A 20-year-old engineering student from a farming family in Chihuahua has won a national award by developing an irrigation filter that could make water go further for drought-stricken farmers.
Luis Ángel Robles Morales, a mechatronics student at Tecnológico de Monterrey’s Chihuahua campus, leads OAKs Filtration, which last week received the 2026 Eugenio Garza Sada Award in the category of student social innovation.
The award — which includes a prize of 1 million pesos (US $59,121) for Robles — was one of three presented Sept. 2 by Tec de Monterrey and FEMSA, the Monterrey-based company that operates OXXO stores and controls Coca-Cola bottling operations in Mexico.
The two entities jointly established the award in 1993 in honor of the late Garza Sada, an industrialist who was among the university’s founders in 1943 and who helped lead a Monterrey business group that later became FEMSA.
Robles’ irrigation filter makes water use more efficient by preventing clogs that lead to wasted water, disrupted harvests and increased maintenance costs.
A persistent problem in drip and sprinkler systems is sand, mud and other particles clogging emitters.
So far, the system has benefited more than 500 farmers in the south-central region of Chihuahua, according to Tec de Monterrey.
Robles comes from a farming family: His grandfather grew corn, chiles and alfalfa, and his father branched off into making filters for irrigation systems.
In Chihuahua, the need for improved irrigation is acute.
From January through August this year, the state received 247.6 millimeters of rain — roughly 9.8 inches and 11.7% less than the same period last year, the newspaper El Diario de Chihuahua reported. By Aug. 15, drought was affecting 28.3% of the state, up from 11.2% in early May.
OAKs Filtration uses a carbon-steel outer casing and a PVC internal filtering element. Robles said the design provides two to three times the filtration area of commercial systems and channels debris toward the filter’s end, allowing it to clean itself through water flow.
In a test described by the digital news platform Expansion ESG, a competing filter clogged after 30 to 60 minutes, while the OAKs filter ran eight uninterrupted hours without pressure loss and was only about one-third full when inspected.
Robles said the price of the OAKs filter system runs from 30,000 to 100,000 pesos (US $1,773 to $5,910), while traditional commercial filters can cost 300,000 to 500,000 pesos (US $17,736 to $29,560).
OAKs was one of three 2026 Garza Sada Award honorees, with a total prize pool of 4.5 million pesos (US $266,000).
The others were pharmaceutical executive and conservationist Eric Hágsater Gartenberg, recognized for humanistic business leadership, and Formando Emprendedores, a nonprofit that provides education and youth-development programs in northern Mexico.
Since its founding in 1993, the award has recognized 81 winners.
Robles said he will devote half of his prize money to the project and half to an international entrepreneurial experience.
With reports from Expansión ESG, EJE Central, El Economista and El Diario de Chihuahua
