News J-WAFS announces 2024 Travel Grantee to attend UNC Water and Health Conference

MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning student will receive funding to attend the water conference in Chapel Hill, NC this fall.

Avery Plachcinski October 2, 2024

A graphic featuring a headshot of Mrin on the left and the UNC Water and Health Conference and J-WAFS logos on the right.

Every year, J-WAFS offers travel grants for MIT graduate students to attend water sector conferences. The grants provide learning and networking opportunities for MIT students who are pursuing careers in the water sector, whether in academia, non-profits, government, or industry. Today, J-WAFS is happy to announce that an outstanding student was selected to receive funding to attend the 2024 UNC Water and Health Conference. Mrin Penumaka, a PhD student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, will travel to Chapel Hill, NC with J-WAFS support in October of this year.

The UNC Water and Health Conference is held annually and convenes policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to assess scientific findings and discuss new and existing strategies to ensure safe, affordable, and sustainable water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) services. The conference will explore WaSH services from a public health perspective in both developing and developed countries. 

Mrin’s research examines how climate change affects infrastructure development and service provisioning, specifically in the water and sanitation sector, in rapidly urbanizing cities in South Asia and southern Africa. As a travel grantee, Mrin will have the opportunity to attend sessions and panels of interest, as well as network with professionals in the water sector. The conference’s networking opportunities and informative sessions will support her dissertation research, which is on governance related to urban transitions and decarbonization in South Africa’s water and energy sectors.

"I am delighted and grateful to J-WAFS for the unique opportunity to learn from water and health scholars and practitioners at the UNC Water and Health conference. In attending the conference, I hope to learn from other researchers as I deepen my work on equitable water and sanitation provisioning and adaptive governance of urban transitions in low and middle-income countries grappling with climate change and urban poverty, " says Mrin. 

The J-WAFS Travel Grant for Water Conferences is supported by gifts to J-WAFS from Xylem Inc. and GoAigua, both J-WAFS research affiliates and water technology companies.