An Innovation Partner is an organizations that supports commercialization, entrepreneurship, and translation of National Science Foundation funded technologies into the market. Partners serve as a resource or sounding board for the research teams.

One of the social-impact areas of interest for the Southwest Angel Network is the environment. Therefore we are pleased to have been invited to become an Innovation Partner for the Nano Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Research Center at Rice University. The objective of NEWT is to develop new technologies to treat industrial/oil & gas wastewater in a more efficient, sustainable manner, and to make clean, safe water available to the millions of individuals who lack access to it by the use of innovative, low-cost, sustainable approaches.

Rice leads a consortium of four universities:  Rice, Arizona State, Yale University, and University of Texas (El Paso) for the NEWT program, which is expected to receive $37 million from NSF over 10 years.