John H. Lienhard V is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Mechanical Engineering at MIT. During three decades on the MIT faculty, Lienhard’s research and educational efforts have focused on heat and fluid flow, water purification and desalination, and thermodynamics. Lienhard received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in thermal engineering at UCLA from the Chemical, Nuclear, and Thermal Engineering Department. He joined MIT immediately after completing his PhD in the Applied Mechanics and Engineering Science Department at UC San Diego. Lienhard’s research on water purification has included humidification-dehumidification desalination, membrane distillation desalination, forward and reverse osmosis, solar-driven desalination, bubble columns, fouling and scaling, nanofiltration, electrodialysis, management of high salinity brines, thermodynamic and energy efficiency analysis of desalination cycles. Lienhard has directly supervised more than 85 graduate theses and postdoctoral associates and has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications. He is the founding director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab and has directed the Rohsenow Kendall Heat Transfer Lab since 1997.

Lienhard is a recipient of the 1988 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, the 1992 SAE Teetor Award, a 1997 R&D 100 Award, the 2012 ASME Globalization Medal, the 2015 ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award, and several teaching awards. He is a Fellow of ASME and a Registered Professional Engineer. Lienhard and his students received thirteen best paper and poster awards for their desalination research during 2011-2017. Lienhard holds more than forty US Patents and pending applications, many of which have been commercialized in the water industry. Lienhard is also the founding director of the Ibn Khaldun Fellowship for Saudi Arabian Women and of the Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy.