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NJIT Research Professor Herbert Tate Heads Panel Discussion for Governors Group
Architect School at NJIT Offers Again Popular Two-Day Summer Career Program
New Jersey Network for Women Leaders in Higher Education Spring 2002 Workshop
NJIT and American Water Works Association Form New Research Center to Improve Drinking Water
New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame at NJIT Inducts Four Members; Fetes Others
New NJIT Degrees Benefit Students, Technology Industries and New Jersey
New Jersey Institute of Technology and American Water
Works Association Form New Research Center to Improve Drinking Water
The New Jersey Institute of Technology, along with the American Water Works Association, recently founded the New Jersey Applied Water Research Center, which will unite industry, government and academia in a common effort to research and improve the state's drinking water.
The center will be operated jointly by the Otto H. York Center for Environmental Engineering and Science at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and the New Jersey Section of the American Water Works Association.
Researchers from NJIT and the Water Works Association, a non-profit group dedicated to providing the state with safe drinking water, signed a memorandum of agreement on Wednesday, Feb. 14, establishing the Applied Water Research Center.
"The center will have an immediate impact on the state's water infrastructure and will fill in the gaps that national research programs have not addressed," says Taha Marhaba, Ph.D., an associate professor of environmental engineering at NJIT and co-director of the center. "The water utilities, the regulatory agencies, the consultants and the universities will now - because of the center - be able to work together on applied water research."
Researchers will also work to assure that the region's water supply is safe from bio-terrorist attacks. They will work on a monitoring system that can quickly identify biological agents deposited in the water infrastructure, Marhaba says.
The center will also research ways to combat drought - a current problem given this winter's low rainfall. Another issue the center will address is how to meet newly proposed drinking water regulations and standards, which, if passed, will be more stringent than current ones.
Other aims of the center include encouraging state utilities and universities to conduct drinking water research; providing research ideas on water supply to the Office of Science and Research of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection; monitoring research to assure that drinking water issues are being addressed and establishing a public service center that will inform residents about research on water supply.
Kevin Dixon, chair of New Jersey Section of the American Water Works Association, says the center will not only allow researchers to better understand the science of water, but since American Water Works represents the water utility firms, also lead to better service to residents.
"The center will have a trickle down effect," Dixon says. "It will help us to produce water more economically and efficiently, which is good for the residents."
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