The Hawkins Memorial Lecture
Thermal Systems Engineering for Desalination and Resource Recovery
John H. Lienhard V, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, MIT
Thursday, October 22, 2026
3:30 p.m. • ME 3021
Abstract: The world’s renewable fresh water supply, from net precipitation over land, has become much more variable as the Earth’s surface temperature has risen. Further, world population has nearly quadrupled during the past century, and the water demands of growing economies have continued to rise. As a result, water scarcity is a growing problem worldwide, impacting not only water for drinking and sanitation, but also reducing crop production and the health of ecosystems. Desalination has been deployed worldwide to expand the supply of freshwater and to manage wastewater. Installed desalination capacity has risen rapidly, especially in coastal areas, and now exceeds 100 billion L/day. Although the cost and lifetime of plants have improved steadily, energy efficiency and brine resource recovery remain significant goals. In this talk, I will discuss my group’s research on energy use in desalination, on selective recovery of chemical and mineral resources from saline water, and on the application of concepts from thermal systems engineering to improve the performance of both thermal and membrane desalination systems. Examples will be drawn from reverse osmosis, humidification-dehumidification, membrane distillation, and lithium capture. I will also discuss our work on large-scale desalination at California’s last nuclear power plant, to provide both energy and fresh water without carbon emissions.
Biography: John H. Lienhard V is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. His work has focused on heat and mass transfer, thermodynamics, and water purification and desalination. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in thermal engineering from UCLA. He earned his PhD at UC San Diego, where he conducted wind-tunnel experiments on the statistical and spectral evolution of thermally stratified turbulent flows. He joined the MIT faculty in 1988. At MIT, Lienhard’s research on water purification has spanned a broad range of desalination technologies, encompassing fundamental thermodynamics, transport phenomena, chemical and electrochemical separations, and system design. He holds more than 40 U.S. patents on the resulting inventions, most of which have been commercialized through start-up companies from his group, including Gradiant Corporation, Sandymount Technologies, and Harmony Desalting. Lienhard has also authored hundreds of technical papers and three textbooks. Lienhard is a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering and an Honorary Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He received 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Desalination and Reuse Association, the 2021 AIChE Donald Q. Kern Award, the 2019 ASME Edward F. Obert Award, and the 2015 ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award.
History of the Hawkins Lecture
This annual lecture series was established in 1984 to honor the memory of George A. Hawkins, former Dean of the Schools of Engineering. Renowned for his many contributions as a teacher, researcher, and administrator, he retained a strong commitment to heat transfer and was instrumental in establishing Purdue’s eminence in the field. The lecture provides an opportunity for a leader in heat transfer research to present topics of broad interest to the University community. This series is supported by an endowment created with gifts from the Heat Transfer Area faculty at Purdue.
George A. Hawkins was born in Denver, Colorado in 1907. He attended the Colorado School of Mines and the University of Denver before coming to Purdue where he received three degrees. Dr. Hawkins earned his Ph.D. in 1935 and began an academic career that spanned 41 years. Promoted to Professor of Mechanical Engineering in 1942, he was Dean of the Schools of Engineering from 1953 to 1967 and Vice President of Academic Affairs from 1967 until his retirement in 1971. In addition to his administrative duties, he continued with technical pursuits, writing several textbooks and more than 150 papers and articles dealing with heat transfer, thermodynamics, and other engineering areas.
For his technical, professional, and administrative contributions, he received many honors, including election as member of the National Academy of Engineering, Life Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), and Honorary Member of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). He received the ASME/Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal in 1940. As dean, he was instrumental in effecting major changes in engineering education throughout the U.S., and was awarded the ASEE Medal for Distinguished and Meritorious Service in 1968. He was named National President of ASEE in 1970.
One of his strongest professional commitments was to the subject of heat transfer, and he had an important influence on establishing Purdue as a world leader in this area. In the 1930s and 1940s, he was, with William McAdams on the East Coast, M. Jakob in the Midwest, and L.M.K. Boelter on the West Coast, a major force in promoting the transition of heat transfer from an engineering art to a modern form of engineering strongly based on scientific fundamentals. His early work as a pioneer of heat transfer is well-documented. His program flourished, producing many outstanding graduate students who have enjoyed successful careers in industry, academia, and government.
Following his retirement in 1971, Dr. Hawkins continued to be active until his death in 1978.
Past Speakers
2026 John Lienhard, MIT
2025 Suresh Garimella, University of Arizona
2024 Van P. Carey, University of California at Berkeley
2023 Chao-Yang Wang, Pennsylvania State University
2022 Samuel Graham, University of Maryland
2021 John Bischof, University of Minnesota
2021 Cristina Amon, University of Toronto
2019 Cynthia Hipwell, Texas A&M University
2018 Costas P. Grigoropoulos, University of California Berkeley
2017 Mehmet Toner, Harvard Medical School (photo)
2016 Suhas V. Patankar, University of Minnesota
2015 Kenneth E. Goodson, Stanford University
2014 Jean-Jacques Greffet, Institute Optique Palaiseau-France
2013 Jayathi Murthy, Purdue University
2012 Gang Chen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2011 Chung K. Law, Princeton University
2010 Arun Majumdar, U.S. Department of Energy
2009 Mamoru Ishii, School of Nuclear Engineering, Purdue University
2008 Paul Hommert, California Laboratories and Homeland Security & Defense Strategic Management Unit, Sandia National Laboratories
2007 Richard O. Buckius, National Science Foundation and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
2006 Yogesh Jaluria, Rutgers University
2005 Massoud Kaviany, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
2004 Dimos Poulikakos, ETH Zurich
2003 John H. Sununu, JHS Associates, Ltd.
2002 Kenneth R. Diller, University of Texas - Austin
2001 Martin C. Jischke, Purdue University
2000 Robert G. Watts, Tulane University
1999 Vijay K. Dhir, University of California - Los Angeles
1998 David P. DeWitt, Purdue University
1997 Boris Rubinsky, University of California - Berkeley
1996 Frank P. Incropera, Purdue University
1995 John R. Howell, University of Texas - Austin
1994 Julian Szekely, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1993 Robert Siegel, NASA Lewis Research Center
1992 Richard C. Chu, International Business Machines Corporation
1991 R. J. Goldstein, University of Minnesota
1990 Raymond Viskanta, Purdue University
1989 Franz Mayinger, Technische Universität München
1988 Wataru Nakayama, Hitachi, Ltd.
1987 Chang-Lin Tien, University of California - Berkeley
1986 Arthur E. Bergles, Iowa State University
1985 E. M. Sparrow, University of Minnesota
1984 Ernst R. G. Eckert, University of Minnesota
