07/09/2026
J-WAFS is excited to announce this year’s round of seed grant recipients! Seed grants award up to $150,000 over a two-year period and support new, innovative projects at MIT. Projects may address all areas related to water and food security, safety, and sustainability for human use, but of particular interest are projects at the climate/water nexus or the climate/food nexus.
A proposal by Stacy Springs, Executive Director of MIT’s Center for Biomedical Innovation, aims to detect dangerous waterborne viruses like Norovirus and Hepatitis A on-site within an hour, without needing specialized laboratory equipment.
Benedetto Marelli, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (MIT School of Engineering) and a faculty leader in the MIT Climate Project, plans to genetically engineer soil bacteria to be able to sense heat waves and accordingly signal their host plant to put up defenses.
Fikile Brushett, Ralph Landau Professor and director of the David H. Koch School of Chemical Engineering Practice, proposes a way to increase the reverse osmosis (RO) freshwater recovery rates from brackish and saline sources.
A project proposed by Lammot Du Pont Professor of Chemical Engineering Heather J. Kulik (MIT Chemical Engineering (ChemE)) and the A. Thomas Guertin Professor of Chemistry Jeremiah Johnson (MIT Department of Chemistry) hopes to use machine learning to identify the most effective material designs at removing forever chemicals known as PFAS from drinking water.
Saurabh Amin, Edmund K. Turner Professor of MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering, along with Deepjyoti Deka, a research scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative, plan to build a network model of how groundwater moves through connected underground basins in order to evaluate the trade-offs between data center growth and protecting groundwater that communities depend on for drinking water and farming.
Vice President of Energy and Climate Evelyn Wang plans to use computational models to develop solar-powered dehumidification and ground source heat pump designs to reduce the energy and water consumption of greenhouse agriculture, which could aid the food security of dry regions not suited for agriculture.
Professor in MIT Mechanical Engineering Giovanni Traverso aims to reduce cow methane emissions by building a device that can remain in a cow’s rumen to measure methane over the course of a week. This will allow him to compare different feed additives to assess which one most consistently lowers methane emissions without harming the animal’s nutrition.
Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering Gang Chen is working to improve the effectiveness of thermal desalination technology, laying the groundwork for highly efficient desalination and other thermal separation applications.
