Natasha Wright is a doctoral candidate in the Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) lab at MIT under Professor Amos Winter. She began her research on water treatment in rural India in the fall of 2012. After finding that high groundwater salinity levels were affecting both the safety and aesthetic quality of 60% of India’s water sources, her research narrowed to focusing on small-scale off-grid desalination. In April 2015 she led the MIT / Jain Irrigation team that won the USAID Desal Prize. Her current research includes optimization and monitoring of three pilots in India and Gaza and redesigning electrodialysis desalination stacks to reduce capital cost and pressure losses.

Natasha earned her BS in Mechanical Engineering at the University of St. Thomas, a liberal arts university, in St. Paul, MN. She enjoys exploring the intersection of engineering, sociology, psychology, economics, politics, and all of the other factors that play a role in designing successful products.

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