UC Berkeley Water Research and Opportunities Portal

ReNUWIt (Re-Inventing the Nation’s Urban Water Infrastructure) is an interdisciplinary, multi-institution engineering research center. Our goal is to change the ways we manage urban water.

ReNUWIt is the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Re-inventing the Nation’s urban Water Infrastructure. Launched in 2011, ReNUWIt is the first ERC dedicated to civil infrastructure and water systems. ReNUWIt encompasses a diverse team of researchers who collaborate with entrepreneurs and practitioners on innovative solutions for urban water infrastructure challenges.

Headquartered at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, the National Alliance for Water Innovation, or NAWI, was selected in 2019 to support the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy-Water Desalination Hub. Along with co-founding laboratories Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, NAWI brings together a world-class team of industry and academic partners to examine the critical technical barriers and research needed to radically lower the cost and energy of desalination.

NAWI’s focus is on early-stage research on desalination and associated water-treatment technologies to secure affordable and energy-efficient water supplies for the United States from nontraditional water sources. Our five-year research program will be guided by an annual roadmapping process designed to engage stakeholders from the water-treatment and water-use ecosystem, and by an annual request-for-proposal process to solicit research ideas through a competitive, peer-reviewed evaluation and selection process.