What’s the Big Idea? LayerPure Reimagines Water Filtration Membrane Market

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George Washington University engineering doctoral candidate Zhaoyang Wang grew up surrounded by seemingly larger-than-life machinery as his family worked at a cement manufacturing factory, where towering equipment transformed raw materials into useful products.

Watching that process sparked a lifelong interest in how industrial systems can use complex science to affect real-world solutions. That curiosity eventually led him to pursue a Ph.D. in environmental engineering at GW, where he would meet fellow environmental engineering doctoral candidate Samarpan Deb Majumder in a research group.

Majumder had begun laying the foundation for a new kind of water filtration membrane and was charging full steam ahead with a prototype. Wang was interested but knew these types of purification membranes were already commercially tapped across the world, including the U.S. and China. How could Majumder's idea be better, he wondered?

"I didn't believe it at first," Wang said. "And then he showed me all the results."

Data was showing this particular membrane Majumder had been developing with collaborators at GW-including SEAS Assistant Professor Xitong Liu-and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) not only reached steady-state performance at a much higher rate than other commercially available membranes but also significantly reduced maintenance time.

Curiosity turned into conviction, and Wang decided to join the venture, aptly named LayerPure. Ultimately, it aims to solve long-standing performance challenges in water purification by producing membranes that filter out salts and impurities more effectively and last longer than those currently on the market.

"In groundwater, you have a lot of salts and minerals that you don't want in your drinking water," Majumder said. "Reverse osmosis membranes filter out those unwanted chemicals, minerals and salts to give you fresh water. But how much these membranes can actually reject really depends on how you make them.

"Our process makes these membranes defect free, so there are no loopholes in the membrane framework that allow unwanted environmental contaminants to pass into your drinking water."

Majumder had long had an interest in the intersection of business and technology. As a researcher, he knows that a lot of what he does in a lab is inferring what might actually happen in the real world. He felt lured to business by the challenge of creating tangible products and results, thus leading to the eventual development of LayerPure.

"From the very beginning when I started research, I felt like I had this knack for making solutions as realistic as possible," Majumder said. "And I think this idea of business came to my mind through thinking that I'm going to make a solution for real problems."

The research and development phase occurred in spring 2024, while the prototype development and experimental testing came later that summer. Their first exposure to commercialization was with the NSF I-Corps program through GW's Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship(OIE), which helped teach them how to market their science and discoveries. They further honed these skills in OIE's 2025 New Venture Competition. In GW's nationally recognized student entrepreneurship competition, the team won the NextEra Innovation in Sustainability Prize while also finishing third in the Business Goods and Services Track.

With guidance from OIE staff, the team went on to participate in the national NSF I-Corps program, conducting roughly 240 interviews in just six weeks. The feedback they received from OIE in the early stages helped them immensely during this interview phase.

"We already knew the basics-what to do, what not to do-so that's why we were able to conduct as many interviews as we were," Majumder. "OIE did a really great job preparing us."

The work hasn't gone unnoticed as LayerPure has earned recognition and accolades in its buildup from lab to early stage startup. Beyond GW, the team has earned first place at D.C. Startup Tech Week, presented its work at the North American Membrane Society Conferenceand advanced to the semifinals of the XPRIZE,a global competition centered on breakthrough solutions to water challenges. Majumder also represented LayerPure in the Water Council Tech Challenge.

These experiences have helped solidify LayerPure's value proposition, and the team, which comprises Majumder, Wang, Liu and NIST's project leader Chris Stafford, went through industrial pilot testing of the prototype this past fall and aims for market launch by 2027.

The long-term goal is not just to improve a single product but to reshape how membranes are made and used across the water industry. What began as a conversation between two lab mates has grown into a venture aimed at addressing a fundamental human need-clean, reliable water-through innovation rooted at GW and OIE.

Applications for the 2026 New Venture Competition close on Feb. 1 at 11:59 p.m.