In a recent article in IDA’s newsletter, IDA Director and Dean of the IDA Desalination Academy Leon Awerbuch talked about the joy of watching our industry’s younger professionals evolve into future leaders in desalination technology and our industry. He cited examples including the accomplishments of companies like Gradiant Corporation, a young but successful enterprise that won the 2014 Global Water Award for the Industrial Water Project of the Year. Both Gradiant’s CEO and CTO earned their PhDs at the world-renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with which Leon has a close relationship.
Leon also talked about the experience of recently attending Ronan K. McGovern’s PhD thesis defense, also at MIT. Ronan, who was the recipient of the 2012 IDA Channabasappa Memorial Scholarship and won a Best Paper Award at the IDA World Congress in Tianjin, focused on ‘The Economics of Future Membrane Desalination Processes and Applications’ as his dissertation title.
As described in Leon’s article, Ronan’s thesis divides the world of desalination into three distinct categories – seawater desalination, where the key challenge is energy consumption; industrial application such as US shale gas production, where the key challenge is treatment+formulation; and brackish water desalination, where the key challenge is purity+recovery. Within this context, he discusses three approaches to predict the effect of energy on membrane processes.
IDA has also profiled in our publications the work of other outstanding young professionals, many of whom are currently PhD candidates still working on their theses. Their accomplishments exemplify the growing list of achievements represented by the newest generation of desalination professionals, many of whom have received a PhD and all of whom are deeply engaged in the development of new technologies and processes that could reshape our industry.
Their work represents the kind of thinking that we would like to put forth in these pages.
With this in mind, IDA is pleased to announce that starting with this issue, the IDA Journal will contain a new feature that highlights selected PhD dissertations on topics related to desalination and water reuse. As a respected technical journal, this publication is read by a wide range of thought-leaders who will undoubtedly be interested in directions that are being explored by some of the brightest young minds in our industry.
As the hub for the global desalination industry, we believe that it is important to recognize the exceptional work being done in many universities and research centers around the world. In fact, we believe that access to this information will have an important impact on everyone involved in desalination and water reuse whether in the public or private sector, and from corporations and public agencies to academia, research centers or the exciting world of entrepreneurship.
While the initial set of papers are from PhD candidates at MIT, we plan to expand this initiative to other major learning institutions around the world. If you or a colleague would like to submit a dissertation thesis for consideration, please contact our editor Dr Isabel Escobar at [email protected]. And as always, we welcome your comments.
Patricia A. Burke ([email protected]) is the IDA Secretary General and an officer on IDA’s Board of Directors. She was one of IDA’s founding members and has been actively involved in the association and its predecessors since 1973.
