Research Themes

The mission of the Center for Materials for Water and Energy Systems (M-WET) is to discover and understand fundamental science to design new membrane materials, develop tools and knowledge to predict new materials’ interactions with targeted solutes, inspired by the need to provide fit for purpose water from low quality water sources and recover valuable solutes with less energy. 

We propose 3 Gap Attack Platforms (GAPs) to achieve this goal: (A) Structure and Dynamics of Water and Solutes Near Interfaces, (B) Molecular Design for Ion Selectivity, and (C) Fundamental Science of Membrane Manufacturing. These GAPs will work with an overarching Integrating Framework on (4) Bridging Between Systems/Developing the Bridging Toolset. M-WET’s team comprises 22 leading 2 membrane scientists, polymer scientists, polymer physicists, materials scientists, theoreticians, chemists and beamline scientists at UT, Austin, UC, Santa Barbara, and the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at LBNL.

The key to M-WET’s previous and future success is an organization directing the flow of scientific advances between GAPs to catalyze systems level breakthroughs. M-WET’s previous success was enabled by the center-wide adoption of a Universal Membrane Chemistry Platform (UMCP) and a Model Fluid Platform (MFP), which kept research projects synchronized across M-WET and well-aligned with our mission and research goals.