Home ›

massachusetts institute of technology

Fuel from the Fields

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009 - $17,793

Cooking fuels are problematic in Haiti: while almost half of the population uses wood or agricultural residues as their primary cooking fuel, breathing the smoke from the fires leads to persistent respiratory lung infections, mostly in women and children. Most of the remainder of the population uses cleaner-burning wood charcoal, which can be prohibitively expensive (often 25% of a family’s income). Both options contribute to deforestation in a country that is already 98% deforested.

This E-Team, calling itself Fuel from the Fields, has developed a method over the last seven years of producing cleaner-burning, inexpensive charcoal made from agricultural waste. Supported by a number of grants from different organizations, the team has validated the viability of the technology and established three training centers and sixty workshops in Haiti producing charcoal for their own use and to sell. The team is now looking to establish centers for training, research, and business throughout Haiti (and eventually worldwide) that will teach farmers the process of making the charcoal, how to create micro-enterprises around the technology, how to innovate/improve on it, and document the technology’s influence.

Charcoal offers Haiti’s small farmers a way to create successful micro-businesses that produce alternative charcoal, generating new income and providing local employment opportunities while reducing deforestation and improving air pollution associated with cooking.

Cycle Ventures: The Rickshaw Bank Partnership

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009 - $46,200

Cycle Ventures, one of nine “D-Lab” classes at MIT, has a specific focus on creating pedal-powered innovations for international development. The Rickshaw Bank (TRB), formed in 2004, is a micro-credit organization in India that lets people lease-to-own rickshaws, usually in one to two years. This grant will fund a partnership between Cycle Ventures and TRB, with the goal of making TRB’s rickshaws cheaper, easier for the driver to pedal, and more attractive to customers. The team has identified three technical areas to focus on: the overall rickshaw structure; adding a suspension element to the frame; and improving the drive train. Over the course of two years the team will conduct overlapping waves of site visits, design, prototyping, and implementation.

Wheelchair Design in Developing Countries

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007 - $32,900

This grant supports a course that gives students the chance to better the lives of others by improving wheelchairs and tricycles made in the developing world. Course lectures focus on understanding local factors, social stigmas against the disabled, and manufacturing constraints, then applying sound scientific and engineering knowledge to develop appropriate technical solutions. Throughout the course, E-Teams of students, community partners in the developing world, and experts in the wheelchair community conduct term-long projects, with the most successful projects turning into summer fellowships, allowing students to implement class projects in community partner workshops throughout the summer.

The course itself builds on a pilot course conducted in spring 2007 that asks students to undertake high-risk, high-payoff projects that local workshops and NGOs don't have the time or resources to develop themselves. Through partnering with community groups, students practice innovation guided towards commercial success while learning engineering, scientific, and cultural lessons.

Designing and Sustaining Technology Innovation for Global Health Practice

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007 - $25,700

This grant will go toward enhancing a technology entrepreneurship course that focuses on the processes for assessing the commercial feasibility of bringing new products, processes or technologies to market. For the course, interdisciplinary E-Teams will design an innovative field-based solution to address a current or emerging global health problem. The course will integrate outside speakers, each focusing on a variety of issues relevant to the development of emerging technologies.

Solar Turbine Group

in

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007 - $20,000

This E-Team is developing an inexpensive solar generator for powering off-grid communities in the developing world. Unlike standard photovoltaic panels, which only produce electricity, the team's device meets the entire range of commercial and residential energy needs: heating, cooling, and electricity. Using common, inexpensive auto parts and plumbing supplies, the generator works by using sun-tracking parabolic mirrors to focus the sun's rays on a pipe containing liquid anti-freeze. The refrigerant is heated and vaporized through a heat exchanger, driving a turbine-alternator assembly to generate electricity. Wasted heat is captured by a condenser and used to heat water. Altogether, the system costs about $3,000 and produces enough energy to power an off-grid school, health clinic or community center in the developing world.

Update

The team is continuing to pursue the scaling and commercialization of this technology. There are two seprate ongoing efforts: a for-profit venture named Promethean Power (focus in India), and a non-profit named STG International (focus in Southern Africa).

 

 

Developmental Entrepreneurship Program (Ibero-American Initiative)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006 - $42,650

The Development Entrepreneurship (DE) program at MIT, established in 2005 with the idea of having teams of students develop technological solutions for poverty alleviation in the developing world, has five successful projects under its belt and has expanded the program into Africa. Now the DE team will expand its work into Central and South America through a collaboration with the Sumaq Alliance, a group of eight business schools in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking markets.

Summer 2009 update: As of October 2007 the team established a program at INCAE, a collaboration, which leveraged Costa Rican government interest to fund an innovations/entrepreneurship class shared by 2 institutions.

Innovations in International Health

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006 - $35,700

This team focuses on developing partnership to help move ideas from MIT labs to the developing world. The project begins with D-Lab, a collection of classes and field trips at MIT that focus on having students to create sustainable solutions to the problems of poverty and environmental degradation in developing countries. Although some of the products that have come out of D-Lab have gone on to wider distribution, most haven't moved beyond the pilot phase, primarily due to students choosing not to pursue the projects further. To solve the problem, MIT faculty have partnered with a Pakistani NGO to create the Innovations in International Health (IIH) program, which aims to give students access to the support and resources necessary to bring their products to market. IIH will consist of a tightly knit network of organizations doing work in the developing world, including research entities, NGOs, government agencies, and community partners. The goal is for the network to provide students with engineering ideas to pursue and the means to bring the resulting inventions to market.

Summer 2009 update: IIH has created a network of global health professionals to provide students with opportunities for continued development of global health technology projects. IIH has enabled the development of 21 medical technology products, such as Aerovax, XoutTB, the Spirulina Bioreacator, PortaTherm and uBox. PortaTherm is currently in the field-testing stage of development and two clinical trials of XoutTB have been conducted. Both uBox and Aerovax have applied for patents. In total 16 projects have been launched by IIH, and three centers of excellence in appropriate medical technologies have been established, while the IIH footprint has expanded to more than 7 countries. This team also created a non-profit organization called Innovators in Health and has secured additional funding from sources such as the Lord Foundation, IADB and an NIH enabled grant.

uBox

in

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007 - $19,930

Though many of the world's worst diseases can be treated with drugs, the problem of adherence--patients correctly following the timing and dosage of long, complex prescriptions--remains a major challenge in public health, especially in the developing world. To combat the problem, this E-Team has created uBox, a cheap, rugged, "smart" pillbox designed for rural communities in the developing world.

UBox is a palm-sized plastic container with sixteen compartments. The user rotates the top handle clockwise to expose a new compartment, and pulls down a small lid at the base of the device to retrieve medication. A simple electronic timer records each time the lid is lowered to remove pills, creating a log of when the patient takes the medication. Further, healthcare workers who are assigned to ensure patients take their pills are given a USB-like modified audio plug and insert it into a port on top of the uBox when visiting a patient. The uBox records the time and date of this action, allowing for healthcare worker tracking as well.

Syndicate content