ASU engineering professor wins McNulty Prize for global impact
Cody Friesen awarded for helping communities access clean drinking water
“However, when I first arrived at ASU as junior faculty in 2004, President Michael Crow was articulating an additional framing of academia: the role of translational research, research that directly translates into the field to solve real-world problems, and how it would not only transform ASU but also the balance of academia and its relevance to society."
Hence, Friesen’s research group is highly translationally-oriented. It prioritizes the creation of new knowledge in the realm of materials science and renewable energy that targets and directly engages in global-scale challenges. The group ensures its basic and applied research is patented and moved into startup companies where it can ultimately be fielded in a way that addresses the problems on which the group focuses.
“Knowing that access to safe drinking water is perhaps humanity’s greatest challenge, we recognized that there is an immense amount of water vapor in the lower atmosphere, and that with sunlight as an energy source, it is theoretically possible to create a renewable, distributed approach to drinking water,” Friesen says.
That research has now resulted in the granting of 13 patents, more than 100 patent applications and the SOURCE Hydropanel. In 2019, the research group was also recognized with the Lemelson-MIT award, the largest monetary prize for inventors in the United States.
“We’re still just at the beginning. There are meaningful opportunities to advance the materials we use and the thermodynamic efficiency in ways that will make the technology even more productive,” Friesen says. “Ultimately, the goal of this work is to democratize access to drinking water and deliver water equity for all humans. We’re just getting started.”
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