporated out from the hydrogel and condensed onto the glass.Over this period, the device worked across a range of humidities, from 21 to 88 percent, and produced between 57 and 161.5 milliliters of drinking water per day. Even in the driest conditions, the device harvested more water than other passive and some actively powered designs.“This is just a proof-of-concept design, and there are a lot of things we can optimize,” Liu says. “For instance, we could have a multipanel design. And we’re working on a next generation of the material to further improve its intrinsic properties.”“We imagine that you could one day deploy an array of these panels, and the footprint is very small because they are all vertical,” says Zhao, who has plans to further test the panels in many resource-limited regions. “Then you could have many panels together, collecting water all the time, at household scale.”This work was supported, in part, by the MIT J-WAFS Water and Food Seed Grant, the MIT-Chinese University of Hong Kong collaborative research program, and the UM6P-MIT collaborative research program. More

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      “Each of us holds a piece of the solution”

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      MIT has an unparalleled history of bringing together interdisciplinary teams to solve pressing problems — think of the development of radar during World War II, or leading the international coalition that cracked the code of the human genome — but the challenge of climate change could demand a scale of collaboration unlike any that’s come before at MIT.“Solving climate change is not just about new technologies or better models. It’s about forging new partnerships across campus and beyond — between scientists and economists, between architects and data scientists, between policymakers and physicists, between anthropologists and engineers, and more,” MIT Vice President for Energy and Climate Evelyn Wang told an energetic crowd of faculty, students, and staff on May 6. “Each of us holds a piece of the solution — but only together can we see the whole.”Undeterred by heavy rain, approximately 300 campus community members filled the atrium in the Tina and Hamid Moghadam Building (Building 55) for a spring gathering hosted by Wang and the Climate Project at MIT. The initiative seeks to direct the full strength of MIT to address climate change, which Wang described as one of the defining challenges of this moment in history — and one of its greatest opportunities.“It calls on us to rethink how we power our world, how we build, how we live — and how we work together,” Wang said. “And there is no better place than MIT to lead this kind of bold, integrated effort. Our culture of curiosity, rigor, and relentless experimentation makes us uniquely suited to cross boundaries — to break down silos and build something new.”The Climate Project is organized around six missions, thematic areas in which MIT aims to make significant impact, ranging from decarbonizing industry to new policy approaches to designing resilient cities. The faculty leaders of these missions posed challenges to the crowd before circulating among the crowd to share their perspectives and to discuss community questions and ideas.Wang and the Climate Project team were joined by a number of research groups, startups, and MIT offices conducting relevant work today on issues related to energy and climate. For example, the MIT Office of Sustainability showcased efforts to use the MIT campus as a living laboratory; MIT spinouts such as Forma Systems, which is developing high-performance, low-carbon building systems, and Addis Energy, which envisions using the earth as a reactor to produce clean ammonia, presented their technologies; and visitors learned about current projects in MIT labs, including DebunkBot, an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot that can persuade people to shift their attitudes about conspiracies, developed by David Rand, the Erwin H. Schell Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.Benedetto Marelli, an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering who leads the Wild Cards Mission, said the energy and enthusiasm that filled the room was inspiring — but that the individual conversations were equally valuable.“I was especially pleased to see so many students come out. I also spoke with other faculty, talked to staff from across the Institute, and met representatives of external companies interested in collaborating with MIT,” Marelli said. “You could see connections being made all around the room, which is exactly what we need as we build momentum for the Climate Project.” More

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      Guardian Ag’s crop-spraying drone is replacing dangerous pilot missions

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      Every year during the growing season, thousands of pilots across the country climb into small planes loaded with hundreds of pounds of pesticides and fly extremely close to the ground at upward of 140 miles an hour, unloading their cargo onto rows of corn, cotton, and soybeans.The world of agricultural aviation is as dangerous as it is vital to America’s farms. Unfortunately, fatal crashes are common. Now Guardian Ag, founded by former MIT Electronics Research Society (MITERS) makers Adam Bercu and Charles Guan ’11, is offering an alternative in the form of a large, purpose-built drone that can autonomously deliver 200-pound payloads across farms. The company’s drones feature an 18-foot spray radius, 80-inch rotors, a custom battery pack, and aerospace-grade materials designed to make crop spraying more safe, efficient, and inexpensive for farmers.“We’re trying to bring technology to American farms that are hundreds or thousands of acres, where you’re not replacing a human with a hand pump — you’re replacing a John Deere tractor or a helicopter or an airplane,” Bercu says.“With Guardian, the operator shows up about 30 minutes before they want to spray, they mix the product, path plan the field in our app, and it gives an estimate for how long the job will take,” he says. “With our fast charging, you recharge the aircraft while you fill the tank, and those two operations take about the same amount of time.”

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      From Battlebots to farmlandsAt a young age, Bercu became obsessed with building robots. Growing up in south Florida, he’d attend robotic competitions, build prototypes, and even dumpster dive for particularly hard-to-find components. At one competition, Bercu met Charles Guan, who would go on to major in mechanical engineering at MIT, and the two robot enthusiasts became lifelong friends.“When Charles came to MIT, he basically convinced me to move to Cambridge,” Bercu says. “He said, ‘You need to come up here. I found more people like us. Hackers!’”Bercu visited Cambridge, Massachusetts, and indeed fell in love with the region’s makerspaces and hacker culture. He moved soon after, and he and Guan began spending free time at spaces including the Artisans Asylum makerspace in Somerville, Massachusetts; MIT’s International Design Center; and the MIT Electronics Research Society (MITERS) makerspace. Guan held several leadership positions at MITERS, including facilities manager, treasurer, and president.“MIT offered enormous latitude to its students to be independent and creative, which was reflected in the degree of autonomy they permit student-run organizations like MITERS to have compared to other top-tier schools,” Guan says. “It was a key selling point to me when I was touring mechanical engineering labs as a junior in high school. I was well-known in the department circle for being at MITERS all the time, possibly even more than I spent on classes.”After Guan graduated, he and Bercu started a hardware consulting business and competed in the robot combat show Battlebots. Guan also began working as a design instructor in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, where he taught a section of Course 2.007 that tasked students with building go-karts.Eventually, Guan and Bercu decided to use their experience to start a drone company.“Over the course of Battlebots and building go-karts, we knew electric batteries were getting really cheap and electric vehicle supply chains were established,” Bercu explains. “People were raising money to build eVTOL [electric vertical take-off and landing] vehicles to transport people, but we knew diesel fuel still outperformed batteries over long distances. Where electric systems did outperform combustion engines was in areas where you needed peak power for short periods of time. Basically, batteries are awesome when you have a short mission.”That idea made the founders think crop spraying could be a good early application. Bercu’s family runs an aviation business, and he knew pilots who would spray crops as their second jobs.“It’s one of those high-paying but very dangerous jobs,” Bercu says. “Even in the U.S., we lose between 1 and 2 percent of all agriculture pilots each year to fatal accidents. These people are rolling the dice every time they do this: You’re flying 6 feet off the ground at 140 miles an hour with 800 gallons of pesticide in your tank.”After cobbling together spare parts from Battlebots and their consulting business, the founders built a 600-pound drone. When they finally got it to fly, they decided the time was right to launch their company, receiving crucial early guidance and their first funding from the MIT-affiliated investment firm the E14 Fund.The founders spent the next year interviewing crop dusters and farmers. They also started engaging with the Federal Aviation Administration.“There was no category for anything like this,” Bercu explains. “With the FAA, we not only got through the approval process, we helped them build the process as we went through it, because we wanted to establish some common-sense standards.”Guardian custom-built its batteries to optimize throughput and utilization rate of its drones. Depending on the farm, Bercu says his machines can unload about 1.5 to 2 tons of payload per hour.Guardian’s drones can also spray more precisely than planes, reducing the environmental impact of pesticides, which often pollute the landscapes and waterways surrounding farms.“This thing has the precision to spray the ‘Mona Lisa’ on 20 acres, but we’re not leveraging that functionality today,” Bercu says. “For the operator we want to make it very easy. The goal is to take someone who sprays with a tractor and teach them to spray with a drone in less than a week.”Scaling for farmersTo date, Guardian Ag has built eight of its aircraft, which are actively delivering payloads over California farms in trials with paying customers. The company is currently ramping up manufacturing in its 60,000-square-foot facility in Massachusetts, and Bercu says Guardian has a backlog of hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of drones.“Grower demand has been exceptional,” Bercu says. “We don’t need to educate them on the need for this. They see the big drone with the big tank and they’re in.”Bercu envisions Guardian’s drones helping with a number of other tasks like ship-to-ship logistics, delivering supplies to offshore oil rigs, mining, and other areas where helicopters and small aircraft are currently flown through difficult terrain. But for now, the company is focused on starting with agriculture.“Agriculture is such an important and foundational aspect of our country,” says Guardian Ag chief operating officer Ashley Ferguson MBA ’19. “We work with multigenerational farming families, and when we talk to them, it’s clear aerial spray has taken hold in the industry. But there’s a large shortage of pilots, especially for agriculture applications. So, it’s clear there’s a big opportunity.”Seven years since founding Guardian, Bercu remains grateful that MIT’s community opened its doors for him when he moved to Cambridge.“Without the MIT community, this company wouldn’t be possible,” Bercu says. “I was never able to go to college, but I’d love to one day apply to MIT and do my engineering undergrad or go to the Sloan School of Management. I’ll never forget MIT’s openness to me. It’s a place I hold near and dear to my heart.” More

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      Study shows making hydrogen with soda cans and seawater is scalable and sustainable

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      Hydrogen has the potential to be a climate-friendly fuel since it doesn’t release carbon dioxide when used as an energy source. Currently, however, most methods for producing hydrogen involve fossil fuels, making hydrogen less of a “green” fuel over its entire life cycle.A new process developed by MIT engineers could significantly shrink the carbon footprint associated with making hydrogen.Last year, the team reported that they could produce hydrogen gas by combining seawater, recycled soda cans, and caffeine. The question then was whether the benchtop process could be applied at an industrial scale, and at what environmental cost.Now, the researchers have carried out a “cradle-to-grave” life cycle assessment, taking into account every step in the process at an industrial scale. For instance, the team calculated the carbon emissions associated with acquiring and processing aluminum, reacting it with seawater to produce hydrogen, and transporting the fuel to gas stations, where drivers could tap into hydrogen tanks to power engines or fuel cell cars. They found that, from end to end, the new process could generate a fraction of the carbon emissions that is associated with conventional hydrogen production.In a study appearing today in Cell Reports Sustainability, the team reports that for every kilogram of hydrogen produced, the process would generate 1.45 kilograms of carbon dioxide over its entire life cycle. In comparison, fossil-fuel-based processes emit 11 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilogram of hydrogen generated.The low-carbon footprint is on par with other proposed “green hydrogen” technologies, such as those powered by solar and wind energy.“We’re in the ballpark of green hydrogen,” says lead author Aly Kombargi PhD ’25, who graduated this spring from MIT with a doctorate in mechanical engineering. “This work highlights aluminum’s potential as a clean energy source and offers a scalable pathway for low-emission hydrogen deployment in transportation and remote energy systems.”The study’s MIT co-authors are Brooke Bao, Enoch Ellis, and professor of mechanical engineering Douglas Hart.Gas bubbleDropping an aluminum can in water won’t normally cause much of a chemical reaction. That’s because when aluminum is exposed to oxygen, it instantly forms a shield-like layer. Without this layer, aluminum exists in its pure form and can readily react when mixed with water. The reaction that occurs involves aluminum atoms that efficiently break up molecules of water, producing aluminum oxide and pure hydrogen. And it doesn’t take much of the metal to bubble up a significant amount of the gas.“One of the main benefits of using aluminum is the energy density per unit volume,” Kombargi says. “With a very small amount of aluminum fuel, you can conceivably supply much of the power for a hydrogen-fueled vehicle.”Last year, he and Hart developed a recipe for aluminum-based hydrogen production. They found they could puncture aluminum’s natural shield by treating it with a small amount of gallium-indium, which is a rare-metal alloy that effectively scrubs aluminum into its pure form. The researchers then mixed pellets of pure aluminum with seawater and observed that the reaction produced pure hydrogen. What’s more, the salt in the water helped to precipitate gallium-indium, which the team could subsequently recover and reuse to generate more hydrogen, in a cost-saving, sustainable cycle.“We were explaining the science of this process in conferences, and the questions we would get were, ‘How much does this cost?’ and, ‘What’s its carbon footprint?’” Kombargi says. “So we wanted to look at the process in a comprehensive way.”A sustainable cycleFor their new study, Kombargi and his colleagues carried out a life cycle assessment to estimate the environmental impact of aluminum-based hydrogen production, at every step of the process, from sourcing the aluminum to transporting the hydrogen after production. They set out to calculate the amount of carbon associated with generating 1 kilogram of hydrogen — an amount that they chose as a practical, consumer-level illustration.“With a hydrogen fuel cell car using 1 kilogram of hydrogen, you can go between 60 to 100 kilometers, depending on the efficiency of the fuel cell,” Kombargi notes.They performed the analysis using Earthster — an online life cycle assessment tool that draws data from a large repository of products and processes and their associated carbon emissions. The team considered a number of scenarios to produce hydrogen using aluminum, from starting with “primary” aluminum mined from the Earth, versus “secondary” aluminum that is recycled from soda cans and other products, and using various methods to transport the aluminum and hydrogen.After running life cycle assessments for about a dozen scenarios, the team identified one scenario with the lowest carbon footprint. This scenario centers on recycled aluminum — a source that saves a significant amount of emissions compared with mining aluminum — and seawater — a natural resource that also saves money by recovering gallium-indium. They found that this scenario, from start to finish, would generate about 1.45 kilograms of carbon dioxide for every kilogram of hydrogen produced. The cost of the fuel produced, they calculated, would be about $9 per kilogram, which is comparable to the price of hydrogen that would be generated with other green technologies such as wind and solar energy.The researchers envision that if the low-carbon process were ramped up to a commercial scale, it would look something like this: The production chain would start with scrap aluminum sourced from a recycling center. The aluminum would be shredded into pellets and treated with gallium-indium. Then, drivers could transport the pretreated pellets as aluminum “fuel,” rather than directly transporting hydrogen, which is potentially volatile. The pellets would be transported to a fuel station that ideally would be situated near a source of seawater, which could then be mixed with the aluminum, on demand, to produce hydrogen. A consumer could then directly pump the gas into a car with either an internal combustion engine or a fuel cell.The entire process does produce an aluminum-based byproduct, boehmite, which is a mineral that is commonly used in fabricating semiconductors, electronic elements, and a number of industrial products. Kombargi says that if this byproduct were recovered after hydrogen production, it could be sold to manufacturers, further bringing down the cost of the process as a whole.“There are a lot of things to consider,” Kombargi says. “But the process works, which is the most exciting part. And we show that it can be environmentally sustainable.”The group is continuing to develop the process. They recently designed a small reactor, about the size of a water bottle, that takes in aluminum pellets and seawater to generate hydrogen, enough to power an electric bike for several hours. They previously demonstrated that the process can produce enough hydrogen to fuel a small car. The team is also exploring underwater applications, and are designing a hydrogen reactor that would take in surrounding seawater to power a small boat or underwater vehicle.This research was supported, in part, by the MIT Portugal Program. More

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      How to solve a bottleneck for CO2 capture and conversion

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      Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere efficiently is often seen as a crucial need for combatting climate change, but systems for removing carbon dioxide suffer from a tradeoff. Chemical compounds that efficiently remove CO₂ from the air do not easily release it once captured, and compounds that release CO₂ efficiently are not very efficient at capturing it. Optimizing one part of the cycle tends to make the other part worse.Now, using nanoscale filtering membranes, researchers at MIT have added a simple intermediate step that facilitates both parts of the cycle. The new approach could improve the efficiency of electrochemical carbon dioxide capture and release by six times and cut costs by at least 20 percent, they say.The new findings are reported today in the journal ACS Energy Letters, in a paper by MIT doctoral students Simon Rufer, Tal Joseph, and Zara Aamer, and professor of mechanical engineering Kripa Varanasi.“We need to think about scale from the get-go when it comes to carbon capture, as making a meaningful impact requires processing gigatons of CO₂,” says Varanasi. “Having this mindset helps us pinpoint critical bottlenecks and design innovative solutions with real potential for impact. That’s the driving force behind our work.”Many carbon-capture systems work using chemicals called hydroxides, which readily combine with carbon dioxide to form carbonate. That carbonate is fed into an electrochemical cell, where the carbonate reacts with an acid to form water and release carbon dioxide. The process can take ordinary air with only about 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide and generate a stream of 100 percent pure carbon dioxide, which can then be used to make fuels or other products.Both the capture and release steps operate in the same water-based solution, but the first step needs a solution with a high concentration of hydroxide ions, and the second step needs one high in carbonate ions. “You can see how these two steps are at odds,” says Varanasi. “These two systems are circulating the same sorbent back and forth. They’re operating on the exact same liquid. But because they need two different types of liquids to operate optimally, it’s impossible to operate both systems at their most efficient points.”The team’s solution was to decouple the two parts of the system and introduce a third part in between. Essentially, after the hydroxide in the first step has been mostly chemically converted to carbonate, special nanofiltration membranes then separate ions in the solution based on their charge. Carbonate ions have a charge of 2, while hydroxide ions have a charge of 1. “The nanofiltration is able to separate these two pretty well,” Rufer says.Once separated, the hydroxide ions are fed back to the absorption side of the system, while the carbonates are sent ahead to the electrochemical release stage. That way, both ends of the system can operate at their more efficient ranges. Varanasi explains that in the electrochemical release step, protons are being added to the carbonate to cause the conversion to carbon dioxide and water, but if hydroxide ions are also present, the protons will react with those ions instead, producing just water.“If you don’t separate these hydroxides and carbonates,” Rufer says, “the way the system fails is you’ll add protons to hydroxide instead of carbonate, and so you’ll just be making water rather than extracting carbon dioxide. That’s where the efficiency is lost. Using nanofiltration to prevent this was something that we aren’t aware of anyone proposing before.”Testing showed that the nanofiltration could separate the carbonate from the hydroxide solution with about 95 percent efficiency, validating the concept under realistic conditions, Rufer says. The next step was to assess how much of an effect this would have on the overall efficiency and economics of the process. They created a techno-economic model, incorporating electrochemical efficiency, voltage, absorption rate, capital costs, nanofiltration efficiency, and other factors.The analysis showed that present systems cost at least $600 per ton of carbon dioxide captured, while with the nanofiltration component added, that drops to about $450 a ton. What’s more, the new system is much more stable, continuing to operate at high efficiency even under variations in the ion concentrations in the solution. “In the old system without nanofiltration, you’re sort of operating on a knife’s edge,” Rufer says; if the concentration varies even slightly in one direction or the other, efficiency drops off drastically. “But with our nanofiltration system, it kind of acts as a buffer where it becomes a lot more forgiving. You have a much broader operational regime, and you can achieve significantly lower costs.”He adds that this approach could apply not only to the direct air capture systems they studied specifically, but also to point-source systems — which are attached directly to the emissions sources such as power plant emissions — or to the next stage of the process, converting captured carbon dioxide into useful products such as fuel or chemical feedstocks.  Those conversion processes, he says, “are also bottlenecked in this carbonate and hydroxide tradeoff.”In addition, this technology could lead to safer alternative chemistries for carbon capture, Varanasi says. “A lot of these absorbents can at times be toxic, or damaging to the environment. By using a system like ours, you can improve the reaction rate, so you can choose chemistries that might not have the best absorption rate initially but can be improved to enable safety.”Varanasi adds that “the really nice thing about this is we’ve been able to do this with what’s commercially available,” and with a system that can easily be retrofitted to existing carbon-capture installations. If the costs can be further brought down to about $200 a ton, it could be viable for widespread adoption. With ongoing work, he says, “we’re confident that we’ll have something that can become economically viable” and that will ultimately produce valuable, saleable products.Rufer notes that even today, “people are buying carbon credits at a cost of over $500 per ton. So, at this cost we’re projecting, it is already commercially viable in that there are some buyers who are willing to pay that price.” But by bringing the price down further, that should increase the number of buyers who would consider buying the credit, he says. “It’s just a question of how widespread we can make it.” Recognizing this growing market demand, Varanasi says, “Our goal is to provide industry scalable, cost-effective, and reliable technologies and systems that enable them to directly meet their decarbonization targets.”The research was supported by Shell International Exploration and Production Inc. through the MIT Energy Initiative, and the U.S. National Science Foundation, and made use of the facilities at MIT.nano. More

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      Imaging technique removes the effect of water in underwater scenes

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      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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      The MIT-Portugal Program enters Phase 4

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      Since its founding 19 years ago as a pioneering collaboration with Portuguese universities, research institutions and corporations, the MIT-Portugal Program (MPP) has achieved a slew of successes — from enabling 47 entrepreneurial spinoffs and funding over 220 joint projects between MIT and Portuguese researchers to training a generation of exceptional researchers on both sides of the Atlantic.In March, with nearly two decades of collaboration under their belts, MIT and the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) signed an agreement that officially launches the program’s next chapter. Running through 2030, MPP’s Phase 4 will support continued exploration of innovative ideas and solutions in fields ranging from artificial intelligence and nanotechnology to climate change — both on the MIT campus and with partners throughout Portugal.  “One of the advantages of having a program that has gone on so long is that we are pretty well familiar with each other at this point. Over the years, we’ve learned each other’s systems, strengths and weaknesses and we’ve been able to create a synergy that would not have existed if we worked together for a short period of time,” says Douglas Hart, MIT mechanical engineering professor and MPP co-director.Hart and John Hansman, the T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and MPP co-director, are eager to take the program’s existing research projects further, while adding new areas of focus identified by MIT and FCT. Known as the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia in Portugal, FCT is the national public agency supporting research in science, technology and innovation under Portugal’s Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation.“Over the past two decades, the partnership with MIT has built a foundation of trust that has fostered collaboration among researchers and the development of projects with significant scientific impact and contributions to the Portuguese economy,” Fernando Alexandre, Portugal’s minister for education, science, and innovation, says. “In this new phase of the partnership, running from 2025 to 2030, we expect even greater ambition and impact — raising Portuguese science and its capacity to transform the economy and improve our society to even higher levels, while helping to address the challenges we face in areas such as climate change and the oceans, digitalization, and space.”“International collaborations like the MIT-Portugal Program are absolutely vital to MIT’s mission of research, education and service. I’m thrilled to see the program move into its next phase,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “MPP offers our faculty and students opportunities to work in unique research environments where they not only make new findings and learn new methods but also contribute to solving urgent local and global problems. MPP’s work in the realm of ocean science and climate is a prime example of how international partnerships like this can help solve important human problems.”Sharing MIT’s commitment to academic independence and excellence, Kornbluth adds, “the institutions and researchers we partner with through MPP enhance MIT’s ability to achieve its mission, enabling us to pursue the exacting standards of intellectual and creative distinction that make MIT a cradle of innovation and world leader in scientific discovery.”The epitome of an effective international collaboration, MPP has stayed true to its mission and continued to deliver results here in the U.S. and in Portugal for nearly two decades — prevailing amid myriad shifts in the political, social, and economic landscape. The multifaceted program encompasses an annual research conference and educational summits such as an Innovation Workshop at MIT each June and a Marine Robotics Summer School in the Azores in July, as well as student and faculty exchanges that facilitate collaborative research. During the third phase of the program alone, 59 MIT students and 53 faculty and researchers visited Portugal, and MIT hosted 131 students and 49 faculty and researchers from Portuguese universities and other institutions.In each roughly five-year phase, MPP researchers focus on a handful of core research areas. For Phase 3, MPP advanced cutting-edge research in four strategic areas: climate science and climate change; Earth systems: oceans to near space; digital transformation in manufacturing; and sustainable cities. Within these broad areas, MIT and FCT researchers worked together on numerous small-scale projects and several large “flagship” ones, including development of Portugal’s CubeSat satellite, a collaboration between MPP and several Portuguese universities and companies that marked the country’s second satellite launch and the first in 30 years.While work in the Phase 3 fields will continue during Phase 4, researchers will also turn their attention to four more areas: chips/nanotechnology, energy (a previous focus in Phase 2), artificial intelligence, and space.“We are opening up the aperture for additional collaboration areas,” Hansman says.In addition to focusing on distinct subject areas, each phase has emphasized the various parts of MPP’s mission to differing degrees. While Phase 3 accentuated collaborative research more than educational exchanges and entrepreneurship, those two aspects will be given more weight under the Phase 4 agreement, Hart said.“We have approval in Phase 4 to bring a number of Portuguese students over, and our principal investigators will benefit from close collaborations with Portuguese researchers,” he says.The longevity of MPP and the recent launch of Phase 4 are evidence of the program’s value. The program has played a role in the educational, technological and economic progress Portugal has achieved over the past two decades, as well.  “The Portugal of today is remarkably stronger than the Portugal of 20 years ago, and many of the places where they are stronger have been impacted by the program,” says Hansman, pointing to sustainable cities and “green” energy, in particular. “We can’t take direct credit, but we’ve been part of Portugal’s journey forward.”Since MPP began, Hart adds, “Portugal has become much more entrepreneurial. Many, many, many more start-up companies are coming out of Portuguese universities than there used to be.”  A recent analysis of MPP and FCT’s other U.S. collaborations highlighted a number of positive outcomes. The report noted that collaborations with MIT and other US universities have enhanced Portuguese research capacities and promoted organizational upgrades in the national R&D ecosystem, while providing Portuguese universities and companies with opportunities to engage in complex projects that would have been difficult to undertake on their own.Regarding MIT in particular, the report found that MPP’s long-term collaboration has spawned the establishment of sustained doctoral programs and pointed to a marked shift within Portugal’s educational ecosystem toward globally aligned standards. MPP, it reported, has facilitated the education of 198 Portuguese PhDs.Portugal’s universities, students and companies are not alone in benefitting from the research, networks, and economic activity MPP has spawned. MPP also delivers unique value to MIT, as well as to the broader US science and research community. Among the program’s consistent themes over the years, for example, is “joint interest in the Atlantic,” Hansman says.This summer, Faial Island in the Azores will host MPP’s fifth annual Marine Robotics Summer School, a two-week course open to 12 Portuguese Master’s and first year PhD students and 12 MIT upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. The course, which includes lectures by MIT and Portuguese faculty and other researchers, workshops, labs and hands-on experiences, “is always my favorite,” said Hart.“I get to work with some of the best researchers in the world there, and some of the top students coming out of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, MIT, and Portugal,” he says, adding that some of his previous Marine Robotics Summer School students have come to study at MIT and then gone on to become professors in ocean science.“So, it’s been exciting to see the growth of students coming out of that program, certainly a positive impact,” Hart says.MPP provides one-of-a-kind opportunities for ocean research due to the unique marine facilities available in Portugal, including not only open ocean off the Azores but also Lisbon’s deep-water port and a Portuguese Naval facility just south of Lisbon that is available for collaborative research by international scientists. Like MIT, Portuguese universities are also strongly invested in climate change research — a field of study keenly related to ocean systems.“The international collaboration has allowed us to test and further develop our research prototypes in different aquaculture environments both in the US and in Portugal, while building on the unique expertise of our Portuguese faculty collaborator Dr. Ricardo Calado from the University of Aveiro and our industry collaborators,” says Stefanie Mueller, the TIBCO Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering and leader of the Human-Computer Interaction Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.Mueller points to the work of MIT mechanical engineering PhD student Charlene Xia, a Marine Robotics Summer School participant, whose research is aimed at developing an economical system to monitor the microbiome of seaweed farms and halt the spread of harmful bacteria associated with ocean warming. In addition to participating in the summer school as a student, Xia returned to the Azores for two subsequent years as a teaching assistant.“The MIT-Portugal Program has been a key enabler of our research on monitoring the aquatic microbiome for potential disease outbreaks,” Mueller says.As MPP enters its next phase, Hart and Hansman are optimistic about the program’s continuing success on both sides of the Atlantic and envision broadening its impact going forward.“I think, at this point, the research is going really well, and we’ve got a lot of connections. I think one of our goals is to expand not the science of the program necessarily, but the groups involved,” Hart says, noting that MPP could have a bigger presence in technical fields such as AI and micro-nano manufacturing, as well as in social sciences and humanities.“We’d like to involve many more people and new people here at MIT, as well as in Portugal,” he says, “so that we can reach a larger slice of the population.”  More

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      Workshop explores new advanced materials for a growing world

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      It is clear that humankind needs increasingly more resources, from computing power to steel and concrete, to meet the growing demands associated with data centers, infrastructure, and other mainstays of society. New, cost-effective approaches for producing the advanced materials key to that growth were the focus of a two-day workshop at MIT on March 11 and 12.A theme throughout the event was the importance of collaboration between and within universities and industries. The goal is to “develop concepts that everybody can use together, instead of everybody doing something different and then trying to sort it out later at great cost,” said Lionel Kimerling, the Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT.The workshop was produced by MIT’s Materials Research Laboratory (MRL), which has an industry collegium, and MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program. The program included an address by Javier Sanfelix, lead of the Advanced Materials Team for the European Union. Sanfelix gave an overview of the EU’s strategy to developing advanced materials, which he said are “key enablers of the green and digital transition for European industry.”That strategy has already led to several initiatives. These include a material commons, or shared digital infrastructure for the design and development of advanced materials, and an advanced materials academy for educating new innovators and designers. Sanfelix also described an Advanced Materials Act for 2026 that aims to put in place a legislative framework that supports the entire innovation cycle.Sanfelix was visiting MIT to learn more about how the Institute is approaching the future of advanced materials. “We see MIT as a leader worldwide in technology, especially on materials, and there is a lot to learn about [your] industry collaborations and technology transfer with industry,” he said.Innovations in steel and concreteThe workshop began with talks about innovations involving two of the most common human-made materials in the world: steel and cement. We’ll need more of both but must reckon with the huge amounts of energy required to produce them and their impact on the environment due to greenhouse-gas emissions during that production.One way to address our need for more steel is to reuse what we have, said C. Cem Tasan, the POSCO Associate Professor of Metallurgy in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and director of the Materials Research Laboratory.But most of the existing approaches to recycling scrap steel involve melting the metal. “And whenever you are dealing with molten metal, everything goes up, from energy use to carbon-dioxide emissions. Life is more difficult,” Tasan said.The question he and his team asked is whether they could reuse scrap steel without melting it. Could they consolidate solid scraps, then roll them together using existing equipment to create new sheet metal? From the materials-science perspective, Tasan said, that shouldn’t work, for several reasons.But it does. “We’ve demonstrated the potential in two papers and two patent applications already,” he said. Tasan noted that the approach focuses on high-quality manufacturing scrap. “This is not junkyard scrap,” he said.Tasan went on to explain how and why the new process works from a materials-science perspective, then gave examples of how the recycled steel could be used. “My favorite example is the stainless-steel countertops in restaurants. Do you really need the mechanical performance of stainless steel there?” You could use the recycled steel instead.Hessam Azarijafari addressed another common, indispensable material: concrete. This year marks the 16th anniversary of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub), which began when a set of industry leaders and politicians reached out to MIT to learn more about the benefits and environmental impacts of concrete.The hub’s work now centers around three main themes: working toward a carbon-neutral concrete industry; the development of a sustainable infrastructure, with a focus on pavement; and how to make our cities more resilient to natural hazards through investment in stronger, cooler construction.Azarijafari, the deputy director of the CSHub, went on to give several examples of research results that have come out of the CSHub. These include many models to identify different pathways to decarbonize the cement and concrete sector. Other work involves pavements, which the general public thinks of as inert, Azarijafari said. “But we have [created] a state-of-the-art model that can assess interactions between pavement and vehicles.” It turns out that pavement surface characteristics and structural performance “can influence excess fuel consumption by inducing an additional rolling resistance.”Azarijafari emphasized  the importance of working closely with policymakers and industry. That engagement is key “to sharing the lessons that we have learned so far.”Toward a resource-efficient microchip industryConsider the following: In 2020 the number of cell phones, GPS units, and other devices connected to the “cloud,” or large data centers, exceeded 50 billion. And data-center traffic in turn is scaling by 1,000 times every 10 years.But all of that computation takes energy. And “all of it has to happen at a constant cost of energy, because the gross domestic product isn’t changing at that rate,” said Kimerling. The solution is to either produce much more energy, or make information technology much more energy-efficient. Several speakers at the workshop focused on the materials and components behind the latter.Key to everything they discussed: adding photonics, or using light to carry information, to the well-established electronics behind today’s microchips. “The bottom line is that integrating photonics with electronics in the same package is the transistor for the 21st century. If we can’t figure out how to do that, then we’re not going to be able to scale forward,” said Kimerling, who is director of the MIT Microphotonics Center.MIT has long been a leader in the integration of photonics with electronics. For example, Kimerling described the Integrated Photonics System Roadmap – International (IPSR-I), a global network of more than 400 industrial and R&D partners working together to define and create photonic integrated circuit technology. IPSR-I is led by the MIT Microphotonics Center and PhotonDelta. Kimerling began the organization in 1997.Last year IPSR-I released its latest roadmap for photonics-electronics integration, “which  outlines a clear way forward and specifies an innovative learning curve for scaling performance and applications for the next 15 years,” Kimerling said.Another major MIT program focused on the future of the microchip industry is FUTUR-IC, a new global alliance for sustainable microchip manufacturing. Begun last year, FUTUR-IC is funded by the National Science Foundation.“Our goal is to build a resource-efficient microchip industry value chain,” said Anuradha Murthy Agarwal, a principal research scientist at the MRL and leader of FUTUR-IC. That includes all of the elements that go into manufacturing future microchips, including workforce education and techniques to mitigate potential environmental effects.FUTUR-IC is also focused on electronic-photonic integration. “My mantra is to use electronics for computation, [and] shift to photonics for communication to bring this energy crisis in control,” Agarwal said.But integrating electronic chips with photonic chips is not easy. To that end, Agarwal described some of the challenges involved. For example, currently it is difficult to connect the optical fibers carrying communications to a microchip. That’s because the alignment between the two must be almost perfect or the light will disperse. And the dimensions involved are minuscule. An optical fiber has a diameter of only millionths of a meter. As a result, today each connection must be actively tested with a laser to ensure that the light will come through.That said, Agarwal went on to describe a new coupler between the fiber and chip that could solve the problem and allow robots to passively assemble the chips (no laser needed). The work, which was conducted by researchers including MIT graduate student Drew Wenninger, Agarwal, and Kimerling, has been patented, and is reported in two papers. A second recent breakthrough in this area involving a printed micro-reflector was described by Juejun “JJ” Hu, John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.FUTUR-IC is also leading educational efforts for training a future workforce, as well as techniques for detecting — and potentially destroying — the perfluroalkyls (PFAS, or “forever chemicals”) released during microchip manufacturing. FUTUR-IC educational efforts, including virtual reality and game-based learning, were described by Sajan Saini, education director for FUTUR-IC. PFAS detection and remediation were discussed by Aristide Gumyusenge, an assistant professor in DMSE, and Jesus Castro Esteban, a postdoc in the Department of Chemistry.Other presenters at the workshop included Antoine Allanore, the Heather N. Lechtman Professor of Materials Science and Engineering; Katrin Daehn, a postdoc in the Allanore lab; Xuanhe Zhao, the Uncas (1923) and Helen Whitaker Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering; Richard Otte, CEO of Promex; and Carl Thompson, the Stavros V. Salapatas Professor in Materials Science and Engineering. More

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      MIT students advance solutions for water and food with the help of J-WAFS

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      For the past decade, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) has been instrumental in promoting student engagement across the Institute to help solve the world’s most pressing water and food system challenges. As part of J-WAFS’ central mission of securing the world’s water and food supply, J-WAFS aims to cultivate the next generation of leaders in the water and food sectors by encouraging MIT student involvement through a variety of programs and mechanisms that provide research funding, mentorship, and other types of support.J-WAFS offers a range of opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students to engage in the advancement of water and food systems research. These include graduate student fellowships, travel grants for participation in conferences, funding for research projects in India, video competitions highlighting students’ water and food research, and support for student-led organizations and initiatives focused on critical areas in water and food.As J-WAFS enters its second decade, it continues to expose students across the Institute to experiential hands-on water and food research, career and other networking opportunities, and a platform to develop their innovative and collaborative solutions.Graduate student fellowshipsIn 2017, J-WAFS inaugurated two graduate student fellowships: the Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellowship for Water Solutions and the J-WAFS Graduate Student Fellowship Program. The Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellowship for Water Solutions is a doctoral fellowship for students pursuing research related to water for human need at MIT. The fellowship is made possible by Elina and Nikhil Meswani and family. Each year, up to two outstanding students are selected to receive fellowship support for one academic semester. Through it, J-WAFS seeks to support distinguished MIT students who are pursuing solutions to the pressing global water supply challenges of our time. The J-WAFS Fellowship for Water and Food Solutions is funded by the J-WAFS Research Affiliate Program, which offers companies the opportunity to collaborate with MIT on water and food research. A portion of each research affiliate’s fees supports this fellowship.Aditya Avinash Ghodgaonkar, a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE), reflects on how receiving a J-WAFS graduate student fellowship positively impacted his research on the design of low-cost emitters for affordable, resilient drip irrigation for farmers: “My J-WAFS fellowship gave me the flexibility and financial support needed to explore new directions in the area of clog-resistant drip irrigation that had a higher risk element that might not have been feasible to manage on an industrially sponsored project,” Ghodgaonkar explains. Emitters, which control the volume and flow rate of water used during irrigation, often clog due to small particles like sand. Ghodgaonkar worked with Professor Amos Winter, and with farmers in resource-constrained communities in countries like Jordan and Morocco, to develop an emitter that is mechanically more resistant to clogging. Ghodgaonkar reports that their energy-efficient, compact, clog-resistant drip emitters are being commercialized by Toro and may be available for retail in the next few years. The opportunities and funding support Ghodgaonkar has received from J-WAFS contributed greatly to his entrepreneurial success and the advancement of the water and agricultural sectors.Linzixuan (Rhoda) Zhang, a PhD student advised by Professor Robert Langer and Principal Research Scientist Ana Jaklenec of the Department of Chemical Engineering, was a 2022 J-WAFS Graduate Student Fellow. With the fellowship, Zhang was able to focus on her innovative research on a novel micronutrient delivery platform that fortifies food with essential vitamins and nutrients. “We intake micronutrients from basically all the healthy food that we eat; however, around the world there are about 2 billion people currently suffering from micronutrient deficiency because they do not have access to very healthy, very fresh food,” Zhang says. Her research involves the development of biodegradable polymers that can deliver these micronutrients in harsh environments in underserved regions of the world. “Vitamin A is not very stable, for example; we have vitamin A in different vegetables but when we cook them, the vitamin can easily degrade,” Zhang explains. However, when vitamin A is encapsulated in the microparticle platform, simulation of boiling and of the stomach environment shows that vitamin A was stabilized. “The meaningful factors behind this experiment are real,” says Zhang. The J-WAFS Fellowship helped position Zhang to win the 2024 Collegiate Inventors Competition for this work.J-WAFS grant for water and food projects in IndiaJ-WAFS India Grants are intended to further the work being pursued by MIT individuals as a part of their research, innovation, entrepreneurship, coursework, or related activities. Faculty, research staff, and undergraduate and graduate students are eligible to apply. The program aims to support projects that will benefit low-income communities in India, and facilitates travel and other expenses related to directly engaging with those communities.Gokul Sampath, a PhD student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and Jonathan Bessette, a PhD student in MechE, initially met through J-WAFS-sponsored conference travel, and discovered their mutual interest in the problem of arsenic in water in India. Together, they developed a cross-disciplinary proposal that received a J-WAFS India Grant. Their project is studying how women in rural India make decisions about where they fetch water for their families, and how these decisions impact exposure to groundwater contaminants like naturally-occurring arsenic. Specifically, they are developing low-cost remote sensors to better understand water-fetching practices. The grant is enabling Sampath and Bessette to equip Indian households with sensor-enabled water collection devices (“smart buckets”) that will provide them data about fetching practices in arsenic-affected villages. By demonstrating the efficacy of a sensor-based approach, the team hopes to address a major data gap in international development. “It is due to programs like the Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab that I was able to obtain the support for interdisciplinary work on connecting water security, public health, and regional planning in India,” says Sampath.J-WAFS travel grants for water conferencesIn addition to funding graduate student research, J-WAFS also provides grants for graduate students to attend water conferences worldwide. Typically, students will only receive travel funding to attend conferences where they are presenting their research. However, the J-WAFS travel grants support learning, networking, and career exploration opportunities for exceptional MIT graduate students who are interested in a career in the water sector, whether in academia, nonprofits, government, or industry.Catherine Lu ’23, MNG ’24 was awarded a 2023 Travel Grant to attend the UNC Water and Health Conference in North Carolina. The conference serves as a curated space for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to convene and assess data, scrutinize scientific findings, and enhance new and existing strategies for expanding access to and provision of services for water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). Lu, who studied civil and environmental engineering, worked with Professor Dara Entekhabi on modeling and predicting droughts in Africa using satellite Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) data. As she evaluated her research trajectory and career options in the water sector, Lu found the conference to be informative and enlightening. “I was able to expand my knowledge on all the sectors and issues that are related to water and the implications they have on my research topic.” Furthermore, she notes: “I was really impressed by the diverse range of people that were able to attend the conference. The global perspective offered at the conference provided a valuable context for understanding the challenges and successes of different regions around the world — from WASH education in schools in Zimbabwe and India to rural water access disparities in the United States … Being able to engage with such passionate and dedicated people has motivated me to continue progress in this sector.” Following graduation, Lu secured a position as a water resources engineer at CDM Smith, an engineering and construction firm.Daniela Morales, a master’s student in city planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, was a 2024 J-WAFS Travel Grant recipient who attended World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden. The annual global conference is organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute and convenes leading experts, decision-makers, and professionals in the water sector to actively engage in discussions and developments addressing critical water-related challenges. Morales’ research interests involve drinking water quality and access in rural and peri-urban areas affected by climate change impacts, the effects of municipal water shutoffs on marginalized communities, and the relationship between regional water management and public health outcomes. When reflecting on her experience at the conference, Morales writes: “Being part of this event has given me so much motivation to continue my professional and academic journey in water management as it relates to public health and city planning … There was so much energy that was collectively generated in the conference, and so many new ideas that I was able to process around my own career interests and my role as a future planner in water management, that the last day of the conference felt less like an ending and more of the beginning of a new chapter. I am excited to take all the information I learned to work towards my own research, and continue to build relationships with all the new contacts I made.” Morales also notes that without the support of the J-WAFS grant, “I would not have had the opportunity to make it to Stockholm and participate in such a unique week of water wisdom.”Seed grants and Solutions grantsJ-WAFS offers seed grants for early-stage research and Solutions Grants for later-stage research that is ready to move from the lab to the commercial world. Proposals for both types of grants must be submitted and led by an MIT principal investigator, but graduate students, and sometimes undergraduates, are often supported by these grants.Arjav Shah, a PhD-MBA student in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering and the MIT Sloan School of Management, is currently pursuing the commercialization of a water treatment technology that was first supported through a 2019 J-WAFS seed grant and then a 2022 J-WAFS Solutions Grant with Professor Patrick Doyle. The technology uses hydrogels to remove a broad range of micropollutants from water. The Solutions funding enables entrepreneurial students and postdocs to lay the groundwork to commercialize a technology by assessing use scenarios and exploring business needs with actual potential customers. “With J-WAFS’ support, we were not only able to scale up the technology, but also gain a deeper understanding of market needs and develop a strong business case,” says Shah. Shah and the Solutions team have discovered that the hydrogels could be used in several real-world contexts, ranging from large-scale industrial use to small-scale, portable, off-grid applications. “We are incredibly grateful to J-WAFS for their support, particularly in fostering industry connections and facilitating introductions to investors, potential customers, and experts,” Shah adds.Shah was also a 2023 J-WAFS Travel Grant awardee who attended Stockholm World Water Week that year. He says, “J-WAFS has played a pivotal role in both my academic journey at MIT and my entrepreneurial pursuits. J-WAFS support has helped me grow both as a scientist and an aspiring entrepreneur. The exposure and opportunities provided have allowed me to develop critical skills such as customer discovery, financial modeling, business development, fundraising, and storytelling — all essential for translating technology into real-world impact. These experiences provided invaluable insights into what it takes to bring a technology from the lab to market.”Shah is currently leading efforts to spin out a company to commercialize the hydrogel research. Since receiving J-WAFS support, the team has made major strides toward launching a startup company, including winning the Pillar VC Moonshot Prize, Cleantech Open National Grand Prize, MassCEC Catalyst Award, and participation in the NSF I-Corps National Program.J-WAFS student video competitionsJ-WAFS has hosted two video competitions: MIT Research for a Water Secure Future and MIT Research for a Food Secure Future, in honor of World Water Day and Word Food Day, respectively. In these competitions, students are tasked with creating original videos showcasing their innovative water and food research conducted at MIT. The opportunity is open to MIT students, postdocs, and recent alumni.Following a review by a distinguished panel of judges, Vishnu Jayaprakash SM ’19, PhD ’22 won first place in the 2022 J-WAFS World Food Day Student Video Competition for his video focused on eliminating pesticide pollution and waste. Jayaprakash delved into the science behind AgZen-Cloak, a new generation of agricultural sprays that prevents pesticides from bouncing off of plants and seeping into the ground, thus causing harmful runoff. The J-WAFS competition provided Jayaprakash with a platform to highlight the universal, low-cost, and environmentally sustainable benefits of AgZen-Cloak. Jayaprakash worked on similar technology as a funded student on a J-WAFS Solutions grant with Professor Kripa Varanasi. The Solutions grant, in fact, helped Jayaprakash and Varanasi to launch AgZen, a company that deploys AgZen-Cloak and other products and technologies to control the interactions of droplets and sprays with crop surfaces. AgZen is currently helping farmers sustainably tend to their agricultural plots while also protecting the environment.  In 2021, Hilary Johnson SM ’18, PhD ’22, won first place in the J-WAFS World Water Day video competition. Her video highlighted her work on a novel pump that uses adaptive hydraulics for improved pump efficiency. The pump was part of a sponsored research project with Xylem Inc., a J-WAFS Research Affiliate company, and Professor Alex Slocum of MechE. At the time, Johnson was a PhD student in Slocum’s lab. She was instrumental in the development of the pump by engineering the volute to expand and contract to meet changing system flow rates. Johnson went on to later become a 2021-22 J-WAFS Fellow, and is now a full-time mechanical engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.J-WAFS-supported student clubsJ-WAFS-supported student clubs provide members of the MIT student community the opportunity for networking and professional advancement through events focused on water and food systems topics.J-WAFS is a sponsor of the MIT Water Club, a student-led group that supports and promotes the engagement of the MIT community in water-sector-related activism, dissemination of information, and research innovation. The club allows students to spearhead the organization of conferences, lectures, outreach events, research showcases, and entrepreneurship competitions including the former MIT Water Innovation Prize and MIT Water Summit. J-WAFS not only sponsors the MIT Water Club financially, but offers mentorship and guidance to the leadership team.The MIT Food and Agriculture Club is also supported by J-WAFS. The club’s mission is to promote the engagement of the MIT community in food and agriculture-related topics. In doing so, the students lead initiatives to share the innovative technology and business solutions researchers are developing in food and agriculture systems. J-WAFS assists in the connection of passionate MIT students with those who are actively working in the food and agriculture industry beyond the Institute. From 2015 to 2022, J-WAFS also helped the club co-produce the Rabobank-MIT Food and Agribusiness Innovation Prize — a student business plan competition for food and agricultural startups.From 2023 onward, the MIT Water Club and the MIT Food and Ag Club have been joining forces to organize a combined prize competition: The MIT Water, Food and Agriculture (WFA) Innovation Prize. The WFA Innovation Prize is a business plan competition for student-led startups focused on any region or market. The teams present business plans involving a technology, product, service, or process that is aimed at solving a problem related to water, food, or agriculture. The competition encourages all approaches to innovation, from engineering and product design to policy and data analytics. The goal of the competition is to help emerging entrepreneurs translate research and ideas into businesses, access mentors and resources, and build networks in the water, food, and agriculture industries. J-WAFS offers financial and in-kind support, working with student leaders to plan, organize, and implement the stages of the competition through to the final pitch event. This year, J-WAFS is continuing to support the WFA team, which is led by Ali Decker, an MBA student at MIT Sloan, and Sam Jakshtis, a master’s student in MIT’s science in real estate development program. The final pitch event will take place on April 30 in the MIT Media Lab.“I’ve had the opportunity to work with Renee Robins, executive director of J-WAFS, on MIT’s Water, Food and Agriculture Innovation Prize for the past two years, and it has been both immensely valuable and a delight to have her support,” says Decker. “Renee has helped us in all areas of prize planning: brainstorming new ideas, thinking through startup finalist selection, connecting to potential sponsors and partners, and more. Above all, she supports us with passion and joy; each time we meet, I look forward to our discussion,” Decker adds.J-WAFS eventsThroughout the year, J-WAFS aims to offer events that will engage any in the MIT student community who are working in water or food systems. For example, on April 19, 2023, J-WAFS teamed up with the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and the Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI) to co-host an MIT student poster session for Earth Month. The theme of the poster session was “MIT research for a changing planet,” and it featured work from 11 MIT students with projects in water, food, energy, and the environment. The students, who represented a range of MIT departments, labs, and centers, were on hand to discuss their projects and engage with those attending the event. Attendees could vote for their favorite poster after being asked to consider which poster most clearly communicated the research problem and the potential solution. At the end of the night, votes were tallied and the winner of the “People’s Choice Award” for best poster was Elaine Liu ’24, an undergraduate in mathematics at the time of the event. Liu’s poster featured her work on managing failure cascades in systems with wind power.J-WAFS also hosts less-structured student networking events. For instance, during MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) in January 2024, J-WAFS hosted an ice cream social for student networking. The informal event was an opportunity for graduate and undergraduate students from across the Institute to meet and mingle with like-minded peers working in, or interested in, water and food systems. Students were able to explain their current and future research, interests, and projects and ask questions while exchanging ideas, engaging with one another, and potentially forming collaborations, or at the very least sharing insights.Looking ahead to 10 more years of student impactOver the past decade, J-WAFS has demonstrated a strong commitment to empowering students in the water and food sectors, fostering an environment where they can confidently drive meaningful change and innovation. PhD student Jonathan Bessette sums up the J-WAFS community as a “one-of-a-kind community that enables essential research in water and food that otherwise would not be pursued. It’s this type of research that is not often the focus of major funding, yet has such a strong impact in sustainable development.”J-WAFS aims to provide students with the support and tools they need to conduct authentic and meaningful water and food-related research that will benefit communities around the world. This support, coupled with an MIT education, enables students to become leaders in sustainable water and food systems. As the second decade of J-WAFS programming begins, the J-WAFS team remains committed to fostering student collaboration across the Institute, driving innovative solutions to revitalize the world’s water and food systems while empowering the next generation of pioneers in these critical fields.  More