2026 Davidson Fellow Jiaen Jiang was recently featured by The Times of India for her innovative engineering project designed to address the challenges of lunar dust during future Moon missions.
Jiang, 16, of Rosenberg, Texas, received a $25,000 Davidson Fellows Scholarship for her project, “Moondust Magnet: A Novel Bipolar Electrostatic System for Capturing Airborne Fine and Submicron Lunar Regolith in Habitat Airlocks.”
Her project explores the use of controlled electric fields to capture fine lunar regolith before it can enter living areas or interfere with filtration systems in future lunar habitats. Jiang developed and tested her system using lunar dust simulants, demonstrating its potential as a method for managing airborne lunar dust.
Jiang’s work has also been recognized through the MIT THINK Scholars Program, where her project was selected as one of five finalists from more than 1,000 applications.
Read the full feature from The Times of India: “Meet Jiaen Jiang, the 16-year-old Texas student who built an electrostatic ‘magnet’ to capture hazardous Moon dust and won $25,000.”