This year, seven new projects led by eleven faculty PIs across six MIT departments will be funded with two-year grants of up to $200,000, overhead free.These grants, which are available to the MIT community, are the cornerstone of MIT’s Institute-wide effort to catalyze solutions-oriented research in water and food systems that target the safety and resilience of the world’s vital resources.
Read article here 2018 J-WAFS Seed Grant recipients and their projects: "Novel systems biology tools for improving crop tolerance to abiotic stressors." PIs: David Des Marais, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Caroline Uhler, the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Institute for Data, Systems and Society. "Assessing Climate Vulnerability of West African Food Security using Remote Sensing." PIs: Dara Entekhabi, the Bacardi and Stockholm Water Foundations Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "Printed Silk-Based Colorimetric Sensors for Food Spoilage Prevention and Supply Chain Authentication." PIs: A. John Hart, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Benedetto Marelli, the Paul M. Cook Career Development Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "What controls Arsenic Contamination in South Asia? Making Sense of Two-Decades of Disjointed Data." PI: Charles Harvey, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "Supermolecular nanostructure gels for chelation of arsenic from drinking water." PI: Julia Ortony, the Finmeccanica Career Development Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. "Anthropogenic Soils of the Amazon: Origins, Extent, and Implications for Sustainable Tropical Agriculture." PIs: Dorothy Hosler, Professor of Archaeology and Ancient Technology, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Heather Lechtman, Professor of Archaeology and Ancient Technology, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and J. Taylor Perron, Associate Professor of Geology, Department of Earth, Planetary and Atmospheric Sciences. "Purifying Water from Boron Contamination with Highly Selective Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) Membranes." PI: Zachary Smith, the Joseph R. Mares Career Development Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering.
