News

During World Water Day celebrations on March 22, the Water Institute and the de Gaspé Beaubien Foundation announced an exciting three-year partnership that will combine water expertise and technology to help mitigate the threats facing our Great Lakes.

Roy Brouwer, Executive Director, Water Institute; Claude Perras, Executive Director, de Gaspé Beaubien Foundation

Dr. Joan Rose – winner of the 2016 Stockholm Water Prize – is an international expert in water microbiology, water quality and public health safety at Michigan State University. Professor Rose and her team, whom she calls “water detectives,” investigate waterborne disease outbreaks globally to determine how they can be stopped, and prevented. 

Collaborative Water Program student, Danielle Lindamood, was accepted into the "Water Innovation Lab - India" program in the fall of 2016. It brought together 35 students and water practitioners from around the world for a two-week field experience in locations around India. She spent two weeks overseas exploring different water problems and contexts, and presenting innovative ideas for solutions.

Below she has written about her experience in India and her experience in being a part of the Water Institute’s Collaborative Water Program.

Congratulations to Water Institute members Philippe Van Cappellen, Norman Zhou and Sherry Schiff, three of the five Waterloo researchers to recently receive a combined total of $3 million from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). 

The researchers and their water-related projects are:

Yesterday, Waterloo’s Water Institute and the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES) signed a Memorandum of Understanding. The MOU formalizes the commitment to continue collaboration between China’s largest environmental research institute and the Water Institute in water management research, education and training.

Water Institute member and architecture professor, Elizabeth English, is leading a team of Waterloo School of Architecture researchers who want to build a floating pavilion in a flood zone of the Grand River.

Four researchers from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences are the co-recipients of a $672,000 USD grant from the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) to study the fate of groundwater pollutants in arid regions.

The Waterloo team, all members of the Water Institute, are part of a consortium including researchers from Qatar University, United Arab Emirates University, Utrecht University, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, and Université Libre de Bruxelles.

Water Institute member Monica Emelko has been working with the province and the municipality since day one to monitor the wildfire's impact on the Athabasca River.

The story includes an interview by Emelko an, Associate Professor in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and her team. 

As Ontario reviews water-taking permit charges for bottled water companies like Nestlé, Water Institute member Rob de Loë urges us to think beyond the bottle.