Hey, Sean, how you doing, my friend?
Let me make sure we're, you might want to unmute yourself.
Let's see here.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Can you hear me now?
Oh, thank you so much.
Yeah, no problem, no problem.
Yeah, sorry for the, well, I guess, okay.
Sorry for the hassle, I guess.
Oh, that's no problem at all.
I'm just so honored to be talking to you.
Let me just shut a few things down and then I'll start our time together.
Okay, okay.
Yeah, thank you so much, man.
This is wonderful.
All right, so what I normally like to do with these, so the reason why I started doing these
is to involve people who normally don't think about water issues.
And so I have found this is just a baby step.
Basically what we're trying to do here is just make a personal connection with people
and invite them into a larger conversation.
And so I always do the same 10 questions, there's no surprises.
And so they've been really fun.
I haven't done one in a while.
And then after I met you and a couple other people at the water summit, I thought this
would be a good time.
So, yeah.
Okay, okay.
Thank you so much.
All right, well, great.
Let's go ahead and get started here.
I am recording this, but I'll edit it down.
So what I like to do is first I like to do a personal introduction and then I'll just
read your bio from your LinkedIn page, if that's okay.
Okay, yeah, yeah, that's fine.
Yeah.
Okay, great.
Well, then I'll go ahead and get started.
Thanks so much.
All right, well, welcome to Water Talks.
I have with me today my friend Chun and him and I met two weeks ago, we were asked to
attend, participate and share interest at MIT.
They have an annual water summit, which we participated in.
And Chun was one of the people that I got to meet.
He is currently a PhD student at MIT, working on the intersection between chemical and environmental
engineering.
And he's interested in the issues of climate change, environmental sustainability, pollution,
resource depletion, and development to make a difference in the world.
So hopefully I got that right there, Chun.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Thanks for inviting me here.
And I also, I'll go by Chun Man, but I...
Oh, Chun Man, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
And yeah, it's great to hear from you again since the summit.
And it's been a wonderful experience just talking to different people at a summit and
meeting all these people from different backgrounds, but people who are interested in the same sort
of issue around water and how to make things better for people around the world.
I think that's really important.
Yeah, it sure is.
It was wonderful to find so many passionate, like-minded people.
And it was just so, I learned so much.
I took notes, I took copious notes, I engaged myself in over 12 hours of learning over a
three day period.
I wish it could have been more.
I did have two meetings I had to attend.
Yeah, yeah.
I had to be a part of.
So Chun, how did you find your way to MIT?
What is your background?
Just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you found your way to MIT.
Yeah.
I think I grew up in Hong Kong and that's kind of where everything is like a concrete
jungle and that's where I kind of grew to become more closer to nature because I always
feel like there's something odd about the living environment around me.
And I was a Boy Scout and I used to camp a lot.
And I was thinking a lot about sort of like Earth and climate change issues.
And that's where it brought me to UC Berkeley from an undergraduate.
And I think it's just what keeps me going is the drive to try to make a difference in
this world.
And I think as long as you have a passion, you know what is important to you, I think
that's where it can bring you to places.
And so now I'm at MIT also doing research that hopefully one day will be useful for
people.
And I'm working on making next generations of membrane technology for resource recovery
and even for health hemodialysis purposes, but also a lot on water purification and desalination.
Yeah.
Tell everyone who doesn't have a technical understanding of the research that some of
the research that you're working on, I think it's with nanofluids.
Yeah.
So what I do is we can imagine we have this material called graphene, which is a single
layer of carbon atom.
So you can think of a really, really thin sheet of my paper, but it's just one atom
thin.
And what we're trying to do is puncture holes in them using different ions.
And by controlling the size of the hole, that can control what gets through and what doesn't
get through.
And if you control it such that the salt can be rejected and the water can get through,
then that's how you can achieve desalination.
Or even for health purposes, that's how you allow some proteins to get retained while
getting the toxins out of the body.
And that's what I've been doing for a while now.
Well, I just want to say firsthand, thank you for the research that you do.
For those of us, for those people who are going to watch us today and aren't in the
research, academic, and science world of water, the stuff that Chun Man is working on is really
cutting edge technology.
And for those of you who aren't familiar with MIT, they're really the world's foremost
technical institution in doing research and application for new breakthroughs and platforms.
So I just want to say thanks for all of your hard work.
And it's really great to have you on.
So just want to back up a bit.
So by way of Hong Kong, do you see Berkeley, to where I live in California?
And now you find yourself living in Massachusetts.
When you're there these days, what's your favorite place to eat?
I guess now with all the lockdown, it's kind of hard to go out and eat.
I actually cook a lot.
So I've been trying different dishes, even trying making dim sum on my own.
I got some bamboo steamers.
And it's been great fun.
But I think Hong Kong's food is where it feels home for me.
That's wonderful.
Well, I am planning on coming out to Cambridge next year for the Water Summit.
And we'll definitely have to get a share meal in a beer.
That'll be great.
But I'm sure California probably has some of the better food.
I always lead with locals and their favorite take on cuisine.
I find that that's the most enjoyable path for every new likes.
And I think for me, I just love eating different sort of things.
I don't really get fixated on I need to get one sort of food.
It's so interesting to learn about different cultures and to understand what people eat
and how people interact.
That's for me is really, really fun.
Sure is.
So you're at MIT.
And where are you in your research?
Are you at the beginning, the middle, or are you feeling like you're coming towards the
conclusion?
I guess for research, it's always hard to come to a definite conclusion.
But you always need some sort of conclusion for things.
And I think there's always more you can investigate and try.
And I'm sort of in the middle stage and wrapping some projects up, but also exploring different
things.
I think that's what's exciting because there's so many opportunities.
There's so many things that we don't know.
But there's so many things that we know a little bit better.
We might be able to design something that could be useful out there.
And I think that's what research is about.
And that's what's exciting about research.
But I also see it's not just the research.
Having the research, translating technology, talking to people out there in the field,
seeing what they actually need, and trying to streamline the whole process, that's the
important part of making these technologies actually worthwhile.
Wow.
That's really inspiring.
So you've been in the academic world, the research world, for a long time.
And you're very good at it.
What are some things that you wish you knew when you started that you might communicate
right now to someone who's starting out?
I think branching out is always good.
I think talking to more people just to get ideas from different fields.
You might feel like you really want to do a certain discipline.
But in this world, everything is kind of interdisciplinary.
So just talk to people.
You hear different people's ideas.
And sometimes you can influence them, they can influence you.
And that's really exciting.
And that's something that I kind of learned along the way and to do more now, and just
to be involved in different things.
Well, I think you hit on something really important, that interdisciplinary aspect of
learning and how really you're always taking your ideas and you're sort of merging them
and cross-pollinating them all over the place.
And that's where a lot of the creativity comes from.
It's where a lot of curiosity comes from.
And it's what continues to make learning and research actually interesting.
And I know for myself, every time I've gotten maybe stuck, I always find my way out by applying
interdisciplinary concepts kind of across.
Yeah.
What are some things that you're really curious about right now?
They could have to do with your research or maybe not, but just some things that are top
shelf right now as far as what you're curious about.
I guess it's always curious on, well, COVID, it's a big thing.
How do we bounce out of this?
How do we, will that change how we approach society or how systems are?
And how do we evolve into a better, more resilient sort of community and with more social safety
net for everyone and everyone can kind of thrive.
And I think that's something that is really something that a lot of people think about
these days.
And it's exciting.
It's, I mean, it's sad to see a lot of the things that are happening or has happened,
but it's also points to some places where there are a lot of opportunities where we
can make a stride forward and really bring about change.
Wow.
That's inspiring.
So what's something that you've failed at in the last 12 months that you'd like to talk
about?
Oh, something that I failed at, I failed at a lot of different things.
But yeah, I mean, research every day is almost failing.
You don't get the results you want.
That's this kind of thing.
Or you're always like, feel like you're behind your schedule.
Yeah.
But I think it's just like working it out, right?
You know, you don't have to push yourself that hard.
It's like things will come along.
You're doing great things.
You know what you're doing.
You have, I think what's really important is you have to drive, you have the motivation
to keep going.
And I think failing is just learning.
And that's life.
That's what happens to people.
And you don't internalize it.
Everyone's vulnerable in a way.
And just accept that.
And accept that you can change and keep improving yourself.
I think that's what I learned over these years.
And I'm really glad that mindset have kind of served me well.
Yeah.
Well, I love what you said.
I just think of, I don't use the word failure.
We just learn.
We just rephrase that word as an invitation to more learning.
Yeah.
This is different ways of thinking about it.
I think, I mean, things happen for a reason.
It's not for no reason.
So yeah, they sure do.
I love that.
I'm a strong believer in that.
You're obviously very, you're on the cutting edge of researching new technologies that
are going to lead to desalinization platforms in the future that do a better job and are
more productive and are more helpful.
And so if you can explain to someone who is maybe watching this for the first time, what
is kind of, what do you see as kind of the current water situation in the world?
I think as we all, we can always cite like the big WHO reports and stuff like a couple
million or billion, a billion people lack like access to drinking safe drinking water.
And I think, I think what, what moving forward, what, what is really exciting in this field
is to start to think about infrastructure systems, right?
Like we see a lot of the infrastructure sort of failing across, across the US, across a
lot of the older cities and Michigan or so.
And maybe we can have a separate design instead of like thinking of like one sort of desalination
as like a catch all solution for all.
I think it's really important to think about portfolios and really think about what are
different ways where we can, we can solve the water sort of scarcity problem and how
not just the supply side, but also looking at demand.
Are there ways where we're consuming a lot of water that we don't, we don't have to
and, and to free up that water for other communities.
I think that's something that, that, that we're working on.
And I mean, we're working a lot on the technology side, but I think there, there is a lot of
things on the other economical or like political aspects too, that I think people are working
on and I'm happy that we are all kind of pointing towards the same goal.
Yeah, we, so you and I, we're both part of a conversation two weeks ago that a lot of
it had to do around the idea of decentralization and desalinization.
And that is the work that I have found myself personally involved in for the last six years.
And so as we've gotten to know each other, what do you know about the project that I've
worked on for six years in El Salvador?
What do you know about ocean water?
So I think, I think you guys are doing a great job because you guys work really closely with
communities who are, who are having these sort of water scarcity problems and you're
providing sort of like, I think looking at the solution space, right?
What is possible and you're providing them with the, the, this sort of like source of
livelihood for them.
And I think, I think I'm really, really proud of what you guys are doing.
And I think that's, that's something really impactful on the ground.
Cause cause I think we can talk about all these grand ideas or anything, but I think,
I think what really matters is like, does it, what's the impact on the ground?
Like, does it touch the lives of people?
I think, I think that's what, that's what really important to, to understand.
And that that's, that's what, that's what OCN WTR is doing.
And I, I'm really happy for you that you're doing that.
And I'm, I'm sure it'll continue to sort of expand and continue to help different, identify
different communities across, across, across places and really, really help solve their
problems regarding water.
Thank you, Chun, man.
I really mean so much to me that to get your, your feedback about that, you know, when
you, when you do work somewhere for six years and it's, it's as personal as it has been
for myself and also for the 115 people that we've taken there to work on this project
and you're at, it's like research, you're always working on it because you're never,
you're never done with your idea.
You never come to some finality about it.
You're always working on it and you're always tweaking it.
You're always trying to figure out a way to, a way to do it better.
But it's really one of the, I guess, things that was personally encouraging for me was
the interactions that I was able to have with everybody at the Water Summit and to understand
that there's such a need for decentralized desalinization projects where, where we help
get the cost of water.
It's not something we talked a ton about, but I'm hoping to talk about in the future,
but it's also important that not only do we build infrastructure for the marginalized
communities, but it's also important because when you look at the inequality of water,
the burden of cost is, is also something that is unevenly distributed.
Yeah.
When we talk about the world of water, we talk about those billion people that need
water.
And the water, unfortunately, as it currently stands, they also oftentimes carry the economic
brunt of that as well.
So not only, not only do we have an inequality in access, we have an inequality in cost.
And so it was, it was so, it was so life-giving to me to be around so many people who care
about that space.
Yeah.
And I think it's also thinking a lot more on, I guess, the cost side, but also making
it sort of like sustainable.
Like they can, they can afford them, like they can, they can run the systems themselves.
So they don't rely a lot on sort of like philanthropy or the government, which, which there are
a lot of fail states out there.
So I think having, building the capacity on the community level is really important to
both drive the cost down, but also bring in the know-how so, so they can continue to provide
for themselves.
Even if other people might, even they don't, yeah, they don't receive like help from other
people.
They can do it themselves.
Yeah.
I know for our, for our project, we, we privately funded that through our, through our church
and there are pros and cons of doing it through NGOs, pros and cons of doing it through governments
and pros and cons of doing it through, through churches.
And the reality is we need all, all of those sectors to contribute when you have a problem
that's, that's at this scale.
And one of the benefits of working through our local church, there has been the, the
ownership and management.
One of the, one of the problems that drives up cost is when you have to pay for management
and you have to pay for, pay for infrastructure.
So I know for our, for our project in Palmer Ceto, we have actually installed this system
at a local residence, at a local place.
And so the ownership is, is local.
And that, that many times when it comes to how you apply public health policy, especially
when you're doing, into other countries, you're dealing with other cultures, the ownership,
the local ownership is, is really the X factor for how you keep costs down.
And I'll say from my personal experience, it's also the most time intensive.
It is, I've spent six years working on, working on one project.
And so I have so many questions for how to begin to scale the things that we've learned
about.
One of the, one of the things that I've been thinking about that's front and center for
myself is how, how do you scale that?
How do you scale relationally so that you can have that ownership so that you don't
waste money when you're building infrastructure?
I don't, I don't have an answer to that.
Yeah, I don't, I mean, it's something that you just have to keep like exploring and trying
different things.
And eventually maybe you'll hit an answer, but I don't think there's like one particular
answer, right?
You just keep trying, keep doing, and you know, you're going in the right direction
and that's, that's, that's, that's, that's really what matters.
Thank you so much, man.
Well, I just want to say on behalf of everybody that's going to hear this today, thank you
for your time.
And I just appreciate all the research and the work that you do.
And I'm really looking forward to just continuing our friendship.
And especially when I come out your way next year, I love to love to have a meal with you
and be able to talk some more.
And what I always like to do at the end of this is are there any last words that we need
to hear from you?
What would you like to say?
I think, I think just go for what you are passionate about.
And I think that's, that will drive your career, what you do for it.
And I think, I think we are, we're all good people up there and we're all trying to make
lives better around us.
It doesn't matter if it feels big or small.
I think as long as we touch some of the lives around us, that's, that's, that's really important.
And I, I'm glad that I have the chance to talk to so many of you.
And I'm, I'm glad that I have the chance to kind of do, do that in my own life.
And I'm really thankful for that.
So thanks a lot.
Well, thank you, Chimman.
Wise words and thank you so much for your time.
Yeah, thanks a lot.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Thanks.