NEWT welcomes congressional reps, NSF director

National Science Foundation Director France Córdova (right) and U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas (center), meet with Rice President David Leebron at an April 11 reception in honor of Rice’s NSF-funded Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) center. Leebron, Córdova, Culberson and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, learned about NEWT research and saw demonstrations of NEWT’s prototype solar-powered desalination system and a water mineralization system created by undergraduates in a NEWT-sponsored course at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen. NEWT, the first NSF engineering research center in Houston and only the third in Texas, is developing compact, mobile, off-grid water-treatment systems that can provide clean water to millions of people who lack it and make U.S. energy production more sustainable and cost-effective. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow)