The Water Science and Engineering Laboratory (WSEL), part of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is a multidisciplinary research and graduate training facility dedicated to advancing water science, engineering, and environmental analysis. WSEL is administered by the College of Engineering (COE) in collaboration with other campus colleges, and supports researchers affiliated with COE, the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS), and the College of Letters and Science. This broad academic integration enables extensive cross-disciplinary work and strengthens the laboratory’s role as a hub for campus‑wide water research.
WSEL maintains active partnerships with external agencies and institutions, frequently hosting collaborative projects with scientists and engineers from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, industry partners, and peer universities.
Within WSEL, the Core Facility for Advanced Water Analysis (CFAWA) serves as a UW-Madison Research Core offering specialized training and access to state‑of‑the‑art analytical instrumentation. CFAWA supports high‑precision inorganic and organic water analyses and is a primary analytical resource for numerous UW-Madison departments, local businesses, external universities, and federal agencies.
Recent developments at WSEL include the acquisition of funding for new analytical instrumentation, including upgraded ion chromatography systems and a microwave digestion unit, which will expand the facility’s capabilities in high‑accuracy water chemistry and advanced sample preparation.
Location
The Water Science and Engineering Laboratory is located in the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department within UW-Madison‘s College of Engineering.
Additional laboratories on the UW-Madison campus are shown below.
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UW-Madison Research Cores Directory
Additional laboratories on the UW-Madison campus can be found via the Research Cores Directory.
Environmental Engineering Core Facility (EECF)
The Environmental Engineering Core Facility (EECF) at UW–Madison provides students and faculty access to core water‑quality instrumentation for analyzing microbial and chemical characteristics of drinking water, wastewater, and resource‑recovery systems. Its shared equipment includes advanced tools such as a Flow Cytometer, Epifluorescence Microscope, multiple GC systems, HPLC, and ICP‑OES. Over the past five years, the lab has supported research from a wide range of departments, including CEE, GLE, CBE, Biochemistry, Geoscience, Soil Science, and Biological Systems Engineering.