Beach erosion has major impacts on our property, personal safety, infrastructure, economy, recreation, wildlife habitat, and taxes. People have long since been building coastal protection measures to battle erosion impacts but either lost to the next storm or increased sand depletion elsewhere. Federal and local governments have spent enormous amounts of money to dredge, transport, and pump sand back to our coastlines. This costly restoration process also has to be repeated every 5 to 7 years to keep up with erosion. The FIRST LEGO League (FLL) team Landroids, a group of middle school friends, has looked for ways to work with, instead of against, mother nature. Using submersible, wave-powered pumps to continuously send a sand slurry back toward the shoreline can be a more sustainable, long-term, and economical way to replenish our beaches. This idea drew on a current technology but used it in a completely different but innovative way. For the pump’s 30-year lifespan compared to 4 replenishing cycles the US Army Corps must do to move the same amount of sand, our proposal will cost less than 10% of the current replenishment method. This method has less environmental impacts, utilizes wave energy instead of fighting it, and can be implemented elsewhere around the world to benefit other coastal communities.

In 2007, Landroids was the founder robotics team to promote STEM education for neighborhood kids. Today, there are 8 similar teams in town plus a high school robotics team and three Jr. FLL after-school teams.

Cory Levy is a remarkable young man whose talents help develop the next generation of
engineers required to address the Grand Challenges. His skills in forging social
connectedness, community, and building Social Capital, have helped scores of young
students develop their creativity, enhance their networks, and unleash their
entrepreneurial energies. For the past two years, with uncommon generosity and a
dedication to service, he has been enthusiastically helping peers nationally, and especially
at UIUC and Duke. A HS senior, he has already led classes and delivered inspirational
talks on multiple occasions at Duke University and at iFoundry in the Engineering
college at Illinois, teaching college students how to find mentors, how to turn internships
into full time opportunities, and how build their Social Capital networks by taking on the
attitude of service. I deliver lectures to my students at Duke on Servant Leadership; Cory
enters the classroom and shows them how to live that attitude. As just one testament to
the importance of Cory’s message, dozens of students, at both Illinois and Duke, quote
Cory in their classroom work, and acknowledge his impact on their thinking.

Cory convinced Stanford to co-sponsor his Fall 09 NextGen Conference. He attracted
over 100 college entrepreneurs to this day long event where he brought his special
knowledge on building Social Capital to attendees, and convinced nearly 20
entrepreneurs and VCs to speak and share their wisdom with the kids.

Cory’s service attitude exemplifies the best qualities of this generation of outstanding
young adults.

One of the targets for the Millennium Development Goals is to half the proportion of the population without adequate access to safe drinking water. Despite investments from governments, private companies, and NGOs, many water projects fail to meet their goals because of the social-political context in which they are implemented. More specifically, projects fail to consider how communities relate to water resources socially, politically, economically and spiritually. Since 2006, I have been working with a village in the rural highlands of semi-arid East Africa as part of my dissertation, understanding how people protect, manage and utilize their limited water resources. Village leaders protect existing water supplies through traditional practices, but village expansion has increased access to additional water supplies that are not protected by village leaders. Population growth has stretched finite water supplies and the village needs the technology and funding to improve the supply of clean water. I propose to utilize a combination of social and physical methods, building on existing behaviors, to protect water source quality and improve the reliable supply of clean water. To accomplish this I need to build livestock troughs to keep animals away from the water supply and adapt existing slow-sand filtration technologies to improve water quality for human consumption. Improved distribution of water supplies for various uses, such as clothes washing and bathing will be incorporated into the design.

The mission of the Vehicle Design Summit is to catalyze an
Energy Space Race: to identify the key characteristics of events like the race to the moon or civil rights movement and then transpose this energy, passion, focus and urgency to the multitude of global challenges (and opportunities) facing humanity and the planet in this day and age.
To achieve this end, VDS will begin by assembling a global consortium of the world’s leading thinkers, dreamers, revolutionaries and change agents to develop the collaborative framework necessary to harness the world’s genius, imagination and inspiration.
To give this initiative an initial focal point for experimentation, innovation and philosophical development the global consortium will design, build and bring to market the VDS Vision 200, a hyper- efficient 6 passenger vehicle earmarked for India that will demonstrate a 95% reduction in embodied energy, materials and toxicity from cradle-to-cradle-to-grave relative to the Prius.
To date VDS has involved more than 500 students from more than 30 countries and build six vehicle prototypes. The project has held design reviews in India, China, Belgium, Italy and the United States. In 2008, VDS finished its first passenger vehicle prototype after learning from the masters in Torino, Italy. Last summer, the team met in India to study supply chain and energy infrastructure in our target market. Our next prototype, ArchiMITes, will go through wind tunnel and crash tests this spring.

Sustainability.
Energy Crisis.
Developing countries and their issues.
Improving Economy.
Creating Jobs.
Bringing peace and prosperity in whole world with our efforts and by harvesting renewable Energy.

The application, Computer-Assisted Medication Regimen Adherence (CAMRA), will assist people with complex medication regimens. CAMRA is targeted to HIV/AIDS patients and will be convenient and discreet. CAMRA is unique because it uses mobile technology and only requires a mobile device, something many people already own. There is no product on the market that leverages the portability and convenience of mobile devices to turn them into stand-alone health care products.

The Imagine Cup is a Microsoft-sponsored technology competition that asks students to solve the world’s toughest problems using technology. Malisa, Ashley, and Ed learned about the Imagine Cup from a professor at DePauw University. They thought it would be a great way to help the world, improve their programming skills, and learn about new technologies. Team MangoBunnies was formed in October 2008 when Malisa, Ashley, and Ed started having discussions about how they wanted to contribute to the United Nation’s Millennium Goals.

With the support of the Creativity and Leadership Project at Oberlin College, I have invented an automated histology device for research and medical applications. The device uses two soon-to-be patent pending mechanisms to fully automate the step in histology where tissue sections are mounted to glass slides, the only step in the histology work flow that has not already been automated. My device is a tool meant to provide a significant and fundamental evolutionary, not revolutionary, move forward in the practice of both life science research and medical histology. Acting both as a tool for scientific discovery and medical diagnostics, the positive impact of my device is directly relevant to facilitating and accelerating the discovery and development of scientific findings essential to the engineering of better medicines and improving the health care provided by hospitals through increasing the quality of histology-based medical diagnostic assays, reducing biopsy processing time, and allowing new and more thorough whole-sample histological approaches to be used on a routine basis. Perhaps the greatest potential of my device, however, lies in how it could link together existing automated histology systems into a single apparatus capable of doing the entire process of medical and research histology in an automated fashion from beginning to end.

The University of Michigan’s Health Engineered for All Lives (M-HEAL) is a student group founded in 2006 to give engineering students the opportunity to work in global health. M-HEAL uses service, needs assessment, engineering design, and social entrepreneurship to improve access to medical technology in underdeveloped communities. Volunteering occurs at a non-profit called World Medical Relief (WMR), where M-HEAL members repair medical equipment that is sent to clinics in need around the world. M-HEAL also designed an inventory system for WMR, the implementation of which required participation from over 150 volunteers. Design projects are another aspect of M-HEAL, the first step of which is surveying the need of developing communities. This has been undertaken by the M-HEAL survey team, whose survey identifies technology that clinics and hospitals lack, and the constraints of designing for developing communities. It is distributed to University of Michigan students who volunteer abroad and the results help generate design projects. Some examples of M-HEAL projects include a low-cost surgical lamp, a solar-powered refrigerator, an infant safety seat, a manual centrifuge and a telemedicine ultrasound machine. Through partnerships with the Ross School of Business, M-HEAL has become involved with social entrepreneurship to explore ways for creating socially responsible ventures around these design projects. M-HEAL is a diverse group, consisting of graduate and undergraduate students from engineering, medicine, business and the liberal arts. M-HEAL has been featured on local television and in publications throughout the University of Michigan as a group bringing about social change through engineering.

In the field of environmental engineering, there is a considerable problem with the development and implementation of new-age, environmentally sustainable energy sources. During research, the spectrum of possible energy sources were evaluated, including fossil fuels, biofuels, solar, hydroelectric, wave, geothermal, nuclear, and wind power. The conclusion was that the engineer of the future would need to encompass all forms of energy in a synergistic relationship, so that no one resource would be over-stressed. The team would attempt to develop a portable device that could convert water from any source (salt water, brackish, or fresh) to potable water meeting US drinking standards. Shop drawings and research ensued as the feasibility of each design was assessed. The final design would combine the existence of a man-made vacuum environment with the sun’s renewable solar energy to distill water. As the pressure of substance decreases, the temperature that it vaporizes also decreases, according to the Ideal Gas Law. Calculations show that the required vacuum should be attainable using only a hand-held pump. The outer solar reflector will focus enough solar radiation to bring the water to a rolling boil. Inner condensation coils allow fresh water to collect in a drinking container. The applications of the product are widespread, from the general outdoorsman all the way to military use or widespread disaster relief. Over 75 percent of earth is covered with water, and 97 percent of that water is seawater. The product will allow users to input salt water, and the process will output water that is safe to consume.

Naturally-occurring arsenic contaminates groundwater in Nepal in concentrations up to 200 ppb, constituting a significant health threat to Nepalis relying on well water. Students of Thayer School of Engineering’s Bachelor of Engineering capstone design course chose to solve this problem, which was submitted to Thayer by VillageTech Solutions (VTS), a non-profit focused on improving life in rural Nepal. The three students collaborated with VTS to define the problem, understand end-user constraints and culture, and integrate the design with pre-existing re-chargeable battery technology. After analyzing the current state of the art for arsenic removal, the students used evolutionary prototyping to refine and optimize electrochemical arsenic-removal processing, system usability, and cost. Students employed sophisticated chemical reaction modeling, electrical and mechanical design and construction, leachate testing research, and economic analysis. The final design uses an electro-coagulation process powered by a 6-volt battery; the iron oxyhydroxide precipitates produced bind to the arsenic and are removed from the water by a sand filter. The unit purifies 15-liter batches of water to well below the 10-ppb World Health Organization arsenic level standards at lower cost and higher efficiency than current systems. Designed for ease of use and sustainability, the system utilizes locally available parts, includes a visible bubble chamber that shows when the system is working, and comes with a pictures-only instruction manual. VTS’s David Sowerwine calls the solution “extraordinary” and is working to implement it in Nepal and elsewhere.