Professor Qian Liao was quoted in an article about the college’s Water Equipment and Policy Center (WEP), which he directs.The center was launched with funding from the National Science Foundation to encourage industry-university partnership on water-related research.
WEP has become a recognized model for collaboration across universities and industry, Liao said. And, through industry-guided research projects, UWM students get hands-on experience in the field.
When the WEP center was founded in 2010, it was the first time UWM had joined an NSF industry-university collaborative research center. Marquette is the other university partner, along with a growing list of corporate partners. Today, more than 80 such partnerships are now in operation across the country and the college is a member in three.
The NSF provides administration seed money to launch a shared program consisting of at least two universities and 10 companies, who jointly decide what problems they will set out to solve. Read more about the WEP in the article.