Global Citizen · 8 hours ago

How This Year’s Cyla Winner Used AI to Design a Molecule That Can Purify Contaminated Water

At seventeen, Diana Virgovicova used quantum chemistry to design a molecule that harnesses sunlight to break down water pollutants-a discovery born from witnessing contaminated water's toll on communities during a backpacking trip through Asia and from her own health struggles she believes may be linked to industrial pollution near her Slovak village. Now twenty-four, she leads Xatoms, a company deploying artificial intelligence to custom-design water purification materials in thirty days instead of ten years, working with Indigenous communities in Canada and expanding solar-activated water kiosks in Kenya. "We don't want to just be a company that's about making revenue," she explains, "we want to go to those places to actually interact with the communities, see what we can do and how we can actually drive impact." Her work confronts not only the crisis affecting two billion people without safe water, but also the hidden inequity: women and girls collectively spend 250 million hours daily-over 28,000 years-collecting water, time stolen from education and shaped by needs like menstrual hygiene that rarely enter the conversation. What began as one teenager's determination to help has become a bridge between cutting-edge technology and the communities who need it most, proving that solutions to our greatest challenges can emerge from the most unexpected places.