In 2017, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Meals Techniques Lab (J-WAFS) initiated the J-WAFS Fellowship Program for excellent MIT PhD college students working to resolve humanity’s water-related challenges. Since then, J-WAFS has awarded 18 scholarships to college students who’ve gone on to create improvements equivalent to a pump that may maximize power effectivity even with altering stream charges, and a low-cost water filter made out of sapwood xylem that has seen real-world use in rural areas India. Final yr, J-WAFS prolonged eligibility to college students with food-related analysis. The 2022 fellows included college students engaged on micronutrient deficiencies and plastic waste from conventional meals packaging supplies.
Right this moment, J-WAFS has introduced the award of scholarships for 2023-24 to Gokul Sampath and Jie Yun. As a PhD pupil within the Division of City Research and Planning, Sampath has been awarded the Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellowship for Water Options, which is supported via a beneficiant reward from Elina and Nikhil Meswani and household. Yun, who’s within the Division of Civil and Environmental Engineering, acquired a J-WAFS Fellowship for Water and Meals Options, which is funded by the J-WAFS Analysis Affiliate Program. At present, Xylem, Inc. and GoAigua J-WAFS Analysis Affiliate corporations. A judging committee of MIT school and employees chosen Sampath and Yun from a aggressive area of excellent graduate college students working in water and meals who have been nominated by their school advisors. Sampath and Yun will obtain an instructional semester’s value of funding together with networking and mentoring alternatives to advance their analysis.
Each Yun and Sampath have demonstrated excellence of their analysis, says J-WAFS Government Director Renee J. Robins. In addition they stood out of their communication expertise and their ardour for engaged on problems with agricultural sustainability and resilience and entry to scrub water. We’re so blissful to have them be part of our inspiring group of J-WAFS fellows, she provides.
Utilizing behavioral well being methods to deal with the arsenic disaster in India and Bangladesh
Gokul Sampath’s analysis focuses on methods to enhance entry to scrub consuming water in creating international locations. As a PhD candidate within the Worldwide Improvement Group within the Division of City Research and Planning, his present work examines the problem of arsenic in consuming water sources in India and Bangladesh. In japanese India, thousands and thousands of shallow tube wells present rural households with a private water supply that’s handy, free, and principally protected from cholera. Sadly, it’s now recognized that one in 4 of those wells are contaminated with naturally occurring arsenic at ranges harmful to human well being. Consequently, roughly 40 million folks throughout the area are at elevated threat of most cancers, stroke and coronary heart illness from arsenic ingested via consuming water and cooked meals.
Because the discovery of arsenic in wells within the late Eighties, governments and non-governmental organizations have tried to resolve the issue in rural villages by offering protected water sources in the local people. However regardless of entry to protected options, many households nonetheless devour water from their contaminated home wells. Sampath’s analysis seeks to know the constraints and trade-offs behind why many villagers don’t gather water from arsenic-safe authorities wells within the village, even once they know their very own wells at house could also be contaminated.
Earlier than becoming a member of MIT, Sampath acquired a grasp’s diploma in Center Japanese, South Asian and African research from Columbia College, in addition to a bachelor’s diploma in microbiology and historical past from the College of California at Davis. He has lengthy labored in water administration in India, starting in 2015 as a Fulbright scholar learning family water supply decisions in arsenic-affected areas within the state of West Bengal. He additionally served as a senior researcher with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Motion Lab, conducting randomized evaluations of market incentives for groundwater conservation in Gujarat, India. Sampath’s adviser, Bishwapriya Sanyal, the Ford Worldwide Professor of City Improvement and Planning at MIT, says Sampath has proven outstanding laborious work and dedication. Along with his courses and analysis, Sampath taught the institutes undergraduate course Introduction to Worldwide Improvement, for which he acquired glorious evaluations from college students.
This summer season, Sampath will journey to India to conduct fieldwork in 4 arsenic-affected villages in West Bengal to know how social affect shapes villagers’ decisions between arsenic-safe and unsafe water sources. By longitudinal research, he hopes to hyperlink information on the social ties between households in villages and the each day water supply decisions they make. Unique practices in Indian village communities, notably the segregation of water sources on the premise of caste and faith, have lengthy been suspected of being a barrier to equal entry to consuming water in Indian villages. But regardless of this, planners looking for to develop entry to protected water in various Indian villages have not often thought of how social divisions inside communities may work in opposition to their efforts. Sampath hopes to check whether or not the injunctive norms enabled by caste bands restrict villagers’ capacity to decide on the most secure water supply amongst these shared within the village. When he returns to MIT within the fall, he plans to dive into analyzing his survey information and start work on a publication.
Understanding plant responses to emphasize to enhance crop drought resistance and yield
Crops, together with crops, play a elementary function in Earth’s ecosystems via their influence on local weather, air high quality and water availability. On the similar time, crops grown for agriculture pressure the surroundings, as they require power, irrigation and chemical compounds. Understanding plant-environment interactions is changing into more and more necessary as intensification of drought stresses agricultural techniques. Jie Yun, a PhD pupil within the Division of Civil and Environmental Engineering, research the response of crops to drought stress within the hope of bettering agricultural sustainability and yields beneath local weather change.
Yun’s analysis focuses on genotype-by-environment interplay (GxE.) This pertains to the statement that plant varieties reply otherwise to environmental modifications. The results of GxE in crop breeding may be exploited as a result of completely different environmental responses amongst cultivars permit breeders to pick crops that exhibit excessive stress-tolerant genotypes beneath specific rising circumstances. Yun bases his research on Brachypodium, a mannequin grass species associated to wheat, oats, barley, rye and perennial forage grasses. By experimenting with this species, outcomes may be instantly utilized to the development of grain and fodder crops. Within the first a part of his thesis, Yun collaborated with Professor Caroline Uhler’s group within the Division of Electrical Engineering and Pc Science and the Division of Knowledge, Techniques and Society. Uhler’s computational instruments helped Yun consider gene regulatory networks and the way they relate to plant resilience and environmental adaptation. This work will assist determine the sorts of genes and pathways that drive variations in drought stress response amongst plant cultivars.
David Des Marais, Cecil and Ida’s inexperienced profession growth professor on the Division of Building and Environmental Engineering, is Yuns’ advisor. He notes all through Jie’s time [at MIT] I’ve been struck by her mental curiosity, bordering on fearlessness. When she’s not mentoring undergraduate college students in Des Marais’ lab, Yun works on the second a part of her challenge: how carbon allocation in crops and development is affected by soil drying. One final result of this work will probably be to know which plant populations include the mandatory genetic variety to adapt or acclimate to local weather change. One other possible influence is to determine targets for genetic enchancment of crop species to extend crop yields with much less water provide.
Rising up in China, Yun witnessed environmental issues stemming from the event of the metal trade, which induced the air pollution of rivers in her hometown. On a go to to her aunt’s home in rural China, she discovered that water air pollution was widespread after noticing that sewage was being discharged exterior the home into close by farmland with out being handled. These experiences led Yun to check water provide and sewage engineering for his bachelor’s diploma at Shenyang Jianzhu College. She then went on to finish a grasp’s diploma in civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon College. It was there that Yun found a ardour for plant-environment interactions; throughout an unbiased research of perfluorooctane sulfonate, she realized the superb capacity of crops to adapt to environmental modifications, toxins and stress. Her purpose is to proceed researching plant-environment interactions and to translate the most recent scientific findings into functions that may enhance meals security.
