Water UCI is an interdisciplinary center in the School of Social Ecology serving as a coordinating vehicle to facilitate seamless collaboration across schools, departments, and existing research centers around questions of fundamental and applied water science, technology, management, and policy.

While our scholarly interests embrace global as well as national aspects of these issues, we will take as our point of departure the unique expertise afforded at UCI in those areas of water research that have a distinctively California focus, and for which we have unique strengths, comparative advantages, strong experience, and great proficiency. These issues include urban and agricultural water management, competition for increasingly scarce and over-taxed water supplies by diverse users, and the food-water-energy nexus – among others.

Water UCI builds on existing campus-wide strengths by affording a plan for responding to the many “grand challenges” facing water resources, and for which UCI is well-equipped. UCI will be better positioned to comprehensively address such challenges if we collaboratively leverage decision-maker support and practitioner expertise within Southern California. Finally, we envision this conjoint effort as a means of enhancing those segments of the campus already engaged in the investigation of water issues, and which, together with researchers in air, energy, climate change, biodiversity, and other environmentally-related areas, will also work with UCI’s Sustainability Initiative on matters related to sustainability education and outreach.

For more information about water challenges facing California, please visit the Water Education Foundation.

Our Mission Statement

Water UCI mobilizes seamless collaboration across the university to conduct research, provide educational and outreach programs, foster workforce development, and advance policy solutions to critical water problems facing the state, nation, and world.

Water UCI, located in the School of Social Ecology, serves to connect the water industry, government agencies, non-governmental organizations and K-12 schools with the vast resources of UCI and the UC system to implement solutions and keep the public informed.

Discover Water UCI

Water UCI is an interdisciplinary center in the School of Social Ecology that facilitates seamless collaboration across schools, departments, and existing research centers around questions of fundamental and applied water science, technology, management, and policy.

Watch this video to find out how UCI is making a difference.

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