2025 UMass Amherst WET Lab Video Transcript

As we seek to grow the climate tech industry at Massachusetts. UMass Amherst WET Center is ushering in the future of water treatment technology. We are in the Water, Energy and Technology Center, or the wet center, and it's a very unique piloting facility that we have at the UMass Amherst campus to bridge research between academic researchers and industry researchers with the goal of translating technology into operation for water and wastewater treatment.

Wastewater and sustainability are inherently linked. Our wastewater treatment infrastructure protects our environmental health, but it is not necessarily the most sustainable approach to environmental and public health. We're in another moment where our technology that supports water and wastewater treatment is antiquated. It needs revitalization. And so, thinking through the ways we've been doing wastewater treatment for almost 100 years, we're in a great moment to think through. How can we do that more energy efficiently?

When you first hear about it, you just go like, oh, wastewater. But when you actually start learning about it, you start learning how interesting it is. And after working in it for a while, especially in engineering companies, you start seeing that wastewater is actually a valuable resource. The WET center is one of UMass core facilities, which means that small businesses and startups within the state of Massachusetts have unique access to this resource to help accelerate their own work.

We are fundraising right now for a new building that we have plans and hope to build, and that would allow us to engage even more companies where we can take new and emerging technologies to the next level so they can be implemented at scale.