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Across the world in Australia, a small tree frog may have the answers to addressing water scarcity in the Southwestern United States.
Based in Las Vegas, WAVR Technologies sees water scarcity firsthand, as the city relies heavily on the Colorado River, and experts warn its flow could decline by as much as 30% by mid-century. To combat this, the startup wants to copy the amphibian’s process of hydrating by absorbing water through its skin to capture water from the air.
WAVR is one of many companies identified by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Futures Engine Southwest Coalition to help address air quality, water scarcity and energy security issues across the region.
“As a consequence of being fast-growing and urbanizing, [Southwest US cities] have environmental challenges.”
Paul Westerhoff, Arizona State University
Backed by $15 million in funding, organizations across sectors are developing technologies that address environmental pressures, leaving more room for economic growth, according to Paul Westerhoff, a faculty member at Arizona State University (ASU) who leads a project working group.
“All these regional major cities are fast-growing,” Westerhoff told Technical.ly. “They all are attracting manufacturing jobs of all different sorts, and as a consequence of being fast-growing and urbanizing, you have environmental challenges.”
The Southwest Engine is one of the largest in the country, spanning Arizona, Utah and Nevada. To manage its wide coverage, the Engine is organized into working groups for each topic area: air, energy and water.
The coalition finds companies like WAVR — founded at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) in 2024 — and brings them into the fold for more access to funding and other resources.
Scaling up the tech
WAVR is a part of the water group, which focuses more on smaller capital investments in startups, according to Westerhoff, who leads the water working group. The energy working group aims to build on existing work at larger companies and encourage investment in major energy initiatives and the air group advances technologies to capture and store carbon from the atmosphere.
“Instead of researchers developing proposals and going after various federal grants in a vacuum without any direct input from key stakeholders like industry and utilities,” Katie Pettinger, chief innovation officer for the Southwest Engine, said, “we’re trying to make sure everyone’s connected to let that technology development happen.”
The Engine identified WAVR as ready for commercialization and helped it secure additional research funding and build a prototype for landscape irrigation.
A pilot project at UNLV is now testing WAVR’s potential to replace Colorado River Basin water with atmospheric water for campus irrigation. The NSF program has also connected the company with potential customers, including data centers that could use its technology to help with cooling demands.
An early prototype of a WAVR device (Courtesy)
The workforce component
Launched in 2022 through the CHIPS and Science Act, the NSF Engines project is designed to foster innovation in communities historically excluded from past tech booms while tackling broader challenges in US research and development.
In the Southwest, Westerhoff has also linked manufacturing companies relocating to the region — many of which face significant water requirements — with startups developing technology to meet those needs.
The companies need a strong workforce to make that happen, though, and some technical roles remain difficult to staff.
After identifying a shortage of engineers specialized in nuclear energy, administrators at UNLV, ASU and the University of Utah are working to address the gap through their curriculum and program offerings.
Katie Pettinger speaking at the inaugural Innovation Summit and Showcase in Las Vegas. The event gathered more than 200 stakeholders from across the region to discuss emerging technologies (Jeff Scheid/ASU)
“We’re thinking strategically about how we expand that and make sure we’re training the right engineers that we’re going to need,” Pettinger said. “If we see explosive growth in nuclear power production, then who’s going to be the one to actually work at the plants?”
The first two years served as the Southwest Engine’s planning phase, with financial support set to expire at the end of next February. While the project initially had the potential to secure $160 million over the next decade, Pettinger expressed concern about NSF’s ability to fund it at the originally planned level under the current administration.
“This [time] is when we’re fully operational and able to ramp up efforts significantly to show that we’re leveraging funding and economic output,” Pettinger said, to hopefully prove its impact and secure more support.
This story was reported with support from The Builder Platform, which helps connect and support the NSF Engines initiative nationwide. To explore resources, connections and updates from across the NSF Engines, visit The Builder Platform.
Maria Eberhart is a 2025-2026 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs emerging journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported in part by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation and the Abell Foundation. Learn more about supporting our free and independent journalism.
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