Peter S. Fiske is the Executive Director of NAWI – the National Alliance for Water Innovation headquartered at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab running the Department of Energy’s Desalination Hub, a 5-year, $110M research program to radically cut the cost and energy consumption for water treatment in a variety of applications including ocean desalination, inland brackish water treatment, industrial water reuse and produced water treatment.
Fiske is also the Director of the Water-Energy Resilience Research Institute (WERRI) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. WERRI’s goal is to orient and align the water-related research programs at LBNL to address critical gaps in the reliability, efficiency and sustainability of water-energy systems in the nation.
Prior to joining LBNL, Fiske was the Chief Executive Officer of PAX
Water Technologies, Inc. from 2008 until January, 2017 when it was acquired by UGSI Inc. in an all-cash transaction. PAX Water pioneered the use of biomimicry to develop innovative and energy efficient technologies for the water industry. PAX also led the industry in advanced manufacturing processes and approaches and successfully in-sourced manufacturing operations from abroad while lowering cost and improving quality and speeding innovation cycles. PAX Water won a number of national water industry awards and its iconic Lily impeller technology was featured in a major design exhibit at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2008.
Prior to joining PAX Water, Fiske was co-founder of RAPT Industries, Inc., which pioneered novel plasma-based manufacturing of precision optics and semiconductors. Fiske spun the company out of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he was a staff scientist.
Fiske is also a frequent writer and lecturer on the subject of IP strategy, entrepreneurship and leadership for scientists and engineers. He teaches occasionally at U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and is a founding faculty member of the Department of Energy’s I-Corps Program. He also a faculty member in Elemental Excelerator – a sustainability-oriented organization funded by the Emerson Collective.
Prior to starting RAPT, Fiske led a research team in condensed matter physics at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory with applications to materials science, energy storage and nuclear and conventional weapons. He is the author of 25 technical articles, most in international peer-reviewed journals including SCIENCE. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1994 and an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley in 2002. In 1996, Fiske was one of 18 young professionals selected nationally for the White House Fellowship. He served his fellowship year as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Special Projects where he led a major personnel policy reform initiative for the Pentagon.
