{"id":237280,"date":"2025-11-10T15:04:39","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T20:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=237280"},"modified":"2025-12-02T09:55:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T14:55:26","slug":"fourth-annual-separations-workshop-connects-students-industry-and-researchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2025\/11\/fourth-annual-separations-workshop-connects-students-industry-and-researchers\/","title":{"rendered":"Fourth-Annual Separations Workshop Connects Students, Industry, and Researchers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The University of Connecticut is\u00a0becoming a central hub for\u00a0separations\u00a0technology experts, thanks to a growing industrial network gathering annually to\u00a0learn,\u00a0network,\u00a0and brainstorm.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Industrial\u00a0Workshop on Separations Technology\u00a0was held\u00a0earlier in October by\u00a0the\u00a0Connecticut Center for Applied Separations Technology\u00a0(CCAST),\u00a0in partnership with the UConn Center for Clean Energy Engineering and the UConn Tech Park.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This workshop, which was the fourth in the last 5 years, was led by General Electric Professor of Advanced Manufacturing in the chemical and biomolecular engineering department Jeffrey McCutcheon. He is also the CCAST director.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A
Networking at the Industrial Workshop on Separations Technology. (Claire Galvin \/ UConn College of Engineering)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThis year\u2019s events drew our largest number of attendees yet,\u201d said McCutcheon. \u201cOur response from industry has been better than ever. There is a strong interest in developing separations technology amongst industry, and one key takeaway for our attendees is that financing is available to help the best ideas translate to the market.”<\/span><\/p>\n

On Thursday, Oct. 2 organizers held the Early Career Workshop on Separations Technology. More than 30 Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers from six universities attended. The students and researchers later engaged in a poster session and startup pitch competition.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The pitch competition was won by Recovered Potential, pitched by Kindle Williams from Stanford University. This company spun out of Stanford University from the lab of newly awarded MacArthur Foundation recipient William Tarpeh. They are developing innovative approaches to recover ammonia and other critical materials from wastewater. They are the recipient of a $1,000 cash award sponsored by Verico Technology.<\/span><\/p>\n

The runner up was\u00a0OsmoPure\u00a0Technologies (pitched by Kian Lopez).\u00a0Spun out of the University of Colorado Boulder from Anthony Straub’s lab, they are developing a unique pressure\u00a0assisted\u00a0membrane distillation process to enhance recovery of concentrated brines.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, on\u00a0Friday the Industrial Workshop on Separations Technology\u00a0occurred, bringing\u00a0people\u00a0from 60 companies, 10 universities, three national labs, and a half-dozen venture capital firms and accelerators.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During the event, attendees learned about new major opportunities for separations in critical materials recovery. According to McCutcheon, this is becoming increasingly important as trade barriers\u00a0increase\u00a0around the\u00a0world\u00a0and domestic supplies of rare and in-demand materials are stressed.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSeparations is an innovative market\u00a0space\u00a0that is constantly evolving,\u201d McCutcheon said. \u201cThe technology touches\u00a0nearly every\u00a0industry,\u00a0and addresses challenges across the disciplines of water, solvent, vapor, and\u00a0gas.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Global Water Intelligence\u2019s Tom Pankratz delivered Friday\u2019s opening keynote on the early history of wastewater treatment technology as conventional physicochemical processes gave way to early membrane technologies that hybridized bioreactors with micro- and ultrafiltration membranes.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s events included several\u00a0presentations\u00a0with industry experts\u00a0from\u00a0Osmoses,\u00a0Membrion, Pall,\u00a0NEXT Membrane,\u00a0ZwitterCo, DuPont, NALA Membranes, and Xylem.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first afternoon panel was dedicated to venture capital in the sustainable separations space. Featuring Burnt Island Ventures, Azolla Ventures,\u00a0\u00a0PureTerra Ventures, and Terramount Infrastructure Partners, the panel, which was moderated by UConn chemical and biomolecular engineering undergraduate student and Hillside Ventures analyst Kristen Foell, discussed challenges and opportunities for investing in the sustainability space. Topics including intellectual property, portfolio management, and fundraising strategy were discussed. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The panel on\u00a0critical\u00a0materials was moderated by Matthew Ringer from\u00a0National\u00a0Renewable Energy Laboratory. He led a panel\u00a0comprised\u00a0of innovative entrepreneurs including\u00a0those\u00a0from\u00a0ChemFinity\u00a0Technologies, Recovered Potential, KMX Technologies,\u00a0and\u00a0from\u00a0Elateq. This panel discussed opportunities in lithium, ammonia, and other metals that have become essential to supply chains for electronics, energy, agriculture, and military needs.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A
Jeff McCutcheon offering a tour of the CCAST lab. (Claire Galvin \/ UConn College of Engineering)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The\u00a0last\u00a0afternoon\u00a0panel on water\u00a0technology\u00a0featured\u00a0Eden Tech, Kira Desalination,\u00a0Active Membranes, and NEXT Membranes\u00a0discussing\u00a0challenges\u00a0facing the water sector and where\u00a0new\u00a0technology\u00a0could make the best impacts in a commoditized, low margin market.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Between the workshops\u00a0and panels, attendees toured the Innovation Partnership Building and the\u00a0state-of-the-art\u00a0laboratory dedicated to a broad spectrum of membrane processes.\u00a0CCAST labs have the\u00a0capability to synthesize and characterize membranes for water treatment, gas separation, pervaporation, brine dewatering, and\u00a0electromembrane\u00a0processes. McCutcheon and his staff work at both the \u201cbench\u201d and “element” scale, offering the ability to design and build complex membrane testing equipment customized for client needs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

More information about\u00a0CCAST\u00a0is available\u00a0<\/span>online<\/span><\/a>, and photos from the event are\u00a0<\/span>also available.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The two-day event featured 14 presenters, a keynote lecture, career panels, student poster session, startup pitch competition, and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":185,"featured_media":237282,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2445],"class_list":["post-237280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 07:17:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/185"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237280"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238609,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237280\/revisions\/238609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/237282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237280"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=237280"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=237280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}