UK project to reduce PFAS pollution is awarded Stockholm Junior Water Prize

27.8.2024 23:29:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release

Christopher Whitfield and Wenqi (Jonathan) Zhao from the United Kingdom receive the prestigious Stockholm Junior Water Prize 2024 for their work on PFAS pollution in the Thames Basin. HRH Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden presented the winners with their award during a ceremony at World Water Week in Stockholm.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) pollution is a growing concern worldwide. Focusing on the Thames Basin in the United Kingdom, where there are with no equitable solutions to the problem, Whitfield and Zhao developed a geospatial neural network, predicting PFAS values to within 10 percent of experimentally validated values.

For this, they were announced the winners of the Stockholm Junior Water Prize, an international competition where students between the ages of 15 and 20 present solutions to major water challenges.

Speaking on winning the prize, Zhao said, “We are very proud to have won this prize. It has been an amazing stay here in Sweden with so many new friends”.

The Jury noted that Whitfield and Zhao “find a way to take data and turn it into actionable knowledge. [They have] identified PFAS hotspots using machine learning, field tested their results, developed a cost-effective filtration system, and reached out to local governments and environmental organizations to raise awareness.”

The winners were presented with their prize during an award ceremony at World Water Week by HRH Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, the Prize’s Official Patron.

The Diploma of Excellence was awarded to Shanni Valeria Mora Fajardo and Rosa Mendoza Sosa from Mexico for their work on how to reuse inked water with homemade filtration to produce veggie gardens.

The People’s Choice Award went to Manoel José Nunes Neto from Brazil, completing the line-up of winners.

The Stockholm Junior Water Prize has been organized every year since 1997. It is hosted by the Stockholm Water Foundation, with Xylem as Founding Partner.

“Innovation is paving the way to a more water-secure world, and the next generation are accelerating progress. The Stockholm Junior Water Prize competitors are an inspiring example of the ingenuity and passion young innovators bring to the table. On behalf of Xylem, I’d like to congratulate all those who took part in this year’s competition,” said Austin Alexander, Vice President of Sustainability and Social Impact at Xylem.

Read more about the winning projects:

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240827691002/en/

Contacts

Andreas Karlsson
Head of Communication, Stockholm International Water Institute
Email: andreas.karlsson@siwi.org, Mobile: +46 (0) 720 506078

About Business Wire

For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.

www.businesswire.com

Subscribe to releases from Business Wire

Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Latest releases from Business Wire

Foundever Successfully Closes a Holistic Recapitalization, Reducing its Debt by Nearly $900 Million and Strengthening its Financial Position for Long-Term Growth17.8.2026 14:30:00 EEST | Press release

Foundever Group S.A.® (“Foundever” or the “Company”) – a global leader in integrated customer experience, digital operations and analytics services, today announced that it has successfully closed a holistic recapitalization (the “Transaction”) in coordination with 95.4% of the lenders under its term loan facility (“Term Loan Lenders”), 100% of its revolving credit facility lenders (“RCF Lenders”), and the Company’s existing majority shareholders. The Transaction meaningfully strengthens Foundever’s financial foundation and positions the Company to invest in its growth strategy. Key terms of the Transaction include: Company's existing majority shareholders invest $225 million into common equity. Term loan facility exchange reduces the Company's total debt by nearly $900 million. Revolving credit facility maturity date is extended by more than four years to December 2030, and term loan maturity date is extended by more than 2.5 years to March 2031. Certain of the Company's RCF Lenders p

Uniphore Launches Marketing AI as Marketing Moves Beyond the CDP17.8.2026 14:30:00 EEST | Press release

Uniphore, the Business AI company, today launched Marketing AI, ushering in a new era of enterprise marketing built on customer intelligence rather than customer data management. Uniphore Marketing AI gives marketers the ability to know every customer better than ever before, predict what each customer is likely to do next and simulate marketing outcomes before committing budget. The system continuously learns from every customer interaction, making its predictions more accurate with every cycle. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260817325069/en/ The Uniphore Marketing AI Flywheel: A Self-Learning System Named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Customer Data Platforms, Uniphore has helped enterprises bring customer data together while providing sovereign control over where that data lives. Marketing AI builds on that foundation, extending Uniphore’s composable approach from the data layer into the

Instabase Becomes SuperApp, Launches the AI Collaboration Super App17.8.2026 13:00:00 EEST | Press release

SuperApp, Inc., formerly Instabase, Inc., today launched SuperApp, the AI collaboration super app, available on the web, iOS, Android, and desktop. SuperApp brings teams and leading AI models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI, and others into one live thread — from the first conversation to finished work. The company changed its name to reflect the new product and company direction. Work today is split into three. Teams talk in one app. They ask AI in another. They make the final work somewhere else. Every handoff asks people to remember what the software forgot. SuperApp brings those moments together. People and AI begin in the same live thread. Teams can use Claude from Anthropic, GPT from OpenAI, Gemini from Google, Grok from xAI, and other leading models, then turn the conversation into a document, presentation, spreadsheet, or interactive app — without losing the people, sources, decisions, feedback, or context that made the work possible. Put simply: think of the communication

Confluence Launches Confluence POINT, Bringing AI-Enabled Automation Across Its Product Suite.17.8.2026 12:04:00 EEST | Press release

Confluence Technologies, Inc. (“Confluence”), a global leader in regulatory, analytics, and investor communications solutions for the investment management industry, today announced the launch of Confluence POINT, AI-enabled automation that optimizes workflows across its solutions. Confluence delivers specialist regulatory, analytics and investor solutions that are unrivalled at what they do. POINT is AI-enabled automation that runs within and alongside these solutions, letting them do more for our clients, reducing manual effort that typically occurs before or after automated processes. POINT Validation transforms and validates documents across a range of formats, including unstructured data. POINT’s AI-powered validation is complete in minutes, delivered via an automated checklist that runs independently. Every finding is backed by an audit trail, and errors are flagged for follow up. POINT eliminates the time-consuming manual validation that follows automated financial and regulator

Xsolla Adds 15+ New Local Payment Methods, Letting Game Developers Reach Players Across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Americas17.8.2026 11:00:00 EEST | Press release

Xsolla, a global video game commerce company, today announced the addition of 15+ new payment methods to Xsolla Payments ahead of Gamescom 2026, spanning Asia and Oceania, EMEA, and the Americas. Game developers and publishers can now accept the local payment methods players already use, across markets from Indonesia and the Philippines to Germany, France, and the United States, with no additional integration required for any individual method. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260817000143/en/ Graphic: Xsolla The shift toward local payment methods is reshaping the digital payments landscape well beyond emerging markets. Across Europe, banks and regulators are building account-to-account and instant-payment alternatives to international cards, and the same pull toward local, instant options holds worldwide. Because locally preferred methods feel more familiar and trusted, they convert more shoppers, and merchant

In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.

Visit our pressroom