Seeking Leaders To Solve Global Water Crisis

February 24, 2024

As a world leader in water research, MSU is addressing global water issues by developing a graduate training program focused on the broad technological, scientific and cultural skills needed to resolve current and future water challenges.

The program is being developed with the help of a $3 million National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) program award.

The NSF’s NRT program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new — and potentially transformative — models for STEM graduate education training. The program is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high-priority interdisciplinary or convergent research areas through comprehensive traineeship models that are innovative, evidence-based and aligned with changing workforce and research needs.

Building on interdisciplinary collaboration among faculty from 13 departments across seven MSU colleges, the project anticipates training 58 doctoral students, including 33 NRT-funded trainees, from engineering, computer science, biology, ecology, public health and social science.

 

“We are surrounded by water crises, from the Flint water crisis; the years-long unsafe drinking water in Jackson, Mississippi; widespread contamination of water with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS; and prolonged drought followed by extreme flooding in California. … Advances in sensors, robotics, genomics and computational modeling are resulting in the big data necessary to confront these challenges on a large scale.” – Xiaobo Tan, principal investigator, MSU Research Foundation Professor and Richard M. Hong Endowed Chair in the MSU College of Engineering