The UK and the US research councils have made major investments in the training of their future water engineering cadres through (respectively) a £6.4 million Industrial Doctorate Centre for the UK Water Sector (STREAM) and a $18.5 million Engineering Research Centre (ERC) for Re-inventing the Nation's Urban Water Infrastructure (ReNUWIt). This network proposal seeks additional travel and subsistence resources to exploit the potential synergy between these two major research and training activities by enabling PhD students, early career researchers and academic staff from each centre of excellence to interact and exchange ideas, knowledge, skills and research results. The transatlantic network will engage publically and industrially supported water research activities at the universities of Newcastle, Cranfield, Sheffield, Exeter, Imperial College London, Stanford, New Mexico State, California at Berkeley, and the Colorado School of Mines.
The network will enable delegations of ReNUWIt PhD students and postdocs lead by a ReNUWIt academic to participate in the Challenge Weeks 2013/2014/2015 organized each year at another STREAM university. Challenge Weeks bring together the diverse cohort of research engineers, academics and industrial partners working under the STREAM umbrella and includes team building exercises, advanced transferable skills training, guest lectures from leading industrialists and scientists, and design and problem solving challenges. Participation of ReNUWIt delegates will enrich these events and provide opportunity for formal and informal engagement between UK and US peers. The network will also enable participation of STREAM research engineers in the workshops and strategic dialogues organized by RENUWIt and/or brief research visits in ReNUWIt laboratories to learn about the ongoing work and state-of-the-art methods used in US laboratories. The goals of the RENUWIt workshops and dialogues are to identify the most critical questions in strategically important water infrastructure areas to be addressed by university research. In addition to supporting the transatlantic mobility of young researchers, the network will also enable participation of STREAM and ReNUWIt academics in each others workshops and training activities, which include taught postgraduate modules, student-led research classes/seminars, and video conference accessible series of leadership seminars occurring throughout the academic year and addressing topics such as environmental leadership, scientific ethics, communication, problem solving, and ethical conduct of research. Last but not least, the network will integrate the STREAM and ReNUWIt websites by providing information dedicated to the organization, internal reporting and public dissemination of network activities funded under this proposal. This information will contain, in addition to a description of both research initiatives with links to their main websites, all the necessary details about the travel bursaries, the application process and deadlines, a timetable of relevant STREAM and ReNUWIt events. The website will also include news items written about the exchange activities by the beneficiaries of the travel bursaries. Contributions of STREAM academics to the webinar series of the ReNUWIt center, and viewing of ReNUWIt webinars by STREAM affiliated members, will build an additional virtual bridge between the two water research centres of excellence.
The additional travel and subsistence resources requested with this proposal will enable STREAM and ReNUWIt to come together as a transatlantic think tank for the water sector, to jointly nurture future engineering talent, and to add value to each other's planned activities without duplicating existing efforts.
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