MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) has redefined the realm of water and food research at MIT, enhancing faculty involvement and igniting fresh research and innovation in these vital sectors. Supported by philanthropic, corporate, and governmental entities, J-WAFS’ tactical methodology encompasses the complete research life cycle, from backing early-stage research to providing commercialization grants for more developed initiatives.
In the last ten years, J-WAFS has allocated about $25 million in direct research funding to assist MIT faculty engaged in groundbreaking research with the potential for substantial impact. “Since granting our initial cohort of seed grants in 2015, it’s impressive to reflect and see that over 10 percent of MIT faculty have availed themselves of J-WAFS funding,” states J-WAFS Executive Director Renee J. Robins ’83. “Numerous professors had never tackled water or food issues prior to their inaugural J-WAFS grant.”
By promoting interdisciplinary collaborations and endorsing high-risk, high-reward initiatives, J-WAFS has enhanced the potential of MIT faculty to engage in pioneering research that tackles some of the most urgent issues related to our water and food systems.
Attracting MIT faculty to water and food research
J-WAFS’ open calls for proposals empower faculty to investigate innovative ideas and devise impactful strategies for addressing significant water and food system challenges. Professor Patrick Doyle’s research in water purification embodies this influence. “Without J-WAFS, I would have never ventured into the domain of water purification,” Doyle reflects. Initially focusing on pharmaceutical manufacturing and drug delivery, interactions with J-WAFS-funded colleagues encouraged him to channel his expertise in soft materials toward water purification. “The combination of funding and the J-WAFS community drew me into a deep engagement with some of the fundamental challenges in water purification and security,” he articulates.
In a similar vein, Professor Otto Cordero from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) utilized J-WAFS funding to redirect his research towards aquaculture. Cordero acknowledges that his first J-WAFS seed grant “has been profoundly influential for my lab as it enabled me to embark on a new path, with no preliminary data available.” Cordero’s specialization lies in microbial communities. Though initially unacquainted with aquaculture, he recognized the significance of microbial communities in maintaining the health of farmed aquatic species.
Assisting early-career faculty
New assistant professors at MIT have notably reaped benefits from J-WAFS funding and resources. J-WAFS has played a crucial role in shaping the careers and research paths of many emerging faculty members by encouraging them to delve into innovative research fields and, in many cases, providing their first research grant from MIT.
Professor Ariel Furst contemplates how crucial J-WAFS’ investment has been in pushing her research forward. “This was among the first grants I secured after joining MIT, and it has profoundly influenced the trajectory of my group’s research initiative,” Furst notes. With J-WAFS’ endorsement, her lab has reached milestones in chemical detection and remediation technologies for water. “The support from J-WAFS has allowed us to extend the platform funded through this project, expanding beyond initial uses to the broader detection of environmental pollutants and their degradation,” she elaborates.
Karthish Manthiram, now a professor of chemical engineering and chemistry at Caltech, discusses how J-WAFS’ early investment empowered him and other young faculty to chase ambitious concepts. “J-WAFS took a considerable risk on us,” Manthiram states. His research on breaking the nitrogen triple bond to produce ammonia for fertilizers was initially met with doubt. However, J-WAFS’ seed funding provided the foundational support his lab needed to pioneer breakthroughs that later attracted significant backing from the National Science Foundation (NSF). “That initial funding from J-WAFS has been crucial to our enduring success,” he remarks.
These narratives highlight the extensive influence of J-WAFS’ support for early-career faculty and its dedication to equipping them to confront critical global challenges and innovate fearlessly.
Enabling subsequent funding
J-WAFS seed grants allow faculty to investigate emerging research fields, yet external funding for ongoing efforts is typically essential to fully realize the potential of these innovative concepts. “Securing funding for early-stage or unconventional ideas can often be challenging,” comments J-WAFS Director Professor John H. Lienhard V. “When I established J-WAFS in 2014, my aspiration was for seed grants to enable PIs [principal investigators] to validate novel concepts so that they would be appealing for additional funding. Now, after a decade, J-WAFS-funded research projects have attracted over $21 million in subsequent grants for MIT.”
Professor Retsef Levi led a seed investigation into how agricultural supply chains impact food safety, working with a team of faculty from the MIT schools of Engineering and Science as well as the MIT Sloan School of Management. This team transformed their seed grant research into a multi-million-dollar follow-up project. Levi shares, “The J-WAFS seed funding established our team’s initial credibility, which was integral to our success in securing substantial funding from various other sources.”
Dave Des Marais was an assistant professor in the Department of CEE when he received his first J-WAFS seed grant. The funding facilitated his exploration of how plant growth and physiology are governed by genes and their interaction with the environment. The seed grant helped propel his lab’s efforts towards enhancing climate change resilience in agricultural systems. This led to his Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the NSF, an esteemed recognition for junior faculty. Having transitioned to an associate professor, Des Marais’ ongoing project examining the mechanisms and impacts of genomic and environmental interactions is backed by a five-year, $1,490,000 NSF grant. “J-WAFS provided crucial funding to kickstart my new research,” remarks Des Marais.
Encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration
Des Marais’ seed grant was also instrumental in fostering new collaborations. He mentions, “The J-WAFS grant enabled me to form a partnership with Professor Caroline Uhler in EECS/IDSS [the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science/Institute for Data, Systems, and Society] that significantly influenced how I think about framing and testing hypotheses. One of the standout aspects of J-WAFS is its role in facilitating unexpected connections among MIT faculty with diverse yet complementary expertise.”
Professors A. John Hart from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Benedetto Marelli from CEE also embarked on a new interdisciplinary collaboration with J-WAFS funding. They teamed up to combine their knowledge in biomaterials, microfabrication, and manufacturing to create printed silk-based colorimetric sensors for detecting food spoilage. “The J-WAFS Seed Grant granted us a distinctive opportunity for multidisciplinary collaboration,” Hart emphasizes.
Professors Stephen Graves from the MIT Sloan School of Management and Bishwapriya Sanyal from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) teamed up to investigate new research surrounding agricultural supply chains. Conducting fieldwork in Senegal, their J-WAFS-supported initiative united specialists in international development with operations management experts to analyze how small enterprises and government bodies affect access to and adoption of irrigation technologies by underprivileged farmers. “We leveraged J-WAFS to ignite a collaboration that would have been unlikely without this grant,” they point out. Being a part of the J-WAFS community also introduced them to researchers in Professor Amos Winter’s
laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering focusing on irrigation innovations for resource-limited environments. DUSP doctoral candidate Mark Brennan remarks, “We had the opportunity to exchange our insights on the functionality of irrigation markets and supply chains in developing nations and then juxtapose that with their comprehension of how irrigation system models operate.”
Timothy Swager, chemistry professor, along with Rohit Karnik, mechanical engineering professor and associate director of J-WAFS, worked together on a sponsored research initiative funded by Xylem, Inc. through the J-WAFS Research Affiliate program. This interdisciplinary investigation, aimed at creating ultra-sensitive sensors for hazardous PFAS substances, originated after a sequence of workshops organized by J-WAFS. Swager and Karnik participated in these workshops, which culminated in their joint proposal receiving funding from Xylem. “The funding from J-WAFS empowered us to merge the sensing expertise of Swager’s lab with my lab’s knowledge in microfluidics to create a cartridge for on-site detection of PFAS,” explains Karnik. “J-WAFS has greatly enhanced my research program in countless ways,” adds Swager, who is currently pursuing the commercialization of this technology.
Fostering global collaboration and influence
J-WAFS has significantly aided MIT faculty in establishing and enhancing international cooperation and impactful global research. By financing and backing projects that connect MIT researchers with global partners, J-WAFS has promoted not only technological advancements but also enriched cross-cultural awareness and involvement.
Professor Matthew Shoulders heads the first J-WAFS Grand Challenge project. In response to the initial J-WAFS call for “Grand Challenge” submissions, Shoulders assembled a multidisciplinary team at MIT to bolster climate resilience in agriculture by addressing the most inefficient aspect of photosynthesis—the notoriously ineffective carbon dioxide-fixing enzyme RuBisCO. J-WAFS financed this high-risk/high-reward venture via a competitive process involving external reviewers throughout multiple rounds of proposal refinement. The constructive feedback directed the team toward researchers with complementary skills from the Australian National University. “Our collaborative group of biochemists, synthetic biologists, computational biologists, and chemists is tightly intertwined with plant biologists and field trial specialists, generating a solid feedback loop for enzyme engineering,” Shoulders states. “Together, this team has the potential to make a concerted effort utilizing the latest, advanced techniques to engineer crop RuBisCO with an aim to achieve significant advancements in securing a reliable crop supply, ideally with simultaneous enhancements in both food and water security.”
Professor Leon Glicksman and Research Engineer Eric Verploegen’s team developed an affordable cooling chamber to maintain the freshness of fruits and vegetables gathered by smallholder farmers lacking access to cold chain storage. The guidance from J-WAFS encouraged the team to focus on practical considerations influenced by local collaborators, ensuring market viability. “As our innovative forced-air evaporative cooling chamber took shape, we consistently verified that our solution was developing in a way competitive regarding cost, efficiency, and usability compared to existing commercial options,” elaborates Verploegen. Following the team’s initial seed grant, they attained a J-WAFS Solutions commercialization grant, which Verploegen mentions “further inspired us to form alliances with local organizations capable of commercializing the technology earlier in the process than we might have otherwise pursued.” The team has since released an open-source design as part of its commercialization plan to enhance accessibility and effect.
Facilitating corporate-sponsored research opportunities for MIT faculty
J-WAFS also plays a crucial role in cultivating private partnerships, fostering collaborations that unite industry and academia. Through its Research Affiliate Program, for instance, J-WAFS offers opportunities for faculty to team up with industry on sponsored research, assisting in transforming scientific breakthroughs into licensable intellectual property (IP) that corporations can convert into commercial products and services.
J-WAFS introduced professor of mechanical engineering Alex Slocum to a challenge posed by its research affiliate company, Xylem: how to create a more energy-efficient pump capable of handling fluctuating flows. With centrifugal pumps estimated to consume approximately 6 percent of U.S. electricity annually, Slocum and his then-graduate student Hilary Johnson SM ’18, PhD ’22 engineered an innovative variable volute mechanism that lessens energy consumption. “Xylem envisions this as the inaugural model of a new category of adaptive pump design,” remarks Johnson. The research resulted in a pump prototype and associated IP that Xylem is working to commercialize. Johnson observes that these results “would not have materialized without J-WAFS’ support and facilitation of the partnership with Xylem.” Slocum adds, “J-WAFS enabled Hilary to initiate her work on pumps, and Xylem sponsored the research to advance her to this stage … where she has the chance to achieve far more than the original project entailed.”
Swager commends the influence of corporate research sponsorship through J-WAFS on his research and technology transfer efforts. His PFAS project with Karnik mentioned earlier was also backed by Xylem. “Xylem was an exceptional sponsor for our research. Their involvement and insights were vital in progressing our PFAS detection technology, which is now on the route to commercialization,” asserts Swager.
Aiming ahead
What J-WAFS has accomplished transcends a compilation of research initiatives; a decade of influence illustrates how J-WAFS’ methodology has been revolutionary for many MIT faculty members. As Professor Mathias Kolle expresses it, his engagement with J-WAFS “significantly impacted how we perceive our research and its wider implications.” He remarks that it “broadened my understanding of the obstacles in the realm of water and food systems and the diverse creative concepts explored by MIT.”
This flourishing environment of innovation, cooperation, and academic advancement surrounding water and food research has not merely assisted faculty in forming interdisciplinary and international partnerships, but has also resulted in the commercialization of groundbreaking technologies with practical applications. C. Cem Taşan, the POSCO Associate Professor of Metallurgy leading a J-WAFS Solutions commercialization team poised to launch a startup, sums it up by stating, “Without J-WAFS, we wouldn’t be in this position at all.”
As J-WAFS contemplates the future, its ongoing dedication — buoyed by the generosity of its supporters and collaborators — builds upon a decade of accomplishments that empower MIT faculty to progress water and food research tackling some of the globe’s most urgent challenges.