2026 Essay Competition

The call for the 2026 Essay Competition

The theme of the fourth call of the annual Essay Competition Young Voices in the Chemical Sciences for Sustainability was

How can the chemical sciences ensure sustainable access to clean water for all needs?

The competition was open to entrants aged under 35 on 31 March 2026. The 2026 call attracted a record-breaking 200+ entries from around the world. These were assessed by a global team of volunteer evaluators recruited by IOCD who provided a short list of about 70 entries. Among them, 38 essays were selected as finalists based on relevance and quality. Essays that were very highly rated were then chosen as Regional Winners, with regions being defined according to the World Bank's 2025 geographic classification. Unfortunately, there was no winner from the North America region. This left us with six Regional Winners. Their essays were published online end of October 2026 and included in the 2026 issue 11 of RSC Sustainability, as detailed below.

The issue of stewarding clean water resources is arising in different ways across the globe and poses tremendous societal challenges almost everywhere. The entries submitted to the competition illustrate how young people view the role that chemistry can play in addressing these challenges. In their essays, the finalists discussed a variety of chemical issues related to ensuring long-term access to clean water. They have identified many sources of pollution that require specific actions. Recognising that prevention is better than cure, some authors suggested ways to reduce the water consumption in agricultural and industrial processes or in cooling systems, as well as reduce the contaminant generation. Others emphasised the importance of designing sensors that respond quickly in order to detect water pollution early and treat its effects efficiently. Aside from traditional water purification techniques such as filtration, flocculation, chlorination and reverse osmosis, the essays described new approaches based on advanced materials, including nanofiltration using nanoporous membranes, the adsorption of pollutants using metal-organic frameworks, and the destruction of organic compounds and pharmaceuticals using photocatalysis. While solutions to the circularity of water resources exist at laboratory level, much remains to be done to scale up these solutions in view of real world applications.

IOCD is extremely grateful to the Royal Society of Chemistry for its financial support, which helps to cover the costs of operating the competition during its first five years, and for its participation in the competition process and publication of the Regional Winner essays. We are also highly indebted to the dozens of volunteer evaluators from around the world who agreed to assist us in reviewing the entries and selecting the Finalists and Winners. Most of all, we are grateful to the young people from across the continents who made the effort to write fascinating essays and to submit them for our scrutiny.

Regional Winners of the 2026 IOCD Essay Competition

The Regional Winners of the 2026 IOCD Essay Competition, Young Voices in the Chemical Sciences for Sustainability (with links to the published essays at RSC Sustainability) were:

East Asia and Pacific: Muhammad Sarkawi
Chemistry before crisis: reframing the role of chemical sciences in sustainable water systems (available here)
Europe and Central Asia: Miguel‑Jorge Reig‑Valor
From treatment to reuse: how chemical sciences transform the water cycle (available here)
Latin America and the Caribbean: Diego Mirabal Castillo
Water recovery from an underground sea: membrane distillation crystallization for zero liquid discharge in lithium mining (available here)
North Africa and Middle East: Muhammad Madni
From lab to tap: scalable self-powered chemical systems for universal clean water access (available here)
South Asia: Saibalendu Sarkar
Think small, impact large: how nanochemistry changes the fate of wastewater (available here)
Sub-Saharan Africa: Ikenna Sebastian Okechukwu
The Angstrom gatekeeper: decoupling water security from fossil energy via adaptive nanomaterials (available here)

Each regional Winner received a cash prize of US$ 500 and a Winner’s Certificate.

In an Editorial in the same issue of RSC Sustainability, IOCD’s Competition Organisers present an overview of the results and the topics covered by these Regional Winners:

S.A. Matlin, F. Rosei, P. Lambin, S. Delaney and L. Jin. How the chemical sciences can ensure sustainable access to clean water for all needs. RSC Sustainability 2026, 4 (11) (available here).

Other Finalists of the 2026 Essay Competition

The 32 additional essays that were selected as Finalists in the 2026 competition were published by IOCD in a Compendium:

S.A. Matlin, F. Rosei, P. Lambin, S. Delaney and Lei Jin. (eds.). How can the chemical sciences ensure sustainable access to clean water for all needs?. Regional winner and finalist essays in the IOCD Essay Competition, Young Voices in the Chemical Sciences for Sustainability 2026, International Organization for Chemical Sciences in Development, Namur, October 2026.
Available to download here.

Among these 32 finalists, 3 were under 18.

Other finalists:

Ayush Agarwal: No test, no trust: knowing what's in the water
Tiffany Jia Ning Ang: Accelerating universal clean water access: bridging chemical sciences innovations with mathematics and policy
Safira Candra Asih: Action-enabling chemical design for equitable water access
Tajwar Azim Baigh: Light-to-heat: photothermal desalination for water scarcity
Saranga Baishya: Arsiron nilogon and fluoride nilogon: sustainable technologies for clean drinking water
Alfonso Jesus Burró Mereles: The molecular shield: circular economy for water security in the global south
Ruth Chan: Making “forever chemicals” not forever
Elleanor Lisa Coe: The chemical science perspective: approaches to acquiring sustainable access to clean water
Mamta Dagar: The lithium paradox: how (electro)chemical sciences can protect the water we risk to power the future
Vinícius De Paula: The glass is half full: the beauty of water chemistry as a guide to green design
Derin Umay Erkmen: Contaminants of emerging concern: cheaper, easier, cleaner removal for clean water through chemical sciences
Farikhatul Fitria: From pollution to regeneration: redefining wastewater in the age of water bankruptcy
Azaan Hafeez: “Prevent where we can, adapt where we must”: chemical strategies for sustainable access to clean water
Harshita Harshita: The blue alchemy: redefining water sustainability through chemical sciences
Faith Mwende Johnson: From molecule to monitoring: analytical chemistry as the backbone of water security in the Global South
Niel Lautenschlager: A tandem MOF approach of NU-1000 and UiO-66 for PFAS capture and photocatalytic degradation
Richa Mishra: Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink: can chemical sciences provide the missing link?
Davis Mwangi Muhoho: Soft solutions to a hard problem: chemistry's role in universal water access
Lewis O'Shaughnessy: Redemption arc: forget microplastics, could polymers actually hold the key to water purification?
Jacob Sunday Oyeku: Clean water for all needs: harnessing agricultural wastes for sustainable access
Bercis Pektas: From yellow giant to water guardian
Swayam Prakash: Opto-chemical sensors for rapid and sustainable on-site water quality analysis: breaking the 24-hour Escherichia coli barrier
Rishabh Raj: Heterogeneous electro-Fenton process for wastewater treatment: one for the future
Shaveendhya G. Ratnayake: From natural minerals to programmable frameworks: the evolution of adsorption chemistry for sustainable water access
Gisela Adelina Rolón Cárdenas: Mitigating pesticide-derived water contamination through chemical innovation
Wenjie Shangguan: Green pesticides, clean water: redesigning agrochemicals for environmental safety
John Bernard Rojas Villarosa: Quenching AI's thirst for water: engineering sustainable AI infrastructure through the chemical sciences
Mason Wakley: Cleaning up, improving access and reducing use: the three-pronged approach to ensure sustainable access to clean water
Yudong Xue: From pollution to purity: metal-organic frameworks enable sustainable clean water access
Hei Nam Yip: Democratizing the drop: how paper chemistry bridges the global water gap
Pragathi Y: From contaminants to clean drops: how chemical sciences can secure sustainable water for all
Valentina Zambrano-Velarde: Mechanochemistry for sustainable water access: destroying contaminants, harvesting water, and purifying what remains