NSF Water Innovation Engine in the Great Lakes

Award ID: 2315268

This NSF Engines award to the NSF Great Lakes RENEW Engine will build a regional ecosystem to improve the security of water supplies and water-intensive industry and boost our nations capacity for innovation in water security. The NSF Great Lakes RENEW Engine will discover, develop, and deploy innovative viable technologies that (1) attract and sustain water-intensive industry in the Great Lakes region while maintaining water supply and quality; (2) recover valuable resources (water, energy, critical minerals and nutrients) from wastewater streams and convert them to valuable assets; and 3) create an innovation ecosystem to foster investment, employment, ownership, and economic opportunities. The NSF Great Lakes RENEW Engine has a region of service that spans six states Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The NSF Great Lakes RENEW Engine is led by Current Innovation NFP, a U.S.-based non-profit. Its ecosystem includes core partners with representation from the manufacturing, energy, and other key industrial sectors, national labs and universities (including public and private four-year institutions and two-year institutions), economic and workforce development organizations, venture capital and impact investors, entrepreneurship support organizations, state and local governments, non-profits, and philanthropies that are essential to the NSF Engines success. The vision of the NSF Great Lakes RENEW Engine is to transform waste to wealth through water security in the Great Lakes region. Specifically, the Engine works to create economic value by recovering critical minerals, nutrients, energy, and water from wastewater, while removing emerging contaminants such as PFAS widely used and difficult to destroy chemicals linked to harmful health effects. The NSF Engine has three core functional areas: (1) Use-Inspired Research and Development (R&D); (2) Translation and Commercialization; and (3) Workforce Development and Education. All three are supported by cross-functional strategies to build a highly connected and collaborative ecosystem of partners and stakeholders across the region of service. The NSF Great Lakes RENEW Engines R&D and translation efforts are focused on supporting technologies including AI-enabled technologies that address the following challenges: (1) The development of novel materials for efficient and selective separation of valuable resources and contaminants from wastewater and non-traditional waste streams; (2) Emerging process technologies to advance the recovery of energy and critical materials; and (3) Delivering sensors and sensor networks for real-time sensing, monitoring, and detection to support efficient and economically viable processes needed in the first two challenges. The Engines translation function is creating a continuum of support programs to shepherd promising technologies from lab to market. These programs provide innovators with assistance tackling key bottlenecks including entry market identification, securing capital, and securing initial customers. Built on the NSF Engines strong and evolving partnerships across academia, government, and end users in industry and utilities, the NSF Great Lakes RENEW Engine is developing intelligent water resource recovery systems testbeds at multiple scales (bench, pilot, and operational) to demonstrate, integrate, and deploy these novel technologies to support water-intensive industry that is growing in this region. This commercialization support combined with ecosystem-wide thought leadership aims to expand markets for water resource recovery technologies and fill needs in crucial domestic supply chains including those for critical materials essential to growing industries and national security. The NSF Great Lakes RENEW Engine centers its workforce development efforts around training and education programs aimed at preparing future innovators, workers, and entrepreneurs for AI-enabled intelligent water resource recovery systems. Great Lakes RENEW engages a growing network of regional foundations, community organizations, education and training providers, and nonprofits with shared priorities in workforce development and STEM education to co-create and implement strategies that advance the NSF's technical and economic goals. Specific activities include developing new K-12 curriculum, pre-apprenticeships, apprenticeships, job/skills training programs, higher education curriculum, or other needs as the NSF Engines continuous gap analysis concludes. The NSF Great Lakes RENEW Engine brings together a strong coalition of partners and core functions that are in strong alignment with regional assets and priorities. The leadership team has identified critical R&D topic areas and expertise to drive circular water innovations to support water-intensive manufacturing industry in the region. The innovation ecosystem built through this NSF Engine cultivates talent development and collective discoveries across critical partners, which creates connected pathways that translate innovation to impact in the circular water economy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Sarah Goforth