The objective of the WaterSEED project is to provide a doctoral program to excellent early stage researchers (ESRs) that want to develop their skills and contribute to the development of breakthrough technologies for water related challenges. Key elements in the program are the strong focus on interdisciplinary interaction, entrepreneurial skills and societal relevance. The project will use the existing Wetsus doctoral (PhD) program as a strong base and will enable this program to become even more international and relevant for the European society. The Wetsus doctoral program has grown in the 10 years of its existence to a prime example of smart, regional specialization on water technology with a strong European connection between research institutes and industry partners. The research in the Wetsus program takes place in close collaboration with 90 companies that actively participate in the research through paying memberships to focused and high trust research themes. All Wetsus researchers have at least three contacts per year with these industry partners. The current doctoral program has a strong regional and national funding base. Through COFUND this program will be further expanded and strengthened by attracting 45 international, excellent young researchers to the program in the period of 2015-2020. It will also strengthen the European connection of the program by increasing the number of researchers from other countries than the host organisation to over 70%. The ESRs will be selected in two calls per year through a transparent and thorough selection process, including a two day WaterSEED Recruitment Challenge at Wetsus for the best candidates.

EMPOWER is an innovative entrepreneurial-based doctoral programme aiming to train scientific entrepreneurs with the skillset to operate between academia, companies, start-ups, public authorities and the general public. This professional figure will have high impact in a post-COVID future where the efforts of research are required to transform the European Union into a modern, green, inclusive and resilient economy, where growth is de-coupled from resource use. EMPOWER will build-up on the experience of Wetsus, a multidisciplinary research institute where intersectoral cooperation between companies, universities and public authorities takes place. In EMPOWER the partners will be 3 universities and 14 companies. EMPOWER will recruit 14 ESRs in one widely advertised call and a transparent 3-round selection procedure. ESRs are employed by the academic partners, according to the Collective Labour Agreement of the Dutch Universities, to earn their PhD degree together with an integrated business-oriented training. Each ESR will shape her/his own project around the idea of achieving clean water and energy, resource recovery and smart water management. Two supervisors (one from Wetsus and one from academia) and an industry mentor will constitute a multidisciplinary “knowledge triangle” to guide each ESR. Together with this, the training of each ESR will focus on research, multidisciplinary expertise, entrepreneurship and personal development.

Development and proliferation of antibiotic resistance is classified among major global threats by the World Health Organization. Sanitation of the water cycle is essential to sustain environmental and human health. Within urban water systems, public and governmental perception is rising on the role of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and their microbiomes as putative hotspots for the proliferation of antibiotic resistances, and the need for new quality criteria and installation upgrades. However, because of methodological biases, our knowledge remains limited on the emission, fate and possible amplification or removal of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) across WWTPs. There is an urgent need to develop standardized methods and database for the accurate identification, characterization, and quantification of antibiotic resistances in such complex water matrices. REPARES brings excellence in research on spread of antibiotic resistance in WWTPs through establishing cooperation of UCT with leading European innovators and internationally-renowned expert of the water-related antibiotic resistance field: UCP will share its expert leadership in wastewater-mediated antibiotic resistance; TUDelft will deliver methods to successfully apply for international projects; Wetsus will propel cooperation with the non-academic sector; AAU will integrate the REPARES database within the world-accepted MiDAS database. REPARES aims at advancing the European community‘s know-how on antibiotic resistance across sanitation waterways, which in the future will bring society to closer achieve Sustainable Development Goal of the United Nations. REPARES will act as an essential vector to disseminate information on antimicrobial resistance spread within European WWTPs beyond science and technology in order to reach the non-academic community by means of open events, popularization publications, and operation of the REPARES web platform.

The “Blue Acid/Base Battery” (BAoBaB), stores electrical energy using pH and salinity differences in water. The principle of BAoBaB is altering the acid-base balance by means of an excess of available electricity to obtain an acid and base from its corresponding salt solution. When electricity is needed, acid and base are recombined into their corresponding salt solution again while obtaining electrical work from the entropy and enthalpy gain. Our goal is to develop this totally new, environment-friendly, cost-competitive, scalable, water-based electrical energy storage system from TRL3 to TRL5. Our objectives are: 1. to establish and extend the potential of BAoBaB to become a reliable and environmentally friendly way of storing (renewable) electricity at kWh-MWh scale for application at user premises or at substation level. 2. to understand and enhance mass transfer in round-trip conversion techniques and hence to improve the energy conversion efficiencies of the BAoBaB system, aiming an efficiency >80% and >10 times higher energy density than in Pumped Hydropower Storage. 3. to validate under accepted utility use conditions an automatically operated BAoBaB system (with corresponding battery management) at a scale of 1 kW power and 7 kWh energy storage. 4. To pave the road for cost competitive energy storage with attention to life-cycle cost and performance, aiming at <0.05 €/kWh/cycle. BAoBaB operates at a timescale of hours to days, and hence will enable a larger penetration degree of distributed and intermittent renewable energy sources. Not only the storage capacities are huge (kWh to MWh), resources are plentiful (salt and water) and environmental risks are minimal. Together with the location independence and non-toxic nature, penetration rate can be high within the EU and outside, providing the EU export opportunities.