How To Go International: Navigating Global Water Market Opportunities

How To Go International: Navigating Global Water Market Opportunities

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[00:00:00] Rixt Sinnema: I will do a quick introduction to the project CircInWater because that's the main reason why we invited Bryan from Cleveland Water Alliance to tell something more about how to go international and mainly to how to go to the United States when you're like a water tech company. CircInWater, it's a project we started in 2022 and we are ending it at the end of June 2025.

[00:00:33] So only a few months left, and the main goal of this project was to support European SMEs, to develop their innovation and mainly SMEs focusing on the agri-food sector and the energy intensive sectors. We set this entirely, well, we developed this project together with partners from Finland, so Blue Economy Mikkeli and Water Cluster Finland, two clusters from Czech Republic, CREA and ICOK.

[00:01:07] the French cluster Aqua Nova and ZINNAE from Spain. And during these years, we started to set up an innovation lump sum scheme. So, several SMEs received 60,000 euros to develop their innovation so that they could develop from TRL level 5 up to 9. We also handed out knowledge lump sums. So when SMEs needed expertise, they could ask for 4,000 euros.

[00:01:38] And, the last one is the internationalization lump sum. And it's still open. So if you have goals to go to the United States or to Canada and, you would like to receive a lump sum. So that's 100 percent funded for flight tickets, hotel costs, or to cover up exhibition fees, you can apply for it.

[00:02:02] and of course this webinar, we organized this, thanks to this project. So if you want to apply for the Circuit Water internationalization lump sum, you can do that via circinwater.grantplatform.com. Next week we have another webinar, so you can sign up via that link as well. Like I said, at the end of June, we are finalizing this project, but we hope that we can start a new project in autumn, in October 2025.

[00:02:38] Unfortunately, it will not be with the same consortium, as the European Commission said, we don't want to have an entire water cluster. So we split up. So, hopefully that will make our chances bigger to get at least one approved. But we will keep you informed about that because. If some of us get approved, then, there will be new lump sum schemes available for SMEs.

[00:03:06] And of course, in a few weeks, the Aquatech in Amsterdam is organized. So on Wednesday, we are organizing a workshop, Water Smart Connect, with a lot of cluster organizations. And the main goal of that is, to bring SMEs, but also other parties together to see if we can work together and to apply for new European projects.

[00:03:31] So if you think this might be interesting, then please join this workshop. And at the beginning of the afternoon, we also organize a matchmaking lunch and that will be at the Danish pavilion. And I believe they are in hall one. And in case you would like to matchmake with other parties, we set up a B2Match platform, so then you can sign up for that and meet new people as well.

[00:03:58] So, those are all the activities we are organizing in the last few months of this project. So that's a short summary of this project. And now I would like to give the floor to Bryan.

[00:04:13] Bryan Stubbs: All right. Good afternoon for most of you. And good morning to a few of my colleagues here in the States.

[00:04:19] I'm Bryan Stubbs. I'm the executive director and president of the Cleveland Water Alliance, a water technology cluster based in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. Joining me today will be one of our accelerator partners, Nina, from Current, just because I thought some of the research work they're doing around the circular economy, along with some of the circular economy work we're doing would be of high interest to this group.

[00:04:44] So we're excited to be here. This is a great team. I'm really jealous that you have this, like, kind of EU focused program, Rixt, and just so I don't forget it, Natalie and I will be Aqua Tech. So, as many of you that want to meet in person, we welcome that and looking forward to being there.

[00:05:04] And then on the other. Side of the year. We have WEF Tech in Chicago this year, and I think that would be an excellent opportunity for some of those companies thinking about traveling here to come here. We'll do a reception for all the international partners on Sunday night that we do every other year in Chicago.

[00:05:25] So, who is CWA? So, as I mentioned, we're a water innovation cluster, and it's really about driving innovation, driving technology. And we achieve this through a series of testbeds, establishing trials, we've invested about 13 million U.S. dollars into our testbeds over these last four years, optimizing our Smart Lake Erie Watershed, which is just this massive, smart and connected system that I'll get into in a moment.

[00:05:54] We really focus on market driven needs and then matchmaking within users. I think sometimes we lose sight of what is the market telling us that they need. And when we have that perfect fit, we can really, really get new products, new innovations to the market. We also offer non-dilutive grants and funding.

[00:06:15] We provide meaningful data and that last one's extremely important: market visibility for your new technology. As you're thinking about not only the United States, but the North American market. So a little bit of background, here is the smart Lake Erie watershed. Those are a couple of our tower climbers. I always joke that I never thought I'd be writing checks to pay for tower climbers, but flash forward many years later.

[00:06:38] And as we've built this telemetry system, this is one of the benefits and fun things. So, for those that don't know the great, the Great Lakes are a little over 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water. And what we've done with one of those five great lakes is to create the largest digitally connected fresh body in the world.

[00:06:57] So a little over 17,000 square kilometers of telecommunications coverage. In that, we've deployed over 400 sensors throughout and 20 plus million data points gathered annually. And these numbers are always growing and there's always new people coming into our smart lake.

[00:07:16] So keep that in mind, but there's definitely European companies who've leveraged this data around. trialing and creating new products and new data products. And a little bit of what this looks like: this is Lake Erie that you see, you can see where we're headquartered on the bottom right, Cleveland and kind of the area that we're covering.

[00:07:37] This is growing statewide. And what this has allowed us to do is to enable a vast increase of automated real-time monitoring, and they give you a little idea of how big those Great Lakes are, here's a little overlay with Europe. They are massive. They're really inland oceans. So it's a really fascinating starting point for us.

[00:07:57] We're playing around with all sorts of different types of measurements, parameters. We're trialing a lot of new parameters, new technologies around nitrates, nitrites, real or near real time E. coli sensors, all sorts of fun stuff that we have high interest for from our European partners.

[00:08:18] So, we wrap that into what we really are known for, which is our testbeds. Accelerating these innovations really requires the ability to demonstrate, show up and prove that technology. This we didn't develop out of thin air. This was a program we started 5 years ago with the help of a consultancy called McKinsey and company and our head of innovation, Missy Beholds, and it was really trying to ask this question of why don't we see more water tech getting into the market?

[00:08:48] And what we noted was, we see a lot of technology in the research bench in the basement of the research facility at the university or the corporation, and it works fine at that scale. But as soon as you take our environmental technologies. into the market into an actual utility. As an example, it really hasn't been tested and vetted, and we're talking about mission critical infrastructure.

[00:09:14] So because of that, there was a lot of fear of trialing things, and thus we were having trouble getting products to market. So our test beds have allowed us to actually deploy Within the environment that the technology was meant to be deployed in and with potentially the customer to get that real time customer feedback.

[00:09:32] So our testbeds really can demonstrate throughout that technology utility matchmaking with pilots. Massive thing that we're doing. Some of these are easy and fun and quick and some of them take years in the making. I'll give you an example of that in a moment. We also lead some market-led open innovation challenges.

[00:09:51] The one we're probably most well known for is our lead service line detection without breaking ground, the idea that we can detect lead service lines that need to be replaced throughout the United States. And if you don't have to dig up a hole because these were buried 100 years ago. We don't know where they are.

[00:10:08] You can save a lot of money and accelerate the swap out of these lead service lines. So any technologies that can detect lead service lines without breaking ground of high interest. And we built a whole test bed based on that. And at this point, we're a little over 70 deployments. From over 14 countries into our testbeds, I will note that Europe has been the lion's share of those technologies.

[00:10:33] There is a great history over these last few years of almost a half of our deployments coming from Europe at one point. So our testbeds, again, really enable the innovators, entrepreneurs, tech companies to test, trial, pilot, and demonstrate your technologies in real world conditions across a range of environments.

[00:10:58] Really crucial and key as a takeaway point. And sometimes, you know, your technology may be an earlier stage technology readiness level, or TRL 6, 7, 8, that's okay. You know, we can test, we can trial, we can go back, make improvements with you, even get into things like rapid prototyping for changes, and then redeploy.

[00:11:20] Or, if you're in a TRL 9, maybe you're already deployed in Europe, the idea to pilot or to demonstrate as the first in North America is something of high interest to it, and we do that as well. What this allows us to do, benchmarking. We've invested millions of dollars into great equipment. So let's take IOT and sensors.

[00:11:40] We have pretty much all the best in class sensors, you know, such as YSI, a great xylem brand, based here in Ohio, manufactured here in Ohio. These are not cheap sensors. These are five to 10, 15, 20,000 a pop U.S. dollars, per sensor. And we've been trialing all sorts of like lower costs, maybe not.

[00:12:02] 99 percent effective, but maybe 97 percent effective, but a 10th or a 20th of the cost. High interest in that. We'd like to support that full IOT lifecycle. Our digital assets is probably where we see the most growth and where we have the most easy ability to plug and play your technology within our range of environments.

[00:12:24] Key point here, insurance. We underwrite a lot of this risk, and that's been a really key point as you demonstrate your product in the North American and the U. S. market is the ability to trial it, but to de risk that trialing. We have five different insurance policies, starting with Lloyds of London.

[00:12:43] Down to much more specific bespoke insurance companies. So we can have that conversation with you. And again, I want to emphasize this is open to all innovators from global multinational companies to the R&D lab in Prague, as an example. Utilities, so we work with over 30 plus utilities and that's growing, quarterly at this point, both public and private utilities.

[00:13:08] And what's really cool is all various sizes. So, our utility partners can be some of the biggest in the United States down to, you know. Utilities that maybe are operating for 10, 15, 20,000 people, and we've led a variety of custom pilot projects, especially around some hard tech opportunities with these utilities.

[00:13:28] Probably the one where we're most excited about right now has been a onsite generation of hypochloride. This was a technology that we found in South Korea with a company called TechWind. When we found them a pilot partner here regionally. A midsize utility about, and Rixt hopefully won't make fun of me for this.

[00:13:49] I can't do my metric calculation, but it's about a 70 million gallons a day utility. So pretty good size utility and. we got backing through, in this case, through the Ministry of Environment and Infrastructure in South Korea to pay for this pilot, and it literally, years in the making, arrived on the back of a container, about six weeks ago, and it's now being plugged in and deployed.

[00:14:18] It'll be operational in March, but in this case, this is the first time this technology has been demonstrated in all of the Americas. And this will become a showcase site for showing this technology. And of course, for this company, getting them to understand the market one, getting the market to understand them, but also to match them with manufacturers.

[00:14:40] This is big equipment. No way can it be shipped on a regular basis from South Korea. So we're finding contract manufacturing for them as an example. Industrial meets the circular economy, obviously, you know, the circuit economy. Your program around the circular economy is of high interest and is growing here domestically.

[00:15:01] And, two significant programs that we're working on for this right now, both funded by the U. S. National Science Foundation. My colleague Nina will tell you about the project we're working with Current and Great Lakes Renew here in a moment, but the other ones are more pure manufacturing based. We're an old,

[00:15:21] Old old manufacturing region of the country. We still manufacture things. So the idea of the circular economy, everything that we're going to need to upscale, and up demonstrate. Technologies from a circular manufacturer have high interest to us. So if you have something like that, we'd love to talk with you, a variety of different ways that we can, we can look at trialing or testing those those applications, be it industrial or or potentially some energy savings applications within the utility space.

[00:15:57] our test beds also touch residential and commercial. We're the home of a major faucet and in the house plumbing company, several in fact. And with them, we're working on things like smart water in the home, point of use detection of contaminants in the home. One of them has developed and taken the market an acoustic detection system to detect a leak within the house and automatically shuts off your water so that your home and your basement

[00:16:27] don't get flooded. So a high interest here as well. And of course, this also ranges even to like micro plastics and washing machines and, and fun stuff like that. So I, I'm a firm believer in like, I can talk all day, but to show you some of the technologies we've deployed in our test bed over this last year and a half, two years is a better demonstration.

[00:16:49] There in the center, you see another South Korean technology, the WaveTalk, it’s a biosensor on a chip. It's fully vetted now for turbidity, and it's moving into biological sensing in real time. Each chip's only about 20 U.S. dollars. We just ran 10,000 of these, with LG as a pilot. And they also won a Consumer Electronics Show, which is a big deal globally, award just, earlier this year, last month, in fact, in January.

[00:17:20] That top right, I was talking about that onsite generation of hypochlorite. You can see the shipping container there. They painted it really fun for us, which I loved. that just arrived, but that's a demonstration of some of the big utility demonstrations. At the top, you know, is a PFOS, PFOA.

[00:17:37] Concentration and detection technology that came out of here. And we've, I think, are tracking about 23 of those technologies right now. and bottom right is one of our washing machine microplastics capturing. I'm sure some of, you know, the company from Europe called Matter, very similar and kind of some complimentary and also some competitive components there.

[00:17:59] But I just wanted to give you an idea of how broad this, this kind of test bedding, this innovation kind of ecosystem is for us, it can go on to the open water. It can go into the built environment, the utility, the industrial, the work going on right now around, you know, data centers is another good example.

[00:18:18] And water reuse is of high interest to us. So, when you think about coming into the United States, think about these things. You know, think about one, the ability to test, trial, demonstrate, give confidence to the market that your technology works. We're here to help you with that. Our partners, such as the Water Alliance and the Netherlands is a great conduit to get to us as far as that part of the conversation as well.

[00:18:47] So we're, we're here. And when you come in, we can help you with that market visibility, you know, really get you that sunshine that you're going to need, help you think through. What does this look like? What does a pilot look like? It's the right pilot. Is it going to get the visibility to the market? Then we go into the market insights.

[00:19:04] What do you know about the U S. market from, from a, from a data marketing perspective? We do a lot of this, this work, and we're starting to put together kind of more intelligence around there where we can help you navigate into the market. Rixt has heard this a dozen times, but I love what our team developed and what we call the soft landing.

[00:19:25] And that's really what we're talking about here today is how can we soften the landing for you to think about coming into the U.S. market that one ability to test, trial and demonstrate, we can give you that access to legal support. IP is confusing, especially if you're not a big company, understanding what you need to do in the U.S.

[00:19:45] So we've got access to a variety of different legal support that we can introduce you to. Regulatory support: We can help you with that and make introductions, contract manufacturing and, and understanding of the BABA rules. This is going to be a bigger deal just with some political changes here in the U.S. Buy America, Build America for a lot of our utilities.

[00:20:07] There are rules around that, or there's also contract manufacturing that we can help you with. So it's a conversation we're ready for. We've been preparing for for about 5 years now, but we can really help get you into the market. Even when the market's a little, I'll just say dysfunctional here at the moment here in the States and then there's also potential incentives and financing.

[00:20:29] Some of this can be direct non dilutive funding. We do have grants. you know, financing options and I'll get into one other program. We're working on two in a minute. Another thing that our teams developed that we're real excited by is our pilot partner Circular. This is the idea of let's say your technology is mature.

[00:20:48] Maybe you're doing good sales in Europe, but you haven't thought through or had the ability yet to enter the U.S. market. We have the ability to see if we can match you with either an industrial or a utility pilot partner to demonstrate your technology. And we can get more into that more on a one on one, but, Natalie, who's on this call is a great point of entry for getting more information on all of this and getting you into our kind of innovation portfolio.

[00:21:21] Of course, we also, when we talk about the soft landing, we talk about the business hoteling space. This is a picture from our office. We're headquartered in partnership with a manufacturing, growth network called Magnet. So it's a perfect kind of circuit economy kind of component. Because the biggest effort here regionally around manufacturing is where we're housed, but we have hoteling space.

[00:21:44] We have desk space. If you want to come in, trial something, pilot something. Be part of our pilot partner, circular program. You can fly here and work out of our office. We'd love to have you. If you want to launch your company out of our office, we're happy to help with that. This really allows for really cool collaboration.

[00:22:03] You get to know us, you get to know the workforce, you get to know sales, marketing people. You know, it's really cool, really interesting. So we have several international companies in our office now, and it's just, it's been a blast. And I love the energy that that creates. So I'll come back to this now. We also are standing up right now, a $25 million equity investment and venture capital firm.

[00:22:25] We're not making investments yet. I'm still fundraising on it, but this is the sort of additional kind of activities that we could potentially provide to you as you're entering the North American market. Are you going to need capital? Is it debt capital? Or are you open to equity financing more for these younger startups?

[00:22:46] So bringing this home before I turn it over to Nina, CWA centrally connects over 100 key water industry corps, all the big names, you know, from HAWK to Xylem to BASF to Veolia, all participate with us, all the big engineering firms participate with us. Right now we're at about 33 water utilities

[00:23:07] participating with us. We expect that number to double by the end of this year. We've got some exciting things to announce at the beginning of April on that. Research universities: you may need access to research. You may need access to engineering from a research standpoint. So we've got partnerships with 23 research universities.

[00:23:26] Many of these are research 1 universities, which is the highest caliber of research universities that we have in the United States. So that's really fun. Over six federal partners. And then we work and tap into over 12 different accelerator programs throughout the U.S. We always say, maybe we're not the expert, but maybe we know somebody who is the expert.

[00:23:50] So if you come to us, if we don't have the answer, we're going to help get you the answer through these accelerators. And really that is exciting. Key kind of take away those key programs are Smart Lake Erie watershed, which is just massively, an attraction from an IOT sensing, little robots that swim in the water.

[00:24:09] The next generation of all sorts of fun things are test beds as a whole. Great way to validate in a in a risk mitigation strategy where your technology in the United States. Our open innovation challenges: Just something we don't do every year. They're big. They're massive. I mentioned the lead service line component.

[00:24:29] That one's still in progress, but we do do these. And look, these are market fed. This is the market telling us we have a problem. We haven't been able to solve for it. Company saying if it was easily solvable, we would have solved for it. So it's saying, okay, there's an issue here. Let's put refined resources towards it.

[00:24:49] And of course, our Freshwater Innovation Fund. So with that, yes, I will be at Aqua Tech. Rixt, I'm looking forward to participating in your event and make sure Natalie and I make sure we'll make sure we get registered there to meet some of your companies. I'll be presenting a couple of times on this same soft landing program while there, but

[00:25:09] we do have a rep in Europe, Leonard, who's in Germany. He will be with us, Natalie and I there. He's a great contact. He's a great conduit, a great also kind of first point of contact to getting to us. And here's my contact information, so if you need it, just, you know, reach out anytime. And with that, I'm going to stop sharing.

[00:25:33] and I'm going to turn it over to Nina with an introduction. The United States has been going big on a few kind of narrow, narrow, narrower areas, on a variety of topics, including like quantum computing, next generation of lithium ion battery technology. And one of the things they've gone big on is this idea of water as a really key driver.

[00:26:04] We've never been good in the United States about getting water, the love that it needs. So there's been a lot of us doing these efforts out of bootstrapping our way. Over the last, you know, decade or two, but flash forward in the last four or five years, suddenly the conversation is changing.

[00:26:20] Water is a major input, a major constraint and growing our market. So with that, the National Science Foundation, as well as the Economic Development Administration wanted to go big on a few areas. And one of the ones they went big on was, you know, this idea of water, and the Great Lakes region. So I don't want to steal her thunder, but one of our partners is Current through a program called Renew and Nina, who we will, we will be kind to her because she's only been on the job 4 weeks.

[00:26:51] and I don't think she slept over that 4 weeks, but I would love for you to get to know that program as well. So, Nina, I'm going to turn it over to you

[00:27:00] Nina Dudnik: That can't what a bit who could ask for a better introduction. let me see if I can make myself share correctly here.

[00:27:13] Bryan Stubbs: Looks good.

[00:27:14] Nina Dudnik: It looks good. Okay. Bryan, thank you so much for including me in this opportunity. It's lovely to meet everybody. as Bryan alluded to, I am a very recent transplant to the world of water. I'm a molecular biologist by training. So I've thought about water in a very different set of contexts.

[00:27:31] but what that has… And I, you know, have been in and around primarily the biopharma industry for decades in particular in the Boston area. And so what I've done is spent an enormous amount of time thinking about, you know, you have been calling it clusters. I would call it an ecosystem, but this idea of how do you accelerate things from the lab to the market?

[00:27:54] and how do you create the ecosystem of all of those different players around you that you need to be able to do that successfully, and well. I have a colleague who likes to say that when you're an entrepreneur, every day is a valley of death. And sometimes it feels that way. And what I think about, and what I'm excited to bring to and help current to be able to do is to figure out how to address that at every step along the way.

[00:28:21] TRLs, technology readiness levels, have been thrown out a couple of times, hither and yon, over the course of this webinar so far. And I think about commercialization starting at TRL 1. And so I, this is the kind of ecosystem that Renew Anchored by Current is trying to create.

[00:28:41] So Current is a Chicago based water innovation hub, not quite 10 years old, spun out by the city of Chicago government. And I think a very forward thinking way to do a couple of things: to grow as Bryan alluded to the circular blue economy to accelerate innovation and to do that by solving very pressing water challenges.

[00:29:05] as Bryan mentioned, the United States National Science Foundation made this incredibly audacious bet about a year and a half ago, that insofar as it took, say, 60 to 80 years for Boston to become the biopharma ecosystem that it is, can we accelerate that process? And can we do it in different kinds of industries in different parts of the country across the United States?

[00:29:28] And that is what Great Lakes Renew is an effort to do. I don't know if there are a lot of chemists on this webinar, but I think of Renew and what current is doing as a catalyst in the true chemistry sense of the word, being a convener to bring parties together to lower the barriers to doing great things.

[00:29:50] And in particular, we are trying to do that around a very focused problem set, which is that the industries of today and the way that we use water today, unfortunately, in many ways, leaves valuable resources in wastewater and contamination. And can we develop and accelerate a set of technologies to address those very specific problems?

[00:30:14] And can we do it faster and better addressing and overcoming all of those barriers to water technology commercialization that Bryan mentioned? And in so doing, can we spur the circular economy transition specifically around selective separation technologies, taking PFAS out of water at the same time, reclaiming things like critical minerals out of wastewater and do that in a way that brings together all of the different parts of the economy and builds new industries around those goals.

[00:30:47] We have sort of three pillars to being able to do that. Like I said, we start at the very beginning TRL zero, let's say, and we support and fund use-inspired research and development. Use-inspired research is that idea that a lot of research oftentimes, and I'm a molecular biologist. I love basic discovery science, but we want to be able to do science and support science that is really geared around not just.

[00:31:15] Developing and uncovering basic scientific principles, but towards use and implementation around these really important problems. Then commercialization: what does it take to help move that out of the lab? Oftentimes, I think academics assume that if it's been published in a journal article, someone will find it and turn it into a company.

[00:31:39] And that's a stochastic process. The probability of which I am not willing to wait for. And so how do we accelerate things getting out of the lab? Into either licensing straight into companies, into startups, into whatever is the best vehicle to get it out there in the world to make a difference to partner with folks like the Cleveland water alliance and others who've been thinking about this in very concrete and amazing ways for years and bring everybody together to

[00:32:05] catalyze that. And last, but very much not least to build the workforce that can do all of this, starting with really young people all the way up through upskilling folks who've been in the economy for a long time to create these jobs of the future. Bryan has been selling the Great Lakes region already for quite a few minutes.

[00:32:25] I don't have to necessarily keep doing that. But we are, you know, as he said, sitting on 20 percent of the world's fresh water surface, fresh water. This is a part of the world, part of the United States that has historically been very strong in a number of different heavy industries, and these are the kinds of industries that are evolving into the next generation economy that are definitely dependent on water and,

[00:32:52] you can, you know, read the news for 5 minutes today and you'll see probably 14 articles about semiconductors or quantum or AI. All of these kinds of next gen economies use an enormous amount of water. Can we do this more sustainably and we reduce our water usage? And most importantly, can we create that kind of circular process that does not turn that water into useless, unreusable wastewater full of either contaminants or

[00:33:21] minerals and materials that we could use again. We also have an enormous coalition of partners around this work, and this is really why I think this region is so well positioned to do this. We have national labs. We have some of the greatest universities in the country. We have great political will behind this effort across those 3 states highlighted in dark blue are the core to start this off, but expanding outward across the states around the Great Lakes and hopefully beyond.

[00:33:52] And we have a track record. We have done this for a number of years. We have partners like Bryan who have done even more. And so, hopefully, we can build upon this in the next couple of years with the support of the National Science Foundation and others to speed this up in all ways. A couple of early wins over the last year or so: we have pulled together a

[00:34:17] research consortium, nascent industry consortium, funded 13 R&D projects. They're in process right now in various different areas. So, from developing new materials around selective separation, new sensors, new digital tools and new test bed facilities, we've started training programs across that entire spectrum from kindergarten on up.

[00:34:43] And I am actively dreaming up and turning into a hopefully hard reality that infrastructure to accelerate innovation out of the lab into the market as quickly as possible. Test beds have obviously been a topic Bryan has really explained how very, very necessary they are and his test beds in Cleveland are really the core of what we want to build across this

[00:35:09] Great Lakes region of connectivity amongst testbeds at various different scales from benchtop to industrial to utility so that the right matchmaking can happen between technologies and companies and the places to trial and demonstrate technologies most effectively. Water is obviously global. I think I was told some 30, 40 years ago as a small child that all of the great conflicts of the 21st century were going to be around water.

[00:35:36] I hope that doesn't prove to be true. But I think it is obviously clear to me that this is becoming a central issue for so many different regions across the world. We have a number of opportunities coming up that I want to let you know about. In about a month, we're going to launch applications for an accelerator program in partnership with an institution here in Chicago called M-Hub.

[00:36:05] This is a hard tech accelerator. They have all of the very cool machining tools and 3D printers and whatnot that you need for rapid prototyping. We're going to pull together mentors from water related industries to coach and support startups and very much encourage you to keep an eye out for that and apply when that opens up in a couple of weeks.

[00:36:28] We are also launching a new call for proposals for R&D projects. This is again, early stage research in partnership with the 13 or so universities that are part of our research consortium. So, if you're interested in partnering with academic scientists on a project, In there are going to be a number of about six or seven different particular topics that we're interested in supporting research on.

[00:36:55] and we can hopefully help you match-make a connection to some of those academics. If that's something that you're interested in. And then looking ahead, working on building that entire continuum of support services that bring together partners like Cleveland Water Alliance and others. So that that baton handoff happens seamlessly.

[00:37:15] all the way across that translation commercialization continuum, including connections to funders, including connections to places to have that soft landing here in the United States and beyond. So, lots more to come. I very much encourage you to sign up to be on our mailing list and keep track of all of our news, because I think I've used the word accelerate in a hundred different ways.

[00:37:40] And one of those ways is that Current itself and Renew is accelerating in its work. And so we have lots more news coming out all the time and lots more opportunities for everybody to get involved.

[00:37:54] Bryan Stubbs: Thank you. Nina really appreciate that. And it just, I hope shows everybody how broad our US ecosystem is. I always look at the Netherlands as being, best in class along with Singapore way ahead of the curve. And, you know, we've got a lot of catch up here. to do, but, I just thought it'd be good to show that it's growing in terms of expertise growing in terms of value to to the U.S.

[00:38:21] So with that, Rixt is happy to answer any and all questions, and I think you've got a great way to communicate with us. Don't forget about, you know, Leonard and in Europe and Natalie, who's also on this call.

[00:38:37] Rixt Sinnema: Thank you so much, Bryan and Nina for your presentations as well. I think we got one more question in the chat.

[00:38:42] I don't know if you are able to answer the question. I think it's from Denny Trakse from Royal Huskoning, and he asked the main restriction we have experienced over the years that U.S. consulting engineers act as a gatekeeper to end users. These major U.S. consulting engineers have proven to be a major hurdle and avoid any risk of new technologies.

[00:39:02] They’d rather stay with proven and established technologies. Is this still the case? And how do we overcome this? Do you have an answer on this?

[00:39:10] Bryan Stubbs: yes, they are not incorrect. That has been a tradition where you've got to get the engineering. Organizations to be excited about your technology where I think it's changed is, you know, let me let me go back to the onsite generation of hypochlorite project.

[00:39:33] In that case, we actually brought in one of our leading engineering firms to help us with that project with the idea that they will see the value in it, and they will help sell it for our South Korean partner TechWind. So, on one hand. There's still a bit of that going on. That's not incorrect. On the next hand, there are ways around that.

[00:39:57] Way 1 is again, as I mentioned, these potential pilot partner projects that we're doing allows us to bring your technology into the sunshine of these engineering firms Two: our relationship with utilities is growing as far as trustworthiness every quarter, and we're getting more and more utilities saying, oh, this is really cool.

[00:40:20] This would really solve a problem for us. Can you help me sell our engineering on record for that? And we do that as well. We also have several engineering firms on our board of directors. So we, I guess that's this was a long answer to say. Yeah, that's been something we've identified, but there are ways around that that we're working on.

[00:40:41] Rixt Sinnema: Nice to know. Yeah. And Danny, if you have questions or like, you always can reach out to Bryan. And, if you want to have, yeah, they gave a nice presentation about how they can help you out. So, feel free to contact him as well.

[00:40:58] Bryan Stubbs: Well, you know, Rixt also just follow up: We're seeing more and more of the engineering companies coming to us saying, what are you seeing as far as new technologies, new innovations, you know, so keep that in mind as well.

[00:41:09] They are realizing that they've got to be smarter with some of the technologies, how they did it to last 50 years. It's not going to work for the next 20. It just isn't. And, you know, there's all sorts of challenges around that. And, suddenly there's a little bit more fear in their heart.

[00:41:27] Of like, okay, we need to have innovation as part of this. And the big one, Danny, is digital water. You know, we're seeing all the major engineering firms have this one key contact on digital. They're all coming to us right now. It's a blast. It's fun.

[00:41:45] Rixt Sinnema: Thank you so much. Danny, do you want to respond to that? Because I think you opened your mic.

[00:41:49] Danny Traksel: Just thanks, Bryan. I'll connect with Bryan on the AquaTech in March. So I think we can connect. We have a standard for our last coding. So Bryan, please feel welcome to join because I have some great information to share with you and the hurdles that we overcome mainly in Canada, which we have done a pilot with the University of Waterloo for a year and a half.

[00:42:09] Danny Traksel: I think Canada is different of course, than the U.S. but Ontario is particular, not easy. We can exchange some information. So I'll connect with you, during the AquaTech.

[00:42:20] Bryan Stubbs: Beautiful. Love it. Thank you.

[00:42:23] Rixt Sinnema: So, thank you all, for joining this webinar 'cause I think we are to the end of this webinar.

[00:42:29] so thank you Bryan. Thank you Nina, so much. And hopefully, we will see all of you at the AquaTech.

[00:42:39] Danny Traksel: Same. Looking forward to Thank you all. Thank you. Thanks, bye.

[00:42:41] Rixt Sinnema: Thank you.

[00:42:42] Danny Traksel: Bye.

[00:42:43] Rixt Sinnema: Bye.

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