Impact Makers: Christopher Whitfeld & Jonathan Zhao

NAME

Christopher Whitfeld

TITLE

Co-founder, PFASolve

LOCATION

London, United Kingdom

ABOUT

When 17-year-old researchers Christopher Whitfeld and Jonathan Zhao entered the Stockholm Junior Water Prize in 2024, they aimed to tackle one of the most persistent and overlooked environmental threats: PFAS pollution. Known as ‘forever chemicals’, PFAS are synthetic compounds that linger in the environment and human body in near-perpetuity. Brief exposure to even a few nanograms of the chemicals can cause long-term harm both to human and environmental health. From pots to packaging, clothing to cosmetics, they continue to contaminate water sources in industrialised societies around the world.

Their winning project proposed a two-pronged approach to combat the issue in the UK’s Thames Basin: a geospatial neural network that uses environmental and location data to predict PFAS concentrations in water, and a low-cost filtration device to remove them. Detecting and removing PFAS has long been prohibitively expensive. Reverse osmosis systems remain out of reach for many low-income communities most affected by contamination, while sampling tests – costing US$120+ per sample – are too costly for broad monitoring. Christopher and Jonathan’s work bridges these gaps; their model is free to use, and their filter is priced to be affordable for London’s lowest income decile.

Beyond their technical work, the duo have become advocates for public awareness and youth engagement in environmental science. Their outreach has been featured in national and international newspapers and youth magazines, while mentoring more than 60 schoolchildren to develop their own research projects.

MOTIVATION

“A large part of our work has been outreach: if the public don't know PFAS are a problem, why would anyone be interested in a solution?

We partnered with FirstNews, the UK’s largest children’s magazine, to publish a fact file about PFAS to convey the breadth of its prevalence and the severity of its impact. Young people are a demographic that are less likely to have heard about PFAS, compared to other climate problems at least, as the chemicals leave no visible trace on the water they pollute. That invisibility makes it harder to capture the problem in striking images that could raise awareness, and the science of PFAS is complicated as well, further obfuscating the crisis.

Despite that, our partnership reached 3 million children with concise but clear information. So we are proud to have contributed to making an invisible environmental threat visible and to have given young people the language to talk about it.”

IMPACT

• Developed an AI model that predicts PFAS concentration in water with 94 per cent accuracy

• Created a low-cost filtration device costing less than $10, achieving 93 per cent PFAS removal compared to traditional $1,000+ systems.

• Raised international awareness of PFAS pollution, reaching an audience of up to 300 million via Forbes, the Financial Times, the Associated Press and others.

• Collaborated with the UK’s largest youth magazine FirstNews to reach 3 million children with accessible information on PFAS, transforming an invisible issue into a mainstream environmental concern.

• Supported by major organizations including Xylem, CIWEM, Arup and Jacobs to advance research and policy discussions on PFAS.

• Founded outreach programmes supporting over 60 students to pursue scientific research on environmental challenges, helping build a culture of youth-led innovation in the UK.

ADVICE

“Be flexible. This was important to both our research process and our communication strategy. Not every hypothesis is bound to be correct, but every failure is an opportunity to reflect and refine. Every audience needs a different message, so don’t expect your message to connect with everyone unless you’re willing to make changes to how you present.”

CONTACT

Christopher’s LinkedIn

Jonathan’s Linkedin