Rohit Karnik, the Tata Professor within the MIT Division of Mechanical Engineering, has been named the brand new director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Meals Techniques Lab (J-WAFS), efficient March 1. Karnik, who has served as affiliate director of J-WAFS since 2023, succeeds founding director John H. Lienhard V, Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Mechanical Engineering.
Karnik assumes the position of director at a pivotal time for J-WAFS, because it celebrates its tenth anniversary. Saying the appointment immediately in a letter to the J-WAFS analysis group, Vice President for Analysis Ian A. Waitz famous Karnik’s deep involvement with the lab’s analysis efforts and programming, in addition to his accolades as a researcher, trainer, chief, and mentor. “I’m delighted that Rohit will carry his expertise and imaginative and prescient to bear on the J-WAFS mission, making certain this system sustains its direct assist of analysis on campus and its necessary impression world wide,” Waitz wrote.
J-WAFS is the one program at MIT centered solely on water and meals analysis. Since 2015, the lab has made grants totaling roughly $25M to researchers throughout the Institute, together with from all 5 colleges and 40 departments, labs, and facilities. It has supported 300 school, analysis employees, and college students mixed. Moreover, the J-WAFS Options Program, which helps efforts to commercialize revolutionary water and meals applied sciences, has spun out 12 corporations and two open-sourced merchandise.
“We launched J-WAFS with the purpose of constructing a group of water and meals researchers at MIT, making the most of MIT’s strengths in so many disciplines that contribute to those most important human wants,” writes Lienhard, who will retire this June. “After a decade’s work, that group is robust and visual. I’m delighted that Rohit has agreed to take the reins. He’ll carry this system to the following stage.”
Lienhard has served as director since founding J-WAFS in 2014, together with govt director Renee J. Robins ’83, who final fall shared her intent to retire as properly.
“It’s an enormous change for a program to show over each the director and govt director roles on the similar time,” says Robins. “Having labored alongside Rohit as our affiliate director for the previous couple of years, I’m enormously assured that J-WAFS might be in good arms with a brand new and regular management workforce.”
Karnik grew to become affiliate director of J-WAFS in July 2023, a transfer that coincided with the beginning of a sabbatical for Lienhard. Earlier than that point, Karnik was already properly engaged with J-WAFS as a grant recipient, reviewer, and group member. As affiliate director, Rohit has been integral to J-WAFS operations, planning, and grant administration, together with the proposal choice course of. He was instrumental in planning the second J-WAFS Grand Problem grant and led workshops at which researchers brainstormed proposal subjects and fashioned groups. Karnik additionally engaged with J-WAFS’ company companions, helped plan lectures and occasions, and supplied venture oversight.
“The expertise gave me broad publicity to the wonderful concepts and analysis at MIT within the water and meals area, and the collaborations and synergies throughout departments and colleges that allow excellence in analysis,” says Karnik. “The strengths of J-WAFS lie in with the ability to assist principal investigators in pursuing analysis to deal with humanity’s water and meals wants; in making a group of scholars although the fellowship program and assist of pupil golf equipment; and in bringing folks collectively at seminars, workshops, and different occasions. All of that is made potential by the endowment and a devoted workforce with shut involvement within the initiatives after the grants are awarded.”
J-WAFS was established by way of a beneficiant reward from Group Jameel, an unbiased, world group advancing science to assist communities thrive in a quickly altering world. The lab was named in honor of the late Abdul Latif Jameel, the founding father of the Abdul Latif Jameel firm and father of MIT alumnus Mohammed Jameel ’78, who based and chairs Group Jameel.
J-WAFS’ operations are carried out by a small however passionate workforce of individuals at MIT who’re devoted to the mission of securing water and meals methods. That mission is extra necessary than ever, as local weather change, urbanization, and a rising world inhabitants are placing large stress on the world’s water and meals provides. These challenges drive J-WAFS’ efforts to mobilize the analysis, innovation, and know-how that may sustainably safe humankind’s most important assets.
As director, Karnik will assist form the analysis agenda and key priorities for J-WAFS and usher this system into its second decade.
Karnik initially joined MIT as a postdoc within the departments of Mechanical and Chemical Engineering in October 2006. In September 2007, he grew to become an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, earlier than being promoted to affiliate professor in 2012. His analysis group focuses on the physics of micro- and nanofluidic flows and making use of that to the design of micro- and nanofluidic methods for purposes in water, healthcare, vitality, and the atmosphere. Previous initiatives embody ones on membranes for water filtration and chemical separations, sensors for water, and water filters from waste wooden. Karnik has served as affiliate division head and interim co-department head within the Division of Mechanical Engineering. He additionally serves as school director of the New Engineering Schooling Transformation (NEET) program within the Faculty of Engineering.
Earlier than coming to MIT, Karnik acquired a bachelor’s diploma from the Indian Institute of Know-how in Bombay, and a grasp’s and PhD from the College of California at Berkeley, all in mechanical engineering. He has authored quite a few publications, is co-inventor on a number of patents, and has acquired awards and honors together with the Nationwide Science Basis CAREER Award, the U.S. Division of Power Early Profession Award, the MIT Workplace of Graduate Schooling’s Dedicated to Caring award, and election to the Nationwide Academy of Inventors as a senior member.
Lienhard, J-WAFS’ outgoing director, has served on the MIT school since 1988. His analysis and academic efforts have centered on warmth and mass switch, water purification and desalination, thermodynamics, and separation processes. Lienhard has immediately supervised greater than 90 PhD and grasp’s theses, and he’s the writer of over 300 peer-reviewed papers and three textbooks. He holds greater than 40 U.S. patents, most commercialized by way of startup corporations along with his college students. Considered one of these, the water remedy firm Gradiant Company, is now valued over $1 billion and employs greater than 1,200 folks. Lienhard has acquired many awards, together with the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award of the Worldwide Desalination and Reuse Affiliation.
Since 1998, Renee Robins has labored on the conception, launch, and improvement of a variety of massive interdisciplinary, worldwide, and partnership-based analysis and training collaborations at MIT and elsewhere. She served in roles for the Cambridge MIT Institute, the MIT Portugal Program, the Mexico Metropolis Program, the Program on Rising Applied sciences, and the Know-how and Coverage Program. She holds two undergraduate levels from MIT, in biology and humanities/anthropology, and a grasp’s diploma in public coverage from Carnegie Mellon College. She has overseen vital progress in J-WAFS’ actions, funding, staffing, and collaborations over the previous decade. In 2021, she was awarded an Infinite Mile Award within the space of the Places of work of the Provost and Vice President for Analysis, in recognition of her contributions inside her position at J-WAFS to assist the Institute perform its mission.
“John and Renee have completed a outstanding job in establishing J-WAFS and bringing it as much as its current kind,” says Karnik. “I’m dedicated to creating positive that the important thing points of J-WAFS that carry a lot worth to the MIT group, the nation, and the world proceed to perform properly. MIT researchers and alumni within the J-WAFS group are already having an impression on addressing humanity’s water and meals wants, and I imagine that there’s potential for MIT to have an excellent better optimistic impression on securing humanity’s very important assets sooner or later.”
