NAE Symposium Focuses on Clean Water

Mark Shannon, MechSE professor and director of the Center of Advanced Materials for the Purification of Water with Systems (WaterCAMPWS), presented his vision for the future of water purification during the National Academy of Engineering's regional meeting April 2 at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Co-sponsored by the NAE and the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, the meeting targeted one of the NAE's 14 Grand Challenges for engineers in the 21^st century: providing access to clean water.

The growing demand for water is one of the most pressing environmental issues facing the planet. Currently, more than one billion people around the world lack access to sufficient amounts of clean water, and such factors as population growth; over pumping of ground water aquifers; contamination by of increasing demands for water, food and energy; the transfer of population to urban areas; and glacial melting are imposing larger demands on the world's water supply. Before introducing NAE President Charles Vest, University of Illinois Provost, Linda Katehi pointed out that the increasing demand for water in the United States alone will require a $1 trillion investment in new water technologies and infrastructure improvements.

Other speakers at the Engineering for Sustainable Global Water Resources symposium included Praveen Kumar, a professor in Illinois' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Institute for Sustainability of Intensively Managed Landscapes; Sally Gutierrez, director of the National Risk Management Research Laboratory in Cincinnati; and Joseph Zuback, president of Global Water Advisors, Inc.