News MIT PhD students awarded J-WAFS fellowships for water solutions for 2025 – 2026
Victoria Chen and Adela Chenyang Li are this year's Meswani Fellows, with honorable mention awarded to Mrinalini (Mrin) Penumaka
Emily Stangel May 5, 2025
J-WAFS is proud to announce that two MIT PhD students have been awarded J-WAFS fellowships for water solutions for the 2025-2026 academic year. Additionally, a third student was chosen to receive “honorable mention.”
Inaugurated in 2017, the Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellowship for Water Solutions is one of two fellowships J-WAFS offers to graduate students. The Meswani fellowship is awarded to selected PhD students who are pursuing innovative water-related research at MIT. The fellowship is made possible by Elina and Nikhil Meswani and family
Fellows are not only chosen based on the quality of their research, but also on their demonstrated commitment to addressing the world’s most pressing challenges within the water sector. Central to securing the world’s water supply and ensuring water safety, J-WAFS continuously aims to cultivate the next generation of leaders in the water sector by encouraging outstanding student research and real-life application of practical solutions. This year’s J-WAFS Fellows embody this goal.
The 2025-2026 Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellows are addressing major water-related issues in unique ways ranging from how to capture water-droplets from arid air to genetically engineering bacteria to help clean polluted water to a multi-level analysis of climate and development reforms in the energy and water sectors.
Join us in congratulating the 2025-2026 J-WAFS Fellows!
More about the 2025-2026 Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellows for Water Solutions
Pictured from left to right: Victoria Chen and Adela Chenyang Li are this year's Meswani Fellows, with honorable mention awarded to Mrinalini (Mrin) Penumaka.
Victoria Chen is a PhD candidate in the Department of Biological Engineering, working in Professor Christopher Voigt’s lab.
Victoria’s research centers on how bacteria can be genetically engineered to help clean polluted water, with an emphasis on figuring out the real-world impacts of releasing engineered bacteria into natural environments. Looking through both a biological and historical lens, her work investigates a unique case study of engineered bacteria being used to clean up toxic phenols in Soviet-occupied Estonia to explore the potential risks and benefits of such technologies.
“I am interested in harnessing synthetic biology to safeguard and remediate our water supply,” says Victoria. She goes on to note that groundwater is a critical source of drinking water for over 2.5 billion people, yet it is increasingly threatened by emerging organic contaminants (EOCs), which can be detrimental to human health. “I believe that biology has a natural affinity for remediating pollution which can be harnessed to create new biotechnologies for purifying water supplies,” Victoria says. “My research draws inspiration from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, during which naturally occurring oil-degrading microbes were observed to appear in the affected region and thrive by eating the pollutants; they then receded after the clean-up. This phenomenon underscores that microbes are inherently equipped to tackle pollution,” she concludes.
Victoria’s undergraduate research at the California Institute of Technology similarly involved developing improved genetic engineering tools and a novel way of deploying bacteria in soil environments using nematodes as a carrier. From there, she decided to focus her graduate studies at MIT on bridging synthetic biology and environmental science. She was further inspired by fieldwork in Estonia, where she encountered an old newspaper article about an elderly woman who had to abandon her well due to a pollution event and instead rely on infrequent water deliveries. “This story immediately highlighted to me the real human impact of water contamination,” says Victoria. “This moment sparked my commitment to not just finish my research, but also to ensure it delivers a lasting impact.”
Adela Chenyang Li is a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. She is working in the Device Research Lab (part of the Rohsenow Kendall Heat Transfer Lab) at MIT, with co-advisors Professor Evelyn Wang and Professor Gang Chen.
Adela’s research is focused on advancing a sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting (SAWH) technology that captures water from the air for water-scarce communities, even in extremely arid climates. She is interested in combining both fundamental studies to better understand microscopic processes governing the limits of the technology, as well as practical device fabrication to demonstrate scalable SAWH in the real world.
“I believe the results of this work could directly contribute to sustainability by enabling clean water production,” says Adela. “Other new water technologies, including seawater desalination and direct fog harvesting, are geographically constrained to coastal regions and/or highly humid climates only. Atmospheric water harvesting, however, has the potential to overcome these challenges by unlocking access to the ubiquitous water vapor stored in the Earth’s atmosphere,” she adds.
According to the UN Water and Sanitation report, water shortage exacerbated by climate change could affect the lives of 5 billion by 2050. Adela notes that she has been deeply aware of the impacts of water scarcity and the absolute urgency for sustainability from an early age, having grown up in dry northern areas of China and California. She became even more committed to solving water scarcity problems when she joined the UC Berkeley Chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) as an undergraduate student in 2017. As part of EWB, Adela helped design and implement rainwater catchment systems, providing arsenic-free drinking water to local schools in Peru. Later, she worked on a gravity-fed water distribution system to bring clean water access to over 1,200 residents in Nicaragua.
“These experiences exposed me to the urgency of global water scarcity and the challenges of designing sustainable, community-driven solutions,” says Adela. “They also fundamentally shaped my career trajectory, inspiring me to pursue graduate research in water security.”
In addition to water issues, Adela is passionate about mentoring and is currently the lead graduate teaching assistant for Course 2.006 (Thermofluids Engineering II) at MIT.
Honorable Mention:
Mrinalini (Mrin) Penumaka is a PhD candidate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. She works in the City Infrastructure Equity Lab with Professor Gabriella Carolini.
As an international development practitioner, Mrin has worked with the Oxford University Centre for the Environment, the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, the World Bank, and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, conducting fieldwork in India, Thailand, China, Niger, and South Africa.
Mrin’s research examines urban and infrastructure transitions in the context of cascading climate impacts. She takes a political economy approach to understand the governance and financing of climate and development challenges in the Global South. Her current projects study climate-focused infrastructure and labor transitions in South Africa, comparing transitions in water and energy systems and the landscape of multilateral and bilateral urban climate finance, addressing the Amazon's rapidly urbanizing biosphere.
“Water-related ecosystems are stressed in South Africa, and rural-urban disparities persist,” says Mrin. She goes on to note that South African regions and cities must invest in water infrastructure, improve legislation, and integrate water management into other sectors. “My research develops empirical and theoretical tools to study the energy-water-labor nexus in climate and development reforms,” she says. “I hope to contribute to promoting inclusive, equitable, and resilient water governance, sustainable livelihoods, and natural resource management.”