The U Water Center recently completed its five-year USAID-funded strategic partnership between the University of Utah and Mehran University of Engineering and Technology (MUET)—a collaboration aimed at forging solutions to water challenges that inhibit education, health, and stability in Pakistan.
In the five years since it was founded, the U.S.-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water has drawn together a community of higher education, government, business and local groups working together to create more sustainable development policy through water research.
The project will now transition to a “sustainability phase” aimed at placing MUET as the lead on the Center’s next chapter as a nationally recognized research center in Pakistan. U researchers will continue to individually partner and advise as collaborators on ongoing research and development projects.
Steve Burian, USPCASW project director and U professor of Civil Engineering said of the U’s ongoing commitment to this work: “In December of 2014, I traveled to Pakistan for the first time with my colleague, Dr. Tariq Banuri. During this trip, we cemented in our minds and the minds of our partners, Project Director Dr. Bakhshal Lashari and his team at MUET, that this effort was to be a lifetime commitment. Together with Dr. Aslam Chaudhry, we established the mentality of approaching activities and engagement as a sustained program. This mindset from the start was embraced by the original team and all those that were involved during the project. All were committed to the importance and urgency of the cause.”
Below is a snapshot of what the team has accomplished during the last five formative years of the Center.
