Ashok Gadgil

Javier Fernández-Han and Ashok Gadgil, 2003 and 2009 / Photos: Berkeley Lab News Center

One of the young inventors we met this morning was sixteen-year-old Javier Fernández-Han, who was both the winner and the youngest entrant of Youth Venture's Invent Your World challenge last year.

I sat with Javier and his wonderfully supportive dad Peter at the pre-conference dinner on Wednesday and again this evening. Not only is he already an extremely talented inventor; he's also among the very best at articulating and explaining his ideas, regardless of age. Javier's invention, dubbed the VERSATILE system, uses algae to treat waste and produce oil, oxygen, and food for humans and livestock. It's also completely greenhouse-gas neutral, even though it has a stove. In Javier's words, "Algae is nature's Swiss Army knife. It gets rid of many things we don’t want and produces many things that we need."

Image: Ashok Gadgil patent

Not only is Ashok Gadgil a truly brilliant inventor; he's also a delight. Before meeting him, I'd been aware of ultraviolet water treatments, and I'd heard that his UV Waterworks system had perfected the treatment and brought clean drinking water to thousands of people around the world. But that was where my knowledge stopped. I asked Dr. Gadgil if he would give me the "for dummies" version, and here's what I received:

At a conference a few years ago, a moderator asked Gadgil about the simplicity of his ideas, and his response was interesting. "I don't quite agree with calling them simple technologies. They are reliant on and use the best knowledge of science and engineering that we currently have." I think it might be the mark of a truly groundbreaking design that, as soon as you hear about, it's impossible to imagine a world before someone thought of it.