Rice’s WaTER Institute leads the charge in making cleaner water through nanotech

@ Rice WaTER Institute

Access to safe drinking water is a major limiting factor to human capacity, and providing access to clean water has the potential to save more lives than doctors, said Pedro Alvarez, Rice University’s George R. Brown Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Rice is uniquely positioned to take on these challenges thanks to decades of research that have culminated in the creation of two vital entities working to make our water safer across the world: the Water Technologies Entrepreneurship and Research (WaTER) Institute launched in January 2024 and its new Rice PFAS Alternatives and Remediation Center (R-PARC).

“Across the world, we’re seeing more serious contamination by emerging chemical and biological pollutants, and climate change is exacerbating freshwater scarcity with more frequent droughts and uncertainty about water resources,” Alvarez said. “The Rice WaTER Institute is growing research and alliances in the water domain that were built by our NEWT Center, which was very productive in launching startups and training about 200 graduate students to address water security concerns.”

Alvarez serves as director of both the Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) and the WaTER Institute. He’s joined in his efforts by a large team of researchers including Michael Wong, Rice’s Tina and Sunit Patel Professor in Molecular Nanotechnology, chair and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and leader of the WaTER Institute’s public health research thrust, and James Tour, Rice’s T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Chemistry and professor of materials science and nanoengineering.

As part of the WaTER Institute, R-PARC will leverage its history of expertise and take full advantage of recent institutional investments, including an array of PFAS-dedicated advanced analytical equipment.

The WaTER Institute boasts a foundation of advancements in clean water technology research and applications established during the decade-long tenure of NEWT that was funded by the National Science Foundation.

“We are the leaders in water technologies using nano,” said Wong. “Things that we’ve discovered within the NEWT Center, we’ve already started to realize will be great for real-world applications.”