Why are there so many water from x devices from MIT. Water from air, water from salt water etc. Is this all they do lol? Is there a group of people responsible?
Yes. There's government money for "water and sanitation issues". NGO money too, but most of that is government money.
All of which issues have conventional solutions, but it's hard to assert you have a breakthrough with an incremental improvement to conventional solutions. And most of the time, deep incremental improvements require a lot of practical domain knowledge of the sort academics and especially their graduate students don't have.
You can probably still win an award for proposing using a lawn roller, as described in U.S. patent 1538550, filed in 1924, for transporting water in developing countries. If you're the right sort of person. More than one person has.
Actually figuring out how to bring sewers and water treatment and indoor plumbing to people in developing nations, that's too hard, too much like work, undeserving of your unique genius.
