This week, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy recognized national efforts and innovations in environmental technologies, including the Alliance for Coastal Technologies’ (ACT) Nutrient Sensor Challenge based at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
The announcement took place at a five-year anniversary event for Challenge.gov, a major initiative of the federal government to spur innovation, cost-effective solutions, and citizen engagement through competitions. Teams and individuals who have led excellent individual challenges, pushed the bar on prize design and incentives, or led the institutionalization of competitions and prizes within the Federal government over the past five years were recognized.
Dr. Peter Preuss, Chief Innovation Officer in the Office of Research and Development at the US EPA, noted at the event that the ACT Nutrient Sensor Challenge, based at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Maryland, is an outstanding example of a market stimulation innovation challenge that has made great strides in accelerating the development, production, and use of affordable, reliable, and accurate nutrient sensors.
These sensors will enable automated and high-resolution nutrient monitoring in aquatic environments ranging from freshwater lakes and streams to the coastal ocean, with the goal of next-generation technologies commercially available by 2017, for a purchase price of less than $5,000.
“Nutrient pollution is the biggest cross-cutting environmental problem, and our inability to make measurements of nutrients in the water – technology is currently too expensive and hard to use – is the biggest limitation to solving that problem,” said Mario Tamburri, Executive Director of ACT, a partnership of research institutions, resource managers, and private sector companies dedicated to developing effective and reliable sensors and platforms for monitoring water quality. “Before we can solve the problem, we need the right tools.”
Tamburri, a research professor at University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, has been a key member of the Challenging Nutrients Coalition, a national inter-agency initiative working to improve scientist’s ability to measure and understand nutrient pollution.
Supported by the EPA, NOAA and several other agencies, the Nutrient Sensor Challenge was designed to help address the environmental and ecological problems associated with nutrient pollution. A critical step in the process is challenging the technology development and innovation communities to develop affordable, reliable, and accurate nutrient sensors while providing independent verification of instrument performance. The effort will support education and decision-making related to algal blooms, hypoxia, water treatment and other nutrient-related water quality issues.
“We are now into a phase where we are asking for applications from technology developer to participate in final sensor verification testing,” said Tamburri.
Alliance for Coastal Technologies launched the Nutrient Sensor Challenge in December 2014. Applications for independent verification testing are due by December 18, 2015, and are a crucial next step to formally challenging the technology development and innovation communities to develop next-generation nutrient sensors.
All instrument performance testing results will be made available to the public in a series of individual ACT verification reports and will also be used by an independent judging panel assembled by the Challenging Nutrients Coalition to recognize accomplishments and select winners of the Nutrient Sensor Challenge.
Additional details about the Challenge can be found at www.nutrients-challenge.org and more information here.
