New fellow: Heather Beam of the Practical Education Network
Teacher training workshops that build the capacity of STEM teachers - Ghana
Issue: There are 250 million children who are not learning basic skills, even though half of them have spent at least four years in school.
Solution: The Practical Education Network (PEN) offers a series of workshops in which STEM teachers learn, design, and share hands-on activities which complement the national curriculum. PEN’s approach blends constructivist learning with locally-available materials, empowering Ghanaian STEM teachers to teach experientially.
Scale-Ups Fellow: Heather holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During her time in graduate school and at D-Lab, she developed a passion for STEM education and indigenous innovation. She co-founded and co-instructed D-Lab: Education in addition to mentoring students from various other D-Lab classes. Read more!
New fellow: Arun Cherian of Rise Legs
A light-weight, cane-based, ecofriendly prosthetic leg - India
Issue: Prosthetic legs currently on the Indian market are either free and inefficient, or efficient, but far too costly for many users.
Solution: Rise Legs prosthetics are up to four times lighter than similarly priced products, and are fabricated using cane from local forests, providing a sustainable stream of income to local cane artisans. Each leg is assembled by local technicians and distributed in partnership with established programs and organizations that focus their work on people living with disabilities.
Scale-Ups Fellow: Arun Cherian quit his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University to develop Rise Legs. Previously, he had been a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley developing wearable exoskeletal suits to help the paralyzed people walk. He holds an MS in mechanical engineering from Columbia University and a BS in mechanical engineering from Anna University. Read more!
New fellow: Wardah Inam of uLink
A platform to develop and manage low-cost modular microgrids in off-grid areas - India
Issue: More than 1.2 billion people worldwide lack access to electricity. This deficiency affects all aspects of life: healthcare, education and economic development.
Solution: uLink is an all-in-one, plug-and-play solution for Energy Service Providers. uLink hardware is a smart Power Management Unit that serves as the building block of a modular microgrid, where generating households can sell electricity to consuming households in the vicinity. Each uLink unit operates autonomously and is capable of power conversion and routing, payment transactions and resource management.
Scale-Ups Fellow: Wardah Inam has a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT with a research focus on system level design of uLink technology to best serve the off-grid market. For the past seven years, she has been working on developing energy efficient technologies for renewable energy deployment. She is passionate about building products that can improve people's lives. Read more!
New fellow: Jackie Stenson of Essmart
Building a rechargeable headlamp for rural Indian farmers - India
Issue: Many south Indian farming tasks require the use of both hands in low-light settings, making those tasks unsafe, inconvenient or inefficient.
Solution: Essmart is developing an affordable, bright, rechargeable headlamp to be sold with a warranty. This will entail design and development of the Essmart headlamp prototype, user testing and adoption studies, and eventually, rollout of the product to the shops in Essmart's growing network.
Scale-Ups Fellow: Jackie has an SB in mechanical engineering from Harvard and an MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development from the University of Cambridge. She has been featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, as an Echoing Green Fellow, and as a Cartier Women's Initiative Awards Laureate for her work with Essmart. Read more!
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