Laboratory Space
NEWT researchers enjoy access to Rice’s Shared Equipment Authority (SEA). Rice established the SEA in 2001 to provide superb experimental facilities, research equipment, and support services at an affordable cost. Small Times magazine ranked Rice’s nanotechnology facilities as #2 in the U.S.
Nine professional staff members operate and maintain equipment, set and enforce safety procedures, train users, and prepare samples. NEWT researchers will also have access to resources at the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology and the Texas Center for X-Ray Crystallography.
NEWT headquarters are located at Rice University, which has excellent engineering and nanotechnology research facilities. Rice also provides additional laboratory space for building and testing the NEWT-SKID testbed (well-suited to treat up to 1000 gal/day of water), which is located in the Ryon Laboratory.
Computing
Rice’s Research Computing Support Group provides full-service system administration, application support, user support and education, and data management services. Every Rice faculty or staff member has access to large-scale computing power at no cost at the Shared University Grid @ Rice (SUG@R), an Intel Xeon-based cluster, and at the Cray XD1 AMD (Ada), an Opteron-based cluster. NEWT will benefit from the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology (K2I), a Rice research institute. K2I brings strengths in high-performance computing and computational science and engineering. Its goals are to support, foster, and develop a strong community of research and education in computing technologies, computational engineering, and information processing. K2I also encourages and develops close partnerships with industry, government, and other universities.
Equipment
Arizona State University (ASU) provides experimental and analytical equipment to measure water quality (bulk and trace organics, inorganics pathogens), flow rates, and power consumption. ASU will also provide access to a high-bay facility to construct and debug MobileNEWT and to the Solar House operated by QESST, ASU’s current ERC. University of Texas El Paso: UTEP provides access to the Center for Inland Desalination (CIDS) tstbed, and to two Environmental Growth Chambers and five ell-equipped laboratories in the Chemistry Department. These laboratories provide bench space for 30 researchers and a wide range of analytical equipment. Yale University: Yale participants are well equipped for environmental nanotechnology research. We have access to shared facilities in the Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering and to state-of-the-art equipment at the Yale Institute for Nanosciences and Quantum Engineering.
Laboratory Safety
NEWT provides appropriate safety training at all the partner universities.
Each NEWT laboratory addresses safety protocols in its research procedures. All the partner universities train researchers in the correct use of personal protective equipment and engineering controls. Rice University requires regular thorough inspections by the Building’s Safety Officer and Rice’s Environmental Health & Safety Department (EHSD). Protective equipment and waste disposal procedures follow Rice’s EHSD policy, which is based on Federal safety guidelines 10 CFR 835.501(d) and 10 CFR 835.1102.
Data Sharing
All NEWT-generated research findings, data, and other research products will be made available to other ERCs to facilitate cross-ERC collaboration and fertilization. Proprietary information will be restricted to NEWT personnel and other ERC personnel upon request and approval from the NEWT Center Director.