News J-WAFS Community Spotlight on Adela Chenyang Li
As a 2025-26 J-WAFS Fellow, Li is working on a device that captures water from the air to create drinkable water for water-scarce communities.
Sofia Rutman April 7, 2026
April is Earth Month! Earth Month aims to improve the global consciousness about the value of our planet and the impact humans have on it. The environment and human activity are intricately connected, but often the environment is sacrificed in service of unsustainable human practices. Water and food systems can strain environmental ecosystems so its important everyone does their part to conserve water and shop for locally sourced food when possible. To commemorate Earth Month, J-WAFS is spotlighting the work of Adela Chenyang Li, and the environmentally low-impact technology she's developing that can provide clean water across the globe.
Adela is a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and MIT, and a 2025 -2026 Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellow for Water Solutions. She received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2020, where she first pursued water development work for communities in need as part of Engineers Without Borders. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Device Research Lab (part of the Rohsenow Kendall Heat Transfer Laboratory) at MIT, working with co-advisors Prof. Evelyn Wang and Prof. Gang Chen on a device to remove water from air to create drinkable water for communities living in arid climates with few other sources of clean water.
In the video below, Adela explains how the team's technology, using advanced powder-like sorbents, can pull water molecules out of the air and turn them into drinking water.