Past Event

Water and Industry @MIT

Members Only Roundtable

April 8, 2021
11:00 AM - 1:00 PM EDT (UTC-4)
Water and Industry @MIT
Leading Edge

Location

Zoom Webinar

 

 


Overview

Water is a vital resource – for society and also for many industrial processes.  There are increasingly complex challenges in this sector: detecting and addressing contaminents, wastewater treatment, valuing and monetizing water and managing water-intensive operations to name a few.

Also, like much of our industrial infrastructure there is a pressing need to modernize, digitize and optimize equipment, plant and systems.  Here we will present new MIT research, technologies and spinoff companies for sensing, treatment processes, remote monitoring and digitalization.  We will be joined by industry leaders who will discuss and share their innovations and experiences with new technology – insights that are transferrable to other large industrial and infrastructure sectors.

Join the MIT Industrial Liaison Program and the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems lab (J-WAFS) at MIT on April 8, 2021 for our Members-only Water and Industry webinar, an installment of our Spring 2021 virtual conference series. This webinar follows the Water and Industry webinar on April 6

This event is for ILP Members only. Please confirm your company's membership here: https://ilp.mit.edu/search/member

  • Overview

    Water is a vital resource – for society and also for many industrial processes.  There are increasingly complex challenges in this sector: detecting and addressing contaminents, wastewater treatment, valuing and monetizing water and managing water-intensive operations to name a few.

    Also, like much of our industrial infrastructure there is a pressing need to modernize, digitize and optimize equipment, plant and systems.  Here we will present new MIT research, technologies and spinoff companies for sensing, treatment processes, remote monitoring and digitalization.  We will be joined by industry leaders who will discuss and share their innovations and experiences with new technology – insights that are transferrable to other large industrial and infrastructure sectors.

    Join the MIT Industrial Liaison Program and the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems lab (J-WAFS) at MIT on April 8, 2021 for our Members-only Water and Industry webinar, an installment of our Spring 2021 virtual conference series. This webinar follows the Water and Industry webinar on April 6

    This event is for ILP Members only. Please confirm your company's membership here: https://ilp.mit.edu/search/member


Agenda

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Moderator
Program Director, MIT Corporate Relations
J.J. Laukaitis
Program Director

J.J. Laukaitis joined the Industrial Liaison Program in 2012 and is a strong believer in the amplifying power that comes from building enduring relationships between industry leaders and MIT researchers and innovators.

J.J. has over 25 years of experience in engineering, product management and commercial sales management across multiple industries including mechanical design and manufacturing, electronics, semiconductor equipment, health care IT and renewable energy.

In his work for PTC, Continuum, Teradyne, DFT Microsystems and GE, J.J. has managed programs to conceive, design and launch new products and services and has led major initiatives to transform customer information into insight for revenue growth.

Panelists
Professor of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Steven Leeb
Professor of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Steven B. Leeb received his doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993.  He has served as a commissioned officer in the USAF reserves, and he has been a member of the M.I.T. faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science since 1993.  He also holds a joint appointment in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. He currently serves as MacVicar Fellow and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems.  In his capacity as a Professor at M.I.T, he is concerned with the design, development, and maintenance processes for all kinds of machinery with electrical actuators, sensors, or power electronic drives.  A major thrust in his current research is the development of power electronic drives and supplies for servomechanical and industrial applications, including medical drug delivery devices, battery chargers, motion controllers and fluorescent lamp ballasts. Another research interest related to power quality issues and on-line machine diagnostics involves the development of a Nonintrusive Load Monitor (NILM).  The NILM determines the operating schedule of the major electrical loads in a commercial or industrial building from measurements made solely at the electrical utility service entry.  He is currently working to develop the NILM into a virtually sensorless platform to determine power quality, perform critical load diagnostics, and monitor manufacturing processes and actuator performance on ships, aircraft, automobiles, and satellites.  He is the author or co-author of over 200 publications and 20 US Patents in the fields of electromechanics and power electronics. 

Clarence J. LeBel Professor in Electrical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Duane Boning
Duane Boning
Clarence J. LeBel Professor in Electrical Engineering

Duane S. Boning is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, where he holds the Clarence J. LeBel chair. He is affiliated with the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories, where he serves as Associate Director for Computation and CAD. He also serves as Co-Director of the MIT Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) dual MBA/Engineering Master’s degree program. He received SB, SM, and PhD degrees in electri¬cal engineering and computer science from MIT. From 1991 to 1993 he was a Member Technical Staff at the Texas Instruments Semiconductor Process and Design Center in Dal¬las, Texas, before returning to MIT to join the EECS faculty.

At MIT, he served as Associate Head for Electrical Engineering in the EECS Department from 2004 to 2011, as Director of the MIT-Masdar Institute Cooperative Program from 2011 to 2018, and as Faculty Lead of the MIT-Skoltech Initiative from 2011 through 2013. From July 2019 to June 2021 he is Associate Chair of the MIT Faculty. Dr. Boning is a Fellow of the IEEE, and was Editor in Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing from 2001 to 2011. His research interests include statistical and machine learning methods for the modeling and control of variation in IC and photonics process¬es, devices, and circuits. Particular emphases includes modeling of chemical mechanical polishing (CMP), plasma etch, and embossing processes; and design for manufacturing (DFM) in IC and photonic technologies. He is co-editor of the book Machine Learning in VLSI Computer-Aided Design (Springer 2019).

Chief Digital Officer, Acciona Infraestructures
Alejandro Beivide García
Chief Digital Officer

Alejandro Beivide is the Chief Digital Officer at Acciona Infraestructures.

Beivide is an Industrial Engineer specialised in Automation and Electronics, and his career in ACCIONA spans more than 15 years, including several positions as desalination engineer and in the Department of Automation and Control, which he led for 5 years until November 2019, when he was appointed Director of Digital Transformation and Control Systems.

Co-founder & CTO, Akselos
Knezevic
David Knezevic
Co-founder & CTO

Dr. Knezevic, from Perth, Western Australia, is the CTO of Akselos. In this role, he has coordinated the delivery of simulation frameworks to the Power Systems and Mining industries. He holds a Ph.D. from Oxford (Rhodes scholar) and was a post-doc at MIT where he worked on Akselos' core technology. He was a Lecturer at Harvard University for three years before joining Akselos full time.

In 2015 David has represented Akselos at numerous prestigious conferences, like the ASME TurboExpo 2015, and the ‘Analysis, Simulation, and Systems Engineering Software Summit (ASSESS)’, where he’s part of the Initiative Advisory Committee Meeting. He has access to a vast network of leaders and practitioners who play a role in shaping the future of the field.

David is a co-author (with colleagues from MIT) of the patent "Methods and apparatus for constructing and analyzing component-based models of engineering systems" that is one of the foundations of Akselos' technology.

In September 2011, Dr. Knezevic was part of the team that won the largest Deshpande innovation grant at MIT, which led to the launch of Akselos.

12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Introduction
Program Director, MIT Corporate Relations
Eduardo Garrido
Program Director

Eduardo Garrido is a Program Director at the Office of Corporate Relations at MIT.

Eduardo Garrido has a strong multicultural and multidisciplinary background, with deep expertise in higher education, banking and management consulting, acquired in Argentina, Spain and USA. He currently serves as Program Director at the Industrial Liaison Program, Office of Corporate Relations (MIT), the largest conduit between corporations and MIT.

Before joining MIT, Eduardo was the Director of Santander Universities at Santander Bank, N.A., based in Boston, MA. In this role, he managed the institutional and business relationship with 46 universities, mainly in the northeastern US. He also served as Santander US representative at President Obama’s 100,000 Strong in the Americas initiative and the Woman for Africa Foundation, among other relevant global higher education projects, and as Member of the Global President’s Council at NYU and the Advisory Boards of the Deming Cup, ECLA (Columbia University) and Newcastle University Business School.

Before coming to the US, Eduardo had several roles at Banco Santander Rio (Argentina). As Director of Santander Universities, he started the first entrepreneurship initiative at Grupo Santander worldwide, including the launching of a business plan competition, the Technology Innovation Venture Capital Fund, and a national competitiveness development initiative. He also sponsored the first edition of MIT 50K in Argentina. As Director of Organization and Quality at Banco Santander Rio, he led the team that obtained the first Global ISO 9001:2000 certificate for a financial institution in Latin America, certifying all main processes and areas of the bank. He also steered the business process reengineering project for the whole Bank, partnering with Ernst & Young and McKinsey and Co and implemented the Retail Banking new operating model.

Before joining Banco Santander Rio, Eduardo was Senior Manager of the Financial Services and Capital Markets Group at Price Waterhouse Management Consultants in Madrid, Spain. He was the Practice Leader of Business Process Reengineering, Financial Risk Management and Risk Adjusted Profitability Measurement.

Before his assignment at Price Waterhouse he served as Director of Consulting Services at MSA International, Inc. and as Financial Control Manager at Citibank España, S.A.

Eduardo graduated as Industrial Engineer at Universidad de Buenos Aires and has a MBA degree from IE Business School.

Moderator

Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Food
Director, Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab
Director, Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy
MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering

Lienhard
John Lienhard

Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Food
Director, Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab
Director, Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy
MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering

John H. Lienhard V is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Food and the Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab at MIT. During more than 26 years on the MIT faculty, Lienhard’s research and educational efforts have focused on water purification and desalination, heat and fluid flow, and experimentation. He has also filled a number of administrative roles at MIT. Lienhard received his bachelors and masters degrees in thermal engineering at UCLA from the Chemical, Nuclear, and Thermal Engineering Department. He joined MIT immediately after completing his PhD in the Applied Mechanics and Engineering Science Department at UC San Diego. Lienhard’s research on water purification includes humidification-dehumidification desalination, membrane distillation desalination, osmotic processes, solar-driven desalination, scale formation, electrodialysis, management of high salinity brines, thermodynamic and energy efficiency analysis of desalination cycles, and energy-water nexus issues. Lienhard has directly supervised more than 70 graduate theses and postdoctoral associates.

Lienhard is a recipient of the 1988 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, the 1992 SAE Teetor Award, a 1997 R&D 100 Award, the 2012 ASME Technical Communities Globalization Medal, and is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Lienhard and his students have received three best paper awards at water and desalination conferences during the past 3 years. He holds more than a dozen US Patents, many of which have been commercialized in the water industry. Lienhard is the co-author of textbooks on heat transfer and on measurement and instrumentation. His heat transfer book has been available online at no charge since 2002, and more than 300,000 copies have been downloaded (ahtt.mit.edu). His measurements book has sold more than 100,000 copies. He has created new courses on desalination, on thermal modeling, and on compressible fluid mechanics. He has also received several awards at MIT for his teaching. In addition, Lienhard has directed the Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy at MIT and KFUPM since it was founded in 2008.

Panelists

Professor of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS)
Professor of Biological Engineering, Biological Engineering Division

Jongyoon Han

Professor of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS)
Professor of Biological Engineering, Biological Engineering Division

Dr. Jongyoon Han is currently a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received B.S.(1992) and M.S.(1994) degree in physics from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, and Ph.D. degree in applied physics from Cornell University in 2001. He was a research scientist in Sandia National Laboratories (Livermore, CA), until he joined the MIT faculty in 2002. He received NSF CAREER award (2003) and Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator Award (ACS, 2009). His research is mainly focused on applying micro/nanofabrication techniques to a very diverse set of fields and industries, including biosensing, desalination / water purification, biomanufacturing, dentistry, and neuroscience. He is currently the lead PI for MIT’s participation for NIIMBL (The National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals).

Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Microfluidics & Nanofluidics Research Laboratory
Rohit Karnik
Rohit Karnik
Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Rohit Karnik is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he leads the Microfluidics and Nanofluidics Research Group. He obtained his B. Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology at Bombay in 2002, and his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 2006 under the guidance of Prof. Arun Majumdar. After postdoctoral work with Prof. Robert Langer at MIT, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT in 2007. His research focuses on the physics of micro- and nanofluidic flows and design of micro- and nanofluidic devices for applications in healthcare, energy systems, and biochemical separation and analysis. Among other honors, he is a recipient of the Institute Silver Medal (IIT Bombay, 2002), NSF Career Award (2010), Keenan Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Education (2011), DOE Early Career Award (2012), and IIT Bombay Young Alumni Achiever Award (2014).

Senior Marketing Director, Analytics, Xylem
Robert Teich
Senior Marketing Director, Analytics

Robert Teich is a Senior Director in Xylem’s Analytical Instrumentation business, where he leads the development and marketing of a broad range of measurement monitoring solutions that deliver high quality insights into the quantity and quality of water within environmental, utility, and laboratory applications. Robert has been part of Xylem’s businesses since 1997 and has held several R&D, Marketing, and P&L leadership roles in the US and Europe.  He is a graduate of University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business MBA program and the University of Illinois’ Undergraduate and Master’s engineering programs.​

Co-Founder and CEO, Gradiant
Bajpayee
Anurag Bajpayee
Co-Founder and CEO

Anurag Bajpayee is the co-founder and CEO of Gradiant Corporation. Gradiant is a technology-driven water services company with a suite of proprietary solutions to enable efficient, economical industrial water treatment and recycling. Founded at MIT in 2013, the company has since grown into a global brand with diversified applications and multiple divisions around the world. Gradiant’s product portfolio spans pre-treatment, disinfection, and desalination and brine concentration solutions and current market applications include power, mining, textiles, pharmaceuticals, landfills, oil & gas and seawater desalination. Prior to founding Gradiant, Anurag earned his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from MIT where his work was recognized by the Scientific American as a top 10 world changing idea and is now part of Gradiant’s technology portfolio. Anurag has co-authored seminal journal articles, holds several patents in the field of water treatment, and in 2019 was named to MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators under 35 List. He also holds a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Missouri and a Masters from MIT

  • Agenda
    11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
    Moderator
    Program Director, MIT Corporate Relations
    J.J. Laukaitis
    Program Director

    J.J. Laukaitis joined the Industrial Liaison Program in 2012 and is a strong believer in the amplifying power that comes from building enduring relationships between industry leaders and MIT researchers and innovators.

    J.J. has over 25 years of experience in engineering, product management and commercial sales management across multiple industries including mechanical design and manufacturing, electronics, semiconductor equipment, health care IT and renewable energy.

    In his work for PTC, Continuum, Teradyne, DFT Microsystems and GE, J.J. has managed programs to conceive, design and launch new products and services and has led major initiatives to transform customer information into insight for revenue growth.

    Panelists
    Professor of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
    Steven Leeb
    Professor of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

    Steven B. Leeb received his doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993.  He has served as a commissioned officer in the USAF reserves, and he has been a member of the M.I.T. faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science since 1993.  He also holds a joint appointment in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. He currently serves as MacVicar Fellow and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems.  In his capacity as a Professor at M.I.T, he is concerned with the design, development, and maintenance processes for all kinds of machinery with electrical actuators, sensors, or power electronic drives.  A major thrust in his current research is the development of power electronic drives and supplies for servomechanical and industrial applications, including medical drug delivery devices, battery chargers, motion controllers and fluorescent lamp ballasts. Another research interest related to power quality issues and on-line machine diagnostics involves the development of a Nonintrusive Load Monitor (NILM).  The NILM determines the operating schedule of the major electrical loads in a commercial or industrial building from measurements made solely at the electrical utility service entry.  He is currently working to develop the NILM into a virtually sensorless platform to determine power quality, perform critical load diagnostics, and monitor manufacturing processes and actuator performance on ships, aircraft, automobiles, and satellites.  He is the author or co-author of over 200 publications and 20 US Patents in the fields of electromechanics and power electronics. 

    Clarence J. LeBel Professor in Electrical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
    Duane Boning
    Duane Boning
    Clarence J. LeBel Professor in Electrical Engineering

    Duane S. Boning is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, where he holds the Clarence J. LeBel chair. He is affiliated with the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories, where he serves as Associate Director for Computation and CAD. He also serves as Co-Director of the MIT Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) dual MBA/Engineering Master’s degree program. He received SB, SM, and PhD degrees in electri¬cal engineering and computer science from MIT. From 1991 to 1993 he was a Member Technical Staff at the Texas Instruments Semiconductor Process and Design Center in Dal¬las, Texas, before returning to MIT to join the EECS faculty.

    At MIT, he served as Associate Head for Electrical Engineering in the EECS Department from 2004 to 2011, as Director of the MIT-Masdar Institute Cooperative Program from 2011 to 2018, and as Faculty Lead of the MIT-Skoltech Initiative from 2011 through 2013. From July 2019 to June 2021 he is Associate Chair of the MIT Faculty. Dr. Boning is a Fellow of the IEEE, and was Editor in Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing from 2001 to 2011. His research interests include statistical and machine learning methods for the modeling and control of variation in IC and photonics process¬es, devices, and circuits. Particular emphases includes modeling of chemical mechanical polishing (CMP), plasma etch, and embossing processes; and design for manufacturing (DFM) in IC and photonic technologies. He is co-editor of the book Machine Learning in VLSI Computer-Aided Design (Springer 2019).

    Chief Digital Officer, Acciona Infraestructures
    Alejandro Beivide García
    Chief Digital Officer

    Alejandro Beivide is the Chief Digital Officer at Acciona Infraestructures.

    Beivide is an Industrial Engineer specialised in Automation and Electronics, and his career in ACCIONA spans more than 15 years, including several positions as desalination engineer and in the Department of Automation and Control, which he led for 5 years until November 2019, when he was appointed Director of Digital Transformation and Control Systems.

    Co-founder & CTO, Akselos
    Knezevic
    David Knezevic
    Co-founder & CTO

    Dr. Knezevic, from Perth, Western Australia, is the CTO of Akselos. In this role, he has coordinated the delivery of simulation frameworks to the Power Systems and Mining industries. He holds a Ph.D. from Oxford (Rhodes scholar) and was a post-doc at MIT where he worked on Akselos' core technology. He was a Lecturer at Harvard University for three years before joining Akselos full time.

    In 2015 David has represented Akselos at numerous prestigious conferences, like the ASME TurboExpo 2015, and the ‘Analysis, Simulation, and Systems Engineering Software Summit (ASSESS)’, where he’s part of the Initiative Advisory Committee Meeting. He has access to a vast network of leaders and practitioners who play a role in shaping the future of the field.

    David is a co-author (with colleagues from MIT) of the patent "Methods and apparatus for constructing and analyzing component-based models of engineering systems" that is one of the foundations of Akselos' technology.

    In September 2011, Dr. Knezevic was part of the team that won the largest Deshpande innovation grant at MIT, which led to the launch of Akselos.

    12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
    Introduction
    Program Director, MIT Corporate Relations
    Eduardo Garrido
    Program Director

    Eduardo Garrido is a Program Director at the Office of Corporate Relations at MIT.

    Eduardo Garrido has a strong multicultural and multidisciplinary background, with deep expertise in higher education, banking and management consulting, acquired in Argentina, Spain and USA. He currently serves as Program Director at the Industrial Liaison Program, Office of Corporate Relations (MIT), the largest conduit between corporations and MIT.

    Before joining MIT, Eduardo was the Director of Santander Universities at Santander Bank, N.A., based in Boston, MA. In this role, he managed the institutional and business relationship with 46 universities, mainly in the northeastern US. He also served as Santander US representative at President Obama’s 100,000 Strong in the Americas initiative and the Woman for Africa Foundation, among other relevant global higher education projects, and as Member of the Global President’s Council at NYU and the Advisory Boards of the Deming Cup, ECLA (Columbia University) and Newcastle University Business School.

    Before coming to the US, Eduardo had several roles at Banco Santander Rio (Argentina). As Director of Santander Universities, he started the first entrepreneurship initiative at Grupo Santander worldwide, including the launching of a business plan competition, the Technology Innovation Venture Capital Fund, and a national competitiveness development initiative. He also sponsored the first edition of MIT 50K in Argentina. As Director of Organization and Quality at Banco Santander Rio, he led the team that obtained the first Global ISO 9001:2000 certificate for a financial institution in Latin America, certifying all main processes and areas of the bank. He also steered the business process reengineering project for the whole Bank, partnering with Ernst & Young and McKinsey and Co and implemented the Retail Banking new operating model.

    Before joining Banco Santander Rio, Eduardo was Senior Manager of the Financial Services and Capital Markets Group at Price Waterhouse Management Consultants in Madrid, Spain. He was the Practice Leader of Business Process Reengineering, Financial Risk Management and Risk Adjusted Profitability Measurement.

    Before his assignment at Price Waterhouse he served as Director of Consulting Services at MSA International, Inc. and as Financial Control Manager at Citibank España, S.A.

    Eduardo graduated as Industrial Engineer at Universidad de Buenos Aires and has a MBA degree from IE Business School.

    Moderator

    Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Food
    Director, Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab
    Director, Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy
    MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering

    Lienhard
    John Lienhard

    Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Food
    Director, Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab
    Director, Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy
    MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering

    John H. Lienhard V is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Food and the Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab at MIT. During more than 26 years on the MIT faculty, Lienhard’s research and educational efforts have focused on water purification and desalination, heat and fluid flow, and experimentation. He has also filled a number of administrative roles at MIT. Lienhard received his bachelors and masters degrees in thermal engineering at UCLA from the Chemical, Nuclear, and Thermal Engineering Department. He joined MIT immediately after completing his PhD in the Applied Mechanics and Engineering Science Department at UC San Diego. Lienhard’s research on water purification includes humidification-dehumidification desalination, membrane distillation desalination, osmotic processes, solar-driven desalination, scale formation, electrodialysis, management of high salinity brines, thermodynamic and energy efficiency analysis of desalination cycles, and energy-water nexus issues. Lienhard has directly supervised more than 70 graduate theses and postdoctoral associates.

    Lienhard is a recipient of the 1988 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, the 1992 SAE Teetor Award, a 1997 R&D 100 Award, the 2012 ASME Technical Communities Globalization Medal, and is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Lienhard and his students have received three best paper awards at water and desalination conferences during the past 3 years. He holds more than a dozen US Patents, many of which have been commercialized in the water industry. Lienhard is the co-author of textbooks on heat transfer and on measurement and instrumentation. His heat transfer book has been available online at no charge since 2002, and more than 300,000 copies have been downloaded (ahtt.mit.edu). His measurements book has sold more than 100,000 copies. He has created new courses on desalination, on thermal modeling, and on compressible fluid mechanics. He has also received several awards at MIT for his teaching. In addition, Lienhard has directed the Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy at MIT and KFUPM since it was founded in 2008.

    Panelists

    Professor of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS)
    Professor of Biological Engineering, Biological Engineering Division

    Jongyoon Han

    Professor of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS)
    Professor of Biological Engineering, Biological Engineering Division

    Dr. Jongyoon Han is currently a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received B.S.(1992) and M.S.(1994) degree in physics from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, and Ph.D. degree in applied physics from Cornell University in 2001. He was a research scientist in Sandia National Laboratories (Livermore, CA), until he joined the MIT faculty in 2002. He received NSF CAREER award (2003) and Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator Award (ACS, 2009). His research is mainly focused on applying micro/nanofabrication techniques to a very diverse set of fields and industries, including biosensing, desalination / water purification, biomanufacturing, dentistry, and neuroscience. He is currently the lead PI for MIT’s participation for NIIMBL (The National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals).

    Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Microfluidics & Nanofluidics Research Laboratory
    Rohit Karnik
    Rohit Karnik
    Professor of Mechanical Engineering

    Rohit Karnik is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he leads the Microfluidics and Nanofluidics Research Group. He obtained his B. Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology at Bombay in 2002, and his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 2006 under the guidance of Prof. Arun Majumdar. After postdoctoral work with Prof. Robert Langer at MIT, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT in 2007. His research focuses on the physics of micro- and nanofluidic flows and design of micro- and nanofluidic devices for applications in healthcare, energy systems, and biochemical separation and analysis. Among other honors, he is a recipient of the Institute Silver Medal (IIT Bombay, 2002), NSF Career Award (2010), Keenan Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Education (2011), DOE Early Career Award (2012), and IIT Bombay Young Alumni Achiever Award (2014).

    Senior Marketing Director, Analytics, Xylem
    Robert Teich
    Senior Marketing Director, Analytics

    Robert Teich is a Senior Director in Xylem’s Analytical Instrumentation business, where he leads the development and marketing of a broad range of measurement monitoring solutions that deliver high quality insights into the quantity and quality of water within environmental, utility, and laboratory applications. Robert has been part of Xylem’s businesses since 1997 and has held several R&D, Marketing, and P&L leadership roles in the US and Europe.  He is a graduate of University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business MBA program and the University of Illinois’ Undergraduate and Master’s engineering programs.​

    Co-Founder and CEO, Gradiant
    Bajpayee
    Anurag Bajpayee
    Co-Founder and CEO

    Anurag Bajpayee is the co-founder and CEO of Gradiant Corporation. Gradiant is a technology-driven water services company with a suite of proprietary solutions to enable efficient, economical industrial water treatment and recycling. Founded at MIT in 2013, the company has since grown into a global brand with diversified applications and multiple divisions around the world. Gradiant’s product portfolio spans pre-treatment, disinfection, and desalination and brine concentration solutions and current market applications include power, mining, textiles, pharmaceuticals, landfills, oil & gas and seawater desalination. Prior to founding Gradiant, Anurag earned his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from MIT where his work was recognized by the Scientific American as a top 10 world changing idea and is now part of Gradiant’s technology portfolio. Anurag has co-authored seminal journal articles, holds several patents in the field of water treatment, and in 2019 was named to MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators under 35 List. He also holds a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Missouri and a Masters from MIT