A pair of New Mexico State University’s research labs were on display when U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich visited campus this week. NMSU College of Engineering faculty shared the latest research in water treatment technologies and energy and cybersecurity technologies.
During the Senator’s two-day visit Thursday and Friday, NMSU featured research that is not only fulfilling the university’s land-grant mission but also providing public health benefits.
“We need science to be able to make good policy decisions, and that’s what NMSU does so well is the science on which you could base your policy decisions,” said Heinrich, who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration committee. “Having NMSU as one of the world leaders in this lane, that’s something I can take back to Washington and make sure that we’re focused on that as we write our spending bills.”
On Thursday, Pei Xu, civil engineering professor, led the tour of several water research labs, which included demonstrations of the latest water treatment technologies related to desalinization, treatment of PFAS and produced water.
“It was a tremendous honor to host Sen. Heinrich at NMSU and showcase our water research capacity,” Xu said. “NMSU is proud to lead cutting-edge water treatment and desalination technologies that tackle New Mexico’s and the nation’s most urgent water challenges.
“We are advancing fit-for-purpose treatment solutions that transform alternative water sources into safe, sustainable supplies for agriculture, drinking, industry and resource recovery,” Xu continued. “Our research integrates materials development, laboratory studies, field demonstrations and risk assessments to ensure public health protection, ecological integrity and long-term environmental sustainability.”
One area of discussion focused on PFAS, which are a group of synthetic, potentially harmful chemicals used in a wide variety of household products and industrial processes.
“We’re finding more and more places that PFAS are a problem, and we need to have real science-based solutions to that,” Heinrich said. “Seeing some of the ways that they are using reverse osmosis and various particles to remove PFAS, that’s something that all of my colleagues are going to be very interested in.”
Huiyao Wang, materials engineering professor, Yanyan Zhang, civil engineering associate professor, and Runwei Li, civil engineering assistant professor, also shared information about their research. The research faculty are members of the New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium team. The Consortium is a collaborative effort between NMSU and the New Mexico Environment Department, which studies the potential to treat and reuse produced water to help solve water challenges in the state and country.
“By pairing innovation with real-world application, our faculty, researchers and students are building resilient water solutions that support communities and drive economic development in our state,” Xu said.
“I’m excited that NMSU is such a leader,” Heinrich said. “They are at the pinnacle for this kind of science worldwide. We should be proud of that in the state of New Mexico, and we should foster that. Hopefully, we can continue to cooperate at the federal and state levels to support the good research that they are doing here.”
On Friday, Olga Lavrova, Klipsch School of Electrical and Computer Engineering professor, led the tour of NMSU’s Photovoltaic Test Center, an outdoor smart grid testing facility.
The facility includes IDEAL – or Integrated Digital Enterprise Accelerator Laboratory – NMSU’s regional, large-scale energy demonstration lab. IDEAL is a state-of-the-art testbed and commercialization accelerator for energy and cybersecurity technologies, including grid resiliency and microgrids, clean hydrogen, secure internet-connected infrastructure including anomaly detection, and secure hardware frameworks and advanced battery storage.
“We’re developing systems that make the grid more flexible, reliable and resilient,” Lavrova said. “Our goal is not only to solve technical problems but also to deliver practical solutions that benefit New Mexico communities, our electric utilities such as El Paso Electric and PNM, and startup and technology transfer partners in the state of New Mexico,” Lavrova said.
Heinrich, who is the ranking member on the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, acknowledged that today’s grid is completely different than when he was growing up.
“We have all these different generating sources adding to the grid. We have to manage all of that in real time to keep the stability of the grid, and so what they’ve built here is an experimentation lab to be able to test the impacts of all those things, and figure out how to manage the grid in real time,” he said. “This is a great snapshot of what we need to be able to do nationwide to have a modern electric grid. And it’s teaching the students here how to be the grid managers of tomorrow, but also do the research that is going to create whole new business applications.”
Touring the IDEAL center allowed Heinrich to see two projects that he helped elevate. In 2024, Heinrich helped secure $1.2 million in funding for NMSU’s IDEAL cybersecurity training and penetration testing center. In 2023, Heinrich and Sen. Ben Ray Lujan helped secure $1.6 million in funding for IDEAL medium-voltage and high-voltage upgrades to develop a microgrid test lab. These investments are already resulting in work with partners, such as a new project developing solid state transformers and a future solid state transformer substation.
“It's great to see the impact not just on the university, but the benefit transferring directly to the students who are going to be our professionals here in a year or two,” Heinrich said.
Gaurav Panwar, computer science assistant professor, also presented about recent and ongoing work in cybersecurity for smart grid networks.
“We also shared with him our vision and current progress for building a state-of-the-art cybersecurity testbed that will enable us to collaborate with other researchers and industry partners to help improve the cybersecurity posture of our national grids and critical infrastructure,” Panwar said. “NMSU is in a unique position to accomplish cutting-edge research, combining improvements in grid technologies and securing existing and future infrastructure with this facility.”
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CUTLINE: New Mexico State University Civil Engineering Professor Pei Xu, left, and Civil Engineering Assistant Professor Runwei Li, left, discuss water treatment research with U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich during his tour of NMSU’s water research labs Sept. 25. (NMSU photo by Josh Bachman)
CUTLINE: Olga Lavrova, New Mexico State University Klipsch School of Electrical and Computer Engineering professor, talks with U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich during a tour of NMSU’s Photovoltaic Test Center Sept. 26. (NMSU photo by Josh Bachman)