Baker Hughes, an energy technology company that provides solutions in over 120 countries worldwide, and the Polytechnic University of Bari signed a scientific collaboration agreement in July 2021 to create the Baker Hughes Pump Lab.

The laboratory, located within the Baker Hughes plant with a branch office in the Polytechnic's facilities, was created with the aim of facilitating the exchange of information between the industrial and academic worlds in order to work on the development of advanced technologies and to identify ideas for interdisciplinary innovation.

The “Pump Lab” is initially dedicated to the development of the design of vertical water pumps for which the license was acquired in 2020, to the energy efficiency of centrifugal pumps, to energy recovery machines, and to the refinement of design for Reverse Osmosis and desalination systems.

In addition, particular attention is paid to technologies for the energy transition, such as the development of pumps for CO₂ capture and treatment, and to the Internet of Things, with the connection of networked systems for centrifugal pumps through the development of predictive algorithms.