MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Meals Programs Lab (J-WAFS) has remodeled the panorama of water and meals analysis at MIT, driving school engagement and catalyzing new analysis and innovation in these crucial areas. With philanthropic, company, and authorities assist, J-WAFS’ strategic method spans the whole analysis life cycle, from assist for early-stage analysis to commercialization grants for extra superior tasks.
Over the previous decade, J-WAFS has invested roughly $25 million in direct analysis funding to assist MIT school pursuing transformative analysis with the potential for important affect. “Since awarding our first cohort of seed grants in 2015, it’s outstanding to look again and see that over 10 p.c of the MIT school have benefited from J-WAFS funding,” observes J-WAFS Government Director Renee J. Robins ’83. “Many of those professors hadn’t labored on water or meals challenges earlier than their first J-WAFS grant.”
By fostering interdisciplinary collaborations and supporting high-risk, high-reward tasks, J-WAFS has amplified the capability of MIT school to pursue groundbreaking analysis that addresses a few of the world’s most urgent challenges going through our water and meals techniques.
Drawing MIT school to water and meals analysis
J-WAFS open requires proposals allow school to discover daring concepts and develop impactful approaches to tackling crucial water and meals system challenges. Professor Patrick Doyle’s work in water purification exemplifies this affect. “With out J-WAFS, I might have by no means ventured into the sector of water purification,” Doyle displays. Whereas beforehand targeted on pharmaceutical manufacturing and drug supply, publicity to J-WAFS-funded friends led him to use his experience in comfortable supplies to water purification. “Each the funding and the J-WAFS group led me to be deeply engaged in understanding a few of the key challenges in water purification and water safety,” he explains.
Equally, Professor Otto Cordero of the Division of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) leveraged J-WAFS funding to pivot his analysis into aquaculture. Cordero explains that his first J-WAFS seed grant “has been extraordinarily influential for my lab as a result of it allowed me to take a step in a brand new path, with no preliminary information in hand.” Cordero’s experience is in microbial communities. He was earlier unfamiliar with aquaculture, however he noticed the relevance of microbial communities the well being of farmed aquatic organisms.
Supporting early-career school
New assistant professors at MIT have notably benefited from J-WAFS funding and assist. J-WAFS has performed a transformative position in shaping the careers and analysis trajectories of many new school members by encouraging them to discover novel analysis areas, and in lots of cases offering their first MIT analysis grant.
Professor Ariel Furst displays on how pivotal J-WAFS’ funding has been in advancing her analysis. “This was one of many first grants I obtained after beginning at MIT, and it has actually formed the event of my group’s analysis program,” Furst explains. With J-WAFS’ backing, her lab has achieved breakthroughs in chemical detection and remediation applied sciences for water. “The assist of J-WAFS has enabled us to develop the platform funded by this work past the preliminary purposes to the overall detection of environmental contaminants and degradation of these contaminants,” she elaborates.
Karthish Manthiram, now a professor of chemical engineering and chemistry at Caltech, explains how J-WAFS’ early funding enabled him and different younger school to pursue bold concepts. “J-WAFS took an enormous threat on us,” Manthiram displays. His analysis on breaking the nitrogen triple bond to make ammonia for fertilizer was initially met with skepticism. Nonetheless, J-WAFS’ seed funding allowed his lab to put the groundwork for breakthroughs that later attracted important Nationwide Science Basis (NSF) assist. “That early funding from J-WAFS has been pivotal to our long-term success,” he notes.
These tales underscore the broad affect of J-WAFS’ assist for early-career school, and its dedication to empowering them to handle crucial international challenges and innovate boldly.
Fueling follow-on funding
J-WAFS seed grants allow school to discover nascent analysis areas, however exterior funding for continued work is often vital to realize the total potential of those novel concepts. “It’s usually laborious to get funding for early stage or out-of-the-box concepts,” notes J-WAFS Director Professor John H. Lienhard V. “My hope, once I based J-WAFS in 2014, was that seed grants would enable PIs [principal investigators] to show out novel concepts in order that they’d be enticing for follow-on funding. And after 10 years, J-WAFS-funded analysis tasks have introduced greater than $21 million in subsequent awards to MIT.”
Professor Retsef Levi led a seed research on how agricultural provide chains have an effect on meals security, with a workforce of school spanning the MIT faculties Engineering and Science in addition to the MIT Sloan College of Administration. The workforce parlayed their seed grant analysis right into a multi-million-dollar follow-on initiative. Levi displays, “The J-WAFS seed funding allowed us to ascertain the preliminary credibility of our workforce, which was key to our success in acquiring giant funding from a number of different companies.”
Dave Des Marais was an assistant professor within the Division of CEE when he obtained his first J-WAFS seed grant. The funding supported his analysis on how plant progress and physiology are managed by genes and work together with the setting. The seed grant helped launch his lab’s work addressing enhancing local weather change resilience in agricultural techniques. The work led to his College Early Profession Growth (CAREER) Award from the NSF, a prestigious honor for junior school members. Now an affiliate professor, Des Marais’ ongoing venture to additional examine the mechanisms and penalties of genomic and environmental interactions is supported by the five-year, $1,490,000 NSF grant. “J-WAFS offering important funding to get my new analysis underway,” feedback Des Marais.
Stimulating interdisciplinary collaboration
Des Marais’ seed grant was additionally key to growing new collaborations. He explains, “the J-WAFS grant supported me to develop a collaboration with Professor Caroline Uhler in EECS/IDSS [the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science/Institute for Data, Systems, and Society] that basically formed how I take into consideration framing and testing hypotheses. Probably the greatest issues about J-WAFS is facilitating surprising connections amongst MIT school with various but complementary ability units.”
Professors A. John Hart of the Division of Mechanical Engineering and Benedetto Marelli of CEE additionally launched a brand new interdisciplinary collaboration with J-WAFS funding. They partnered to hitch experience in biomaterials, microfabrication, and manufacturing, to create printed silk-based colorimetric sensors that detect meals spoilage. “The J-WAFS Seed Grant supplied a novel alternative for multidisciplinary collaboration,” Hart notes.
Professors Stephen Graves within the MIT Sloan College of Administration and Bishwapriya Sanyal within the Division of City Research and Planning (DUSP) partnered to pursue new analysis on agricultural provide chains. With discipline work in Senegal, their J-WAFS-supported venture introduced collectively worldwide improvement specialists and operations administration consultants to review how small corporations and authorities companies affect entry to and uptake of irrigation know-how by poorer farmers. “We used J-WAFS to spur a collaboration that will have been inconceivable with out this grant,” they clarify. Being a part of the J-WAFS group additionally launched them to researchers in Professor Amos Winter’s lab within the Division of Mechanical Engineering engaged on irrigation applied sciences for low-resource settings. DUSP doctoral candidate Mark Brennan notes, “We acquired to share our understanding of how irrigation markets and irrigation provide chains work in growing economies, after which we acquired to distinction that with their understanding of how irrigation system fashions work.”
Timothy Swager, professor of chemistry, and Rohit Karnik, professor of mechanical engineering and J-WAFS affiliate director, collaborated on a sponsored analysis venture supported by Xylem, Inc. by the J-WAFS Analysis Associates program. The cross-disciplinary analysis, which focused the event of ultra-sensitive sensors for poisonous PFAS chemical compounds, was conceived following a sequence of workshops hosted by J-WAFS. Swager and Karnik had been two of the individuals, and their involvement led to the collaborative proposal that Xylem funded. “J-WAFS funding allowed us to mix Swager lab’s experience in sensing with my lab’s experience in microfluidics to develop a cartridge for field-portable detection of PFAS,” says Karnik. “J-WAFS has enriched my analysis program in so some ways,” provides Swager, who’s now working to commercialize the know-how.
Driving international collaboration and affect
J-WAFS has additionally helped MIT school set up and advance worldwide collaboration and impactful international analysis. By funding and supporting tasks that join MIT researchers with worldwide companions, J-WAFS has not solely superior technological options, but in addition strengthened cross-cultural understanding and engagement.
Professor Matthew Shoulders leads the inaugural J-WAFS Grand Problem venture. In response to the primary J-WAFS name for “Grand Problem” proposals, Shoulders assembled an interdisciplinary workforce based mostly at MIT to boost and supply local weather resilience to agriculture by enhancing probably the most inefficient facet of photosynthesis, the notoriously-inefficient carbon dioxide-fixing plant enzyme RuBisCO. J-WAFS funded this high-risk/high-reward venture following a aggressive course of that engaged exterior reviewers by a a number of rounds of iterative proposal improvement. The technical suggestions to the workforce led them to researchers with complementary experience from the Australian Nationwide College. “Our collaborative workforce of biochemists and artificial biologists, computational biologists, and chemists is deeply built-in with plant biologists and discipline trial consultants, yielding a strong suggestions loop for enzyme engineering,” Shoulders says. “Collectively, this workforce will be capable to make a concerted effort utilizing probably the most trendy, state-of-the-art methods to engineer crop RuBisCO with an eye fixed to serving to make significant beneficial properties in securing a secure crop provide, hopefully with accompanying enhancements in each meals and water safety.”
Professor Leon Glicksman and Analysis Engineer Eric Verploegen’s workforce designed a low-cost cooling chamber to protect vegetables and fruit harvested by smallholder farmers with no entry to chilly chain storage. J-WAFS’ steerage motivated the workforce to prioritize sensible issues knowledgeable by native collaborators, making certain market competitiveness. “As our new thought for a forced-air evaporative cooling chamber was taking form, we regularly checked that our answer was evolving in a path that will be aggressive by way of value, efficiency, and usefulness to current industrial options,” explains Verploegen. Following the workforce’s preliminary seed grant, the workforce secured a J-WAFS Options commercialization grant, which Verploegen say “additional motivated us to ascertain partnerships with native organizations able to commercializing the know-how earlier within the venture than we would have executed in any other case.” The workforce has since shared an open-source design as a part of its commercialization technique to maximise accessibility and affect.
Bringing company sponsored analysis alternatives to MIT school
J-WAFS additionally performs a job in driving non-public partnerships, enabling collaborations that bridge business and academia. By means of its Analysis Affiliate Program, for instance, J-WAFS offers alternatives for school to collaborate with business on sponsored analysis, serving to to transform scientific discoveries into licensable mental property (IP) that firms can flip into industrial services.
J-WAFS launched professor of mechanical engineering Alex Slocum to a problem introduced by its analysis affiliate firm, Xylem: easy methods to design a extra energy-efficient pump for fluctuating flows. With centrifugal pumps consuming an estimated 6 p.c of U.S. electrical energy yearly, Slocum and his then-graduate pupil Hilary Johnson SM ’18, PhD ’22 developed an revolutionary variable volute mechanism that reduces power utilization. “Xylem envisions this as the primary in a brand new class of adaptive pump geometry,” feedback Johnson. The analysis produced a pump prototype and associated IP that Xylem is engaged on commercializing. Johnson notes that these outcomes “wouldn’t have been attainable with out J-WAFS assist and facilitation of the Xylem business partnership.” Slocum provides, “J-WAFS enabled Hilary to start her work on pumps, and Xylem sponsored the analysis to carry her so far … the place she has a chance to do way over the unique venture referred to as for.”
Swager speaks extremely of the affect of company analysis sponsorship by J-WAFS on his analysis and know-how translation efforts. His PFAS venture with Karnik described above was additionally supported by Xylem. “Xylem was a wonderful sponsor of our analysis. Their engagement and suggestions had been instrumental in advancing our PFAS detection know-how, now on the trail to commercialization,” Swager says.
Trying ahead
What J-WAFS has completed is greater than a group of analysis tasks; a decade of affect demonstrates how J-WAFS’ method has been transformative for a lot of MIT school members. As Professor Mathias Kolle places it, his engagement with J-WAFS “had a major affect on how we take into consideration our analysis and its broader impacts.” He provides that it “opened my eyes to the challenges within the discipline of water and meals techniques and the numerous totally different artistic concepts which are explored by MIT.”
This thriving ecosystem of innovation, collaboration, and tutorial progress round water and meals analysis has not solely helped school construct interdisciplinary and worldwide partnerships, however has additionally led to the commercialization of transformative applied sciences with real-world purposes. C. Cem Taşan, the POSCO Affiliate Professor of Metallurgy who’s main a J-WAFS Options commercialization workforce that’s about to launch a startup firm, sums it up by noting, “With out J-WAFS, we wouldn’t be right here in any respect.”
As J-WAFS seems to the long run, its continued dedication — supported by the generosity of its donors and companions — builds on a decade of success enabling MIT school to advance water and meals analysis that addresses a few of the world’s most urgent challenges.
