Stockholm every year awards the prestigious Stockholm Water Prize. Singapore created the annual Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize. Both have water policy research centers.

And if the incoming dean of the new graduate School of Freshwater Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has his way, UWM will join Stockholm and Singapore in lending its voice to the international water policy debate.

“Milwaukee can become the Singapore of the Great Lakes in terms of the concentration of industry and potential for research,” said David Garman, a water technology scientist and entrepreneur from Australia.

In a telephone interview from his home in Australia – he doesn’t start at UWM until September – Garman outlined some of his early priorities and perspectives for an institution that’s meant to play a strategic role in the metro area’s ambitions to become a hub of water technology.

View the full story by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel