The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has honoured the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (PSIPW) with his patronage of its 11th Awards ceremony. King Salman is represented at the ceremony by H.E. Eng. Abdulrahman Bin Abdulmohsen al-Fadley, the Minister of Environment, Water, and Agriculture of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The ceremony will be held at the United Nations Office in Vienna, Vienna International Centre (VIC), building C, level 2, room CR1 on 8 November 2024 at 4 PM (Vienna time).
The 11th Awards Ceremony is supported by the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations in Vienna, the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations in New York and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).
PSIPW is a leading, global scientific award focusing on cutting-edge innovation in water research. It gives recognition to scientists, researchers and inventors around the world for pioneering work that addresses the problem of water scarcity in creative and effective ways.
To this end, PSIPW offer a suite of five prizes every two years, covering the entire water research landscape.
On 25 June 2024, PSIPW made its public announcement for the winners of its 11th Award at the United Nations Office at Vienna (UNOV). Speaking at the water session of the 67th Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), PSIPW’s General Secretary Dr. Abdulmalek A. Al Alshaikh presented the six winning teams, providing a brief overview of the recipients and a description their innovative work.
Leading international scientists with a diversity of backgrounds -- including ecohydrology, chemistry, engineering, and environmental science, as well as hydrology -- won the five prizes for a wide variety of relevant, groundbreaking solutions that promise to help provide needed drinking water to the world's people. The winners hail from institutions in China, the Czech Republic, Italy, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Creativity Prize: The team of Maria Cristina Rulli (Polytechnic of Milan, Italy) and Paolo D’Odorico (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
They spearheaded novel analyses of the water-energy-food nexus, describing how numerous, complex factors interact, providing managers and policymakers better ways to be stewards of freshwater in a changing, globalised world.
Creativity Prize: The team of Zhiguo He (Zhejiang University, China)
The team is awarded for developing working, versatile soft robots with unprecedented manoeuvrability that have the capacity for numerous underwater research and monitoring applications.
Team members include: Pengcheng Jiao and Yang Yang.
Surface Water Prize: Qiuhua Liang (Loughborough University, UK) and his team
The team is awarded for developing pioneering, open-source, multi-GPU hydrodynamic models to support real-time flood forecasting at high temporal-spatial resolutions.
Team members include: Huili Chen, Xiaodong Ming, Xilin Xia, Yan Xiong and Jiaheng Zhao.
Groundwater Prize: Chunmiao Zheng (Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, China) and his team
The team is awarded for developing powerful modelling tools to understand groundwater processes and manage groundwater resources under diverse eco-hydrological and climatic conditions, considering environmental and socioeconomic factors at local and national scales.
Team members include: Yingying Yao and Erhu Du.
Alternative Water Resources Prize: Virender K. Sharma (Texas A&M University, USA) and his team
The team is awarded for pioneering techniques using activated ferrate in advanced oxidative processes to effectively remove antibiotics and pharmaceuticals from wastewater. These processes work at high, and even enhanced, efficiency in water containing commonly occurring natural organic matter that often inhibit the effectiveness of oxidative processes in removing micropollutants.
Team members include: Ching-Hua Huang, Chetan Jinadatha and Radek Zbořil.
Water Management & Protection Prize: Joseph Hun-wei Lee (Macau University of Science and Technology, China)
He is awarded for developing unique and highly effective hydro-environmental modelling systems for the sustainable water management of smart cites.
