MemRE: Collaborative development of an integrated research environment

Abstract

The Membrane Research Environment (MemRE) is a component research infrastructure project of the Advanced Membrane Technologies for Water Treatment Research Cluster, a research project funded by the CSIRO flagship Water for a Healthy Country. The research cluster, a nationally distributed and multidisciplinary group of researchers including computational and physical chemists, physicists, material scientists, and chemical and mechanical engineers, aims to develop novel membrane materials in order to reduce the energy associated with desalination by 40%. Common hurdles in multidisciplinary research projects include: a lack of consolidation of existing information relevant to the research from all the participating fields; an absence of information infrastructure to promote comparison of results; and the need for a common language to better enable project participants to communicate. MemRE has been designed and implemented as a solution to these hurdles, to provide an integrated research development tool and learning environment.