Partnership

Municipal wastewater treatment is under pressure like never before. Flows fluctuate unpredictably, pollutant loads are higher, and communities increasingly demand water reuse solutions. Utilities must maintain consistent treatment performance while reducing energy and chemical use. Traditional membrane systems often struggle under these conditions, particularly when faced with sudden surges or variable solids content. Fibracast's FibrePlate [...]

In the industrial innovation lifecycle, there is a notorious gap between a successful lab experiment and a market-ready product. This "Valley of Death" is the stage where many promising clean-tech innovations fail due to the logistical, technical, and financial hurdles of scaling up. For IntensiCarb™, a revolutionary vacuum-enhanced anaerobic digestion technology, navigating this gap required [...]

Across Canada, municipalities face the same hidden vulnerability: ageing wastewater infrastructure that has never been comprehensively inspected. Few assets illustrate this more clearly than large-diameter trunk sanitary sewers - the buried arteries of wastewater systems that often haven’t been assessed since installation. Without condition data, utilities are forced into reactive maintenance cycles. Failures lead to [...]

When Dr. Sonia Hassini first entered civil engineering, she imagined a future in construction. But as she moved deeper into her studies in Tunisia, her attention shifted toward the systems that make cities livable, especially the fragile and often overlooked networks that manage water. Exposure to hydraulics, water distribution challenges, watershed analysis, and water scarcity [...]

The Challenge of Aging Infrastructure Across Ontario and beyond, municipalities face a pressing challenge: managing aging water infrastructure, particularly asbestos cement (AC) pipe. AC water distribution mains, which make up about 11% of North America’s water network, fail at an average rate of 10.3 breaks per 100 miles each year. With more than 40% of [...]

Dr. Hamed Ibrahim is advancing a transformative vision for how we understand and manage water in the 21st century. An Assistant Professor in Civil & Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto since January 2024, his research brings together advanced computational methods, a deep understanding of hydrological systems, and a focus on applied impact, particularly [...]

After nearly a decade away, Dr. Maricor Arlos returned to the University of Waterloo in 2024, not to retrace her steps but to reshape the path forward. A Waterloo graduate three times over, Arlos had spent years conducting research in Switzerland and Alberta, gaining a sharper, more global perspective on water management, stakeholder priorities, and [...]