J-WAFS and MIT community members win IDA Innovation Forum Awards

Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) and MIT community members received high recognition at the International Desalination Association (IDA) 2022 World Congress, held in Sydney, Australia. The event's theme—'Charting resilient water solutions'—illustrated the importance of securing global water resources. J-WAFS director John Lienhard serves as a member of the IDA 2022-2024 board of directors. The IDA Innovation Forum awarded 2nd place to Jonathan Bessette, a PhD student at MIT and a recent J-WAFS travel grantee, for his research on 'Simple, sustainable, straight from the sun: Battery-less electrodialysis'. In addition, Junghyo Yoon, a postdoctoral associate and J-WAFS principal investigator (2021), and his colleague Jongyoon Han tied for 2nd place with 'Nona+ provides safe water in an easy way.' Junghyo and Jongyoon's desalination technology has developed into spinout company, NONA Technologies, thanks to the support of a 2021 J-WAFS Solutions Grant. Additionally, MIT spinout company Gradiant won the 'Most innovative company' award for their advances in water treatment, reuse and resource recovery.