Our Vision

Anglian Water and Imperial College have been working together to tackle today’s water challenges for the last 20 years. The partnerships's goal has been to encourage everyone to appreciate waters real value; to understand its place in the environment, its contribution to health and wellbeing, its use and disposal. Imperial College experts in water and wastewater have been carrying out research in collaboration with Anglian Water to deliver this goal.

The aim of the partnership is to inform and enhance investment decisions and derive future competitive advantage through higher income, lower capital costs, longer lifetimes, lower operating costs, and reduced risk. There are three driving factors for Anglian Water to enter into the research partnership:

  1. to reduce cost and risk;
  2. for new ideas and horizon scanning; and
  3. to develop skills, capability and profile.

Imperial College also greatly benefits from the engagement with business-relevant research challenges driving our research. The access to company knowledge and resources the partnership allows for has been vital to our work. The MSc programme in Environmental Technology profits from new ideas and contributions to teaching by Anglian Water staff while creating many new opportunities for the institution, its staff and students.

Background to the Partnership

teamEstablished in 2004,  by Prof Steve Kaye from Anglian Water and Professor Nick Voulvoulis from Imperial, the partnership was solidified  with the employment of Dr Guy Ohandja in 2006 as Research Fellow (till 2012). In 2013, Lena Heinrich (2013-2015) was appointed the Partnership's Coordinator at the Centre, aiming to brink together key experts from Imperial College, Anglian Water and beyond to address current and emerging topics in the water industry. Lorraine Gaston (2016-2017) and now Chetna Vaghela (since 2018) has taken on the role of Research Coordinator for the partnership, helping Anglian Water identify short and long-term research needs whilst matching them with expertise at Imperial and delivering synergies between the two institutions. 

Today, after 15 years, the partnership continues to go strong under the leadership of Dr Adam Brookes from Anglian Water and Professor Nick Voulvoulis from the Centre for Environmental Policy, in collaboration with the Grantham Institute and the Environmental and Water Resource Engineering (EWRE) group (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) at Imperial College. Dr Adam Brookes, Innovation Programme Manager at Anglian Water has been leading the partnership from the Anglian Water side since 2018, when Prof Steve Kaye was apointed as the new CEO at UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR).