PIRE: Water and Commerce- Technologies to Enable Environmental Sustainability in Global Markets

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International maritime trade, energy production, and the manufacture and global circulation of new materials urgently require creative technological solutions to enable environmentally sustainable commerce. This interdisciplinary PIRE project Water and Commerce: Technologies to Enable Environmental Sustainability in Global Markets will perform innovative research and educate young US scientists and engineers in an international context to provide these solutions. Participating U.S. institutions are Duke University, Michigan State University, and North Carolina Central University. Foreign partners include Istanbul Technical University and Gebze Institute of Technology (Turkey), National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), and Centre Européen de Recherche et d'Enseignement des Géosciences de l'Environnement (France). The specific objectives of the Partnership are to: (i) educate students to work within and manage projects executed by international teams; (ii) perform innovative research with foreign collaborators and industrial partners to develop new technologies and methods that enable the sustainability of water resources and to carry out life cycle assessments of various energy/technology mixes, (iii) develop the awareness of global issues and sustainability, and (iv) increase the number and diversity of students entering careers in science and engineering. Research within the project is organized by international research teams that engage industrial partners to address critical elements of energy transport and production including treatment of ballast water, methods for diagnosing and fingerprinting contamination, and advanced technologies for oil-water separations. Life cycle assessments will produce a multi-level analysis of impacts and trade-offs resulting from energy production and transport scenarios and from the technological innovations developed by the PIRE team. This effort addresses fundamental advances in membrane materials design, methods for controlling the dispersion of non-indigenous and potentially invasive species in ballast water, means for decreasing the environmental footprint of the oil industry, recovering oil, and developing a suite of technologies to diagnose and mitigate the chronic and acute impacts of oil exploration and transportation. Our educational program directly addresses the need for a diverse STEM workforce with the capacity for international collaboration and leadership. The Partnership will cement collaborations between academic participants and industrial partners to form a synergistic Industry/University consortium as an integral part of education and research. Collaborations with industrial partners will help reduce technologies to practice and provide students with opportunities for internships. Students will obtain certification in a rigorous plan of study in science, engineering, management, environmental policy, and systems analysis that emphasizes environmental sustainability in commerce viewed from the perspective of materials, energy and transportation. Leveraging highly successful recruitment programs at Duke, MSU and NCCU (86.7% minority enrollment) and closely coordinating research and education activities between all partner institutions will expand opportunities for underrepresented groups of students to participate in multiple university and global learning/research activities with the goal of increasing the number of these students entering into STEM related fields. The project is funded by NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE) through the PIRE.