A special section of this issue of the journal has a selection of papers addressing the themes of Water Sustainability and Innovative Technology, Sustainable Manufacturing, and Sustainable Energy. The papers are filled with closely knitted and mutually interacting research of significant work. They should add great value to readers in the domain of sustainability science and engineering. Researchers in both academic and industrial organizations will benefit from this collection of papers, which is aimed at advancing the current research into a next level for greater economic, environmental, and social benefits. The Water Sustainability and Innovative Technology theme focused on ensuring a sustainable supply of safe and useful water, which is one of the most critical resource management issues facing the United States and the world. Multidisciplinary, big-picture thinking at the regional and corporate level, combined with macroand microscale strategies, and plans and actions at the local and plant level, are needed to meet this challenge. The papers highlight public and private sector research, advances, and technology improvements that can help meet these needs, and the role of regional public–private partnerships in the proliferation and implementation of sustainable water practices. The Sustainable Manufacturing theme focused on the increasing need of companies to look for new ways of making more efficient use of resources, ensuring compliance with domestic and international regulations related to environment, safety and health, and enhancing the marketability of their products, processes, and services. While the trend on implementing sustainable manufacturing practices continues to grow, so do the implications for global competitiveness and leadership in manufacturing. The papers highlight cutting edge research, technology development, federal and private sector advances in sustainable manufacturing. The Sustainable Energy theme focused on integration of sustainable energy and energy efficiency in water technologies and sustainable manufacturing. Energy efficiency and renewable energy are usually considered the twin pillars of sustainable energy. The papers highlight the continued quest for sustained supplies of energy and the roles of technologies for energy use efficiency improvement and GHG emission reduction. The pursuance of sustainability is about the creation and maintenance of the necessary conditions to support present and future generations. While there are a variety of definitions of sustainability, a key concept and core principle of sustainability is the triple-bottom-line-based balanced development. Therefore, sustainability problems are always very complex. In the perspective on pursuit on sustainability, Diwekar’s paper discussed the systems boundaries, and provided a comprehensive review on the systems analysis approaches in various disciplines. System analysis is essential when investigating water resources management problems. In the paper on urban water resources management, Shuster and Garmestani offer a definition of sustainability based on the ease, with which capital (e.g., natural resource, social, cultural, financial, etc.) can be exchanged or substituted. They then discuss how to examine barriers to the free exchange of capitals that can hinder the realization of sustainable water resources management and how these barriers may be & Heriberto Cabezas hcabezas@fuse.net