Cambridge Supervisor: Professor David Fairen-Jimenez
Berkeley Host: Professor Omar Yaghi
Dhruv received his undergraduate degree in Materials Science at the Indian Institute of Technology (Gandhinagar), followed by a master’s degree in physical sciences from the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. He is currently a doctoral student in Chemical Engineering, supervised by Professor David Fairen-Jimenez at Cambridge. Dhruv is a molecular architect (of sorts), developing advanced computational approaches for the discovery and design of molecular framework materials known as metal-organic frameworks, with an emphasis on their applications in medicine, energy and related fields.
The global water security crisis – estimated to affect over 50% of the world’s population – necessitates the pursuit of alternate approaches for accessing safe drinking water. Existing technologies such as desalination, while promising, may prove infeasible at large scales due to the associated costs and infrastructural limitations. Developments in metal-organic framework (MOF)-based adsorbents have shown potential for water harvesting from air, offering the possibility of inexpensive, decentralized freshwater generation with low environmental cost. Ideal MOF-based adsorbents require the optimization of several, often competing properties, which may not necessarily be feasible to explore experimentally. My project focuses on the development of a constrained chemical space navigation algorithm for the rapid screening of the MOF chemical space for the generation of new MOF structures with favorable physical and chemical characteristics for use as water harvesters.