Michael Coto

a 4th year student with The Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy.

10% of the world’s population lack access to a clean drinking water supply, that’s more than the entire population of Europe. My PhD research has been focused on developing highly active catalytic materials that are able to oxidise biological and chemical water contaminants by utilising the energy of the sun. I have validated my promising lab-based findings with a field trial to Tanzania in which I compared the efficacy of new generation photo-catalysts to other common point-of-use water purifiers in an informal settlement. My work indicates that new highly efficient photo-catalytic materials can provide a sustainable, off-grid and cheap method of water treatment.

(2020): My startup Majicom recently won a prize at the global Cisco social innovation competition for our work in Tanzania. I won the CSAR award a few years back for the academic work that led to Majicom. A recent article is also below. https://blogs.cisco.com/csr/meet-majicom-a-third-runner-up-of-the-cisco-global-problem-solver-challenge-2020dtidpblgblg001473oidpstoth022641

Other 2017 award winners

Saif Ahmad

Petro Giannaros

Michael Hart

Edmund Kay

Sarah Madden

Lewis Owen

Advait Sarkar

Himansha Singh

Andrea Strakova

Edward Tan

Teng Zhao

Previous award winners

Find out about the winners awarded in previous years: