Connecting the UK Industrial Doctorate Centre for the Water Sector (STREAM) with the US Urban Water Engineering Research Center (ReNUWIt)

The UK and the US research councils have made major investments in the training of their future water engineering cadres through (respectively) a £6.4 million Industrial Doctorate Centre for the UK Water Sector (STREAM) and a $18.5 million Engineering Research Centre (ERC) for Re-inventing the Nation's Urban Water Infrastructure (ReNUWIt). This network proposal seeks additional travel and subsistence resources to exploit the potential synergy between these two major research and training activities by enabling PhD students, early career researchers and academic staff from each centre of excellence to interact and exchange ideas, knowledge, skills and research results. The transatlantic network will engage publically and industrially supported water research activities at the universities of Newcastle, Cranfield, Sheffield, Exeter, Imperial College London, Stanford, New Mexico State, California at Berkeley, and the Colorado School of Mines.

The network will enable delegations of ReNUWIt PhD students and postdocs lead by a ReNUWIt academic to participate in the Challenge Weeks 2013/2014/2015 organized each year at another STREAM university. Challenge Weeks bring together the diverse cohort of research engineers, academics and industrial partners working under the STREAM umbrella and includes team building exercises, advanced transferable skills training, guest lectures from leading industrialists and scientists, and design and problem solving challenges. Participation of ReNUWIt delegates will enrich these events and provide opportunity for formal and informal engagement between UK and US peers. The network will also enable participation of STREAM research engineers in the workshops and strategic dialogues organized by RENUWIt and/or brief research visits in ReNUWIt laboratories to learn about the ongoing work and state-of-the-art methods used in US laboratories. The goals of the RENUWIt workshops and dialogues are to identify the most critical questions in strategically important water infrastructure areas to be addressed by university research. In addition to supporting the transatlantic mobility of young researchers, the network will also enable participation of STREAM and ReNUWIt academics in each others workshops and training activities, which include taught postgraduate modules, student-led research classes/seminars, and video conference accessible series of leadership seminars occurring throughout the academic year and addressing topics such as environmental leadership, scientific ethics, communication, problem solving, and ethical conduct of research. Last but not least, the network will integrate the STREAM and ReNUWIt websites by providing information dedicated to the organization, internal reporting and public dissemination of network activities funded under this proposal. This information will contain, in addition to a description of both research initiatives with links to their main websites, all the necessary details about the travel bursaries, the application process and deadlines, a timetable of relevant STREAM and ReNUWIt events. The website will also include news items written about the exchange activities by the beneficiaries of the travel bursaries. Contributions of STREAM academics to the webinar series of the ReNUWIt center, and viewing of ReNUWIt webinars by STREAM affiliated members, will build an additional virtual bridge between the two water research centres of excellence.

The additional travel and subsistence resources requested with this proposal will enable STREAM and ReNUWIt to come together as a transatlantic think tank for the water sector, to jointly nurture future engineering talent, and to add value to each other's planned activities without duplicating existing efforts.

The imperatives of water security, sustainability and resilience have prompted both the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in the UK and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the US to set up multi-institutional, industry supported centres to support research and post-graduate training for the brightest young talent in the UK and US. These water research centres of excellence will develop a new cadre of engineers to meet the demands of the water industry in the 21st Century. It will be up to these future engineers to deliver the envisioned, radically new technologies and infrastructures which currently exist only on the drawing board or may not yet have been dreamt of. Examples are more sustainable urban drainage systems, more resilient flood defences, more intelligent water distribution networks, low-energy water treatment methods, rainwater harvesting and greywater re-use technologies, or the recovery of energy and resources (nutrients, metals) from wastewater. It is important for these future leaders to think big, look beyond the fence, and embed their locally significant work in a global context. Our proposal will facilitate substantive engagement between the EngD students trained by STREAM and their US peers trained by ReNUWIt by providing mobility funding and unique opportunities for building close transatlantic relationships which may last for a life time. Through interaction with equally ambitious young talent trained by the very best US institutions the new UK cadre of engineering leaders will recognize the global opportunities for the application of their own research ideas, and they will be inspired by the ideas pursued by their US peers to do even better in their own work. The US is a major global player in the water sector, and a continuous transatlantic dialogue between the STREAM and ReNUWIt centres of excellence will rapidly disseminate the progress made in either country. The transatlantic exchange of ideas, inspiration, research results (scientific break-through as well as disappointments), skills and knowledge will act as an incubator and accelerator for innovation. STREAM has many associated industrial partners, including all major UK water companies, and these will directly benefit from the transatlantic exchange of ideas and knowledge through their participation in the STREAM Challenge Weeks, their engagement with STREAM students, and by taking advantage of the opportunities to book personal appointments with visiting ReNUWIt academics.