NSF engines: great lakes water innovation engine

Active Cooperative Agreement Awarded Last action

Award ID
2315268
Recipient
Awarding agency
Obligated
$27,448,182

Award facts

Completion date 53% complete
Originally
Place of performance
Chicago, IL 60606, USA

Award details come from USAspending.gov.

Description

Abstract
This NSF engines award to the great lakes water innovation engine will advance our nation?s capacity for innovations in the circular water economy through research, translation, and workforce activities centered around the concept of waste-to-wealth-and-health. The NSF engine will discover, develop, and deploy innovative viable technologies that (1) attract water-intensive manufacturers to the great lakes region while maintaining environmental health; (2) recover valuable resources (like energy, critical minerals and nutrients) from wastewater streams and convert them to wealth; and 3) create an innovation ecosystem to foster employment, ownership, and wealth-building opportunities for people and communities, especially those most in need of economic opportunity. The NSF engine has an initial region of service that spans three states ? Illinois, ohio and wisconsin ? With several anchor points including chicago, cleveland, and milwaukee as priority areas of impact for the first two years. The NSF engine will be led by current innovation NFP, a U.S.-based non-profit. The NSF engine builds a strong ecosystem including core partners with representation from the manufacturing and energy sectors, national labs and universities (including public and private four-year institutions and two-year institutions), economic and workforce development organizations, entrepreneurship support organizations, non-profits, philanthropies and investment firms that are essential to the NSF engine?s success. This diverse coalition of partners will be central to r & d, translation, and workforce development efforts. The vision of the NSF engine is to transform ?waste to wealth and health? In the context of water quality. Specifically, this means recovering energy, nutrients, freshwater, and critical minerals from water and wastewater for economic value and removing emerging contaminants such as PFAS? Widely used chemicals that break down very slowly over time and have been linked to harmful health effects in human and animals? From water to protect human health. The NSF engine has three core functional areas: (1) use-inspired research and development (r & d); (2) translations and partnerships (translation); and (3) inclusive ecosystems (ecosystems), each of which inherently addresses one or more key barriers that must be overcome to realize the vision. The great lakes water innovation engine?s r & d and translation efforts will focus on the following challenges: challenge 1 will lead to novel material platforms for efficient and selective separation of valuable resources and contaminants of emerging concern (e.g., PFAS) from wastewater and associated waste streams; challenge 2 will result in emerging process technologies to advance recovery of energy and critical minerals from various water sources; and challenge 3 will deliver sensors and sensor networks for real-time sensing, monitoring, and detection to support sustainable and economically viable processes needed in the first two challenges. Built on the NSF engine?s strong and evolving partnerships across academia, government, and end users in industry and utilities, this NSF engine aims to develop intelligent water resource recovery systems testbeds at multiple scales (bench, pilot, and full) to demonstrate, integrate, and deploy these novel technologies to support sustainable water-intensive industry that is growing in this region. The NSF engine also aims to develop domestic supply chains for materials essential to growing industries like battery production and electrification. Recognizing the relatively undefined and immature nature of the markets for water resource recovery and circular water economy technologies, the NSF engine centers the workforce development efforts around training and education programs aimed at preparing future innovators, workers, and entrepreneurs in the emerging space of a circular water economy. The NSF engine will leverage the inclusive ecosystem work group, which engages more than a dozen regional foundations, family offices, community organizations and nonprofits with workforce development and entrepreneurship investment priorities, as a governing body to create and implement a workforce development and stem education strategy that aligns with the NSF engine?s technical 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 engine?s initial and continuous GAP analysis concludes. This NSF engine brings together a strong coalition of partners and core functions that are in excellent 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 sustainable water-intensive manufacturing industry in the region. The innovation ecosystem built through this NSF engine cultivates sustainable 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.- subawards are planned for this award.

Transactions

Action Obligated Date
Amendment $12,740,159
Amendment $0
Amendment $0
Amendment $0
Amendment $0
Amendment $0
Amendment $14,708,023
Amendment -$14,708,023
Original award $14,708,023

Subawards

Subrecipient Amount Awarded
The Ohio State University This award will respond to Challenge 4 identified in the proposal to the NSF. Challenge 4 will focus on subsystem (bench-scale) testbed development to test… $276,153
Northwestern University This subaward concentrates on three primary categories: (1) the efficient and selective separation of materials in wastewater and waste streams to remove… $863,875
University Of Illinois This subaward concentrates on one primary category: Smart monitoring and community-specific assessment of green stormwater infrastructure hydrologic, energy,… $362,886
The University Of Chicago This subaward concentrates on two primary categories: (1) materials platform, designed to recover materials from wastewater and waste streams and (2) sensing… $1,658,760
Rapid Radicals Technology, Inc. This subaward concentrates on one primary category: the development of subsystem testbeds as intelligent water resource recovery systems. $179,211
Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership, Inc. This subaward concentrates on supporting the employment, ownership, and wealth-building opportunity goals for Great Lakes ReNEW, particularly building career… $761,650
Illinois Institute Of Technology This subaward concentrates on one primary category: bench-scale testbed development to test technologies resulting from activities in Challenges 1-3. The… $265,534
Mhub mHUB and CURRENT will collaborate on a Smart & Sustainable Manufacturing Accelerator integrating CURRENT's accelerator modules, curriculum, and resources into… $428,518
Purdue University This subaward concentrates on one primary category: the efficient and selective separation of materials in wastewater and waste streams to remove contaminants… $309,903
Dayton Miami Valley Entrepreneurs Center Inc. This Subaward concentrates on supporting the employment, ownership, and wealth-building opportunity goals for Great Lakes ReNEW, particularly mapping career… $172,051
Cincinnati Univ Of This award will respond to Challenge 4 identified in the proposal to the NSF. Challenge 4 will focus on subsystem (bench-scale) testbed development to test… $313,113
Regents Of The University Of Michigan $457,000
Marquette University This subaward concentrates on three primary categories: (1) the development of processing technologies to advance the recovery of resources; (2) real-time… $748,706
National Fund For Workforce Solutions This subaward concentrates on supporting the employment, ownership, and wealth-building opportunity goals for the Engine, particularly mapping career pathways… $342,034
Regents Of The University Of Minnesota This subaward concentrates on two primary categories: (1) the development of processing technologies to advance the recovery of resources and (2) real-time… $692,717
Hire360 This subaward concentrates on supporting the employment, ownership, and wealth-building opportunity goals for project, particularly building career pathways… $381,429
Cleveland Water Alliance This subaward concentrates on two primary categories: (1) designing and building a market entry-based testbed to support technologies as they advance from bench… $300,002
Show all 17

Quick answers

Who received award 2315268?

2315268 was awarded to Current Innovation NFP by National Science Foundation on March 1, 2024.

How much is award 2315268 worth?

$27,448,182 has been obligated on 2315268.

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