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IN THIS DIGEST

International Development Innovation Network

New Scale-Ups Fellows!

D-Lab Academics

Practical Impact Alliance

D-Lab in the News

IDIN Summits

Fall D-Lab Classes

Techcon 2016
 

D-Lab in the News



Scale-Ups Fellowship, IDIN
Social entrepreneur Zubaida Bai bags UN honour for corporate sustainability initiative
The Economic Times (India) - Jun 24, 2016

Scale-Ups Fellowship
Generating Value from Waste: Sid Pai's journey with Protoprint, a social enterprise in India that converts waste plastic into 3D printer filament.
Medium - Jun 25, 2016

International Development Innovation Network
IDDS Educación 2016, an international summit for design and development
Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Jun 23, 2016

Scale-Ups Fellowship
Wecyclers Turns Waste Recycling Into A Game
Pop-Up City - Jun 9, 2016

Scale-Ups Fellowship
Clean Energy Education & Empowerment Award Winners (including 2012 D-Lab Scale-Ups fellow Jodie Wu)
C3E - Jun 1, 2016

International Development Innovation Network Summits

    
Hands-on design experiences that bring together people from all walks of life to create low-cost, practical innovations to improve the lives of people living in poverty.

IDDS Botswana
Jun 25- Jul 23, 2016
D'Kar, Botswana    


IDDS Amazon
Jul 4- Jul 17, 2016
Para, Brazil


IDDS Cookstoves
Aug 1- Aug 19, 2016
Kampala, Uganda


IDDS Sustainable Homes 
June 11-26, 2017
Sololá, Guatemala

IDDS Climate Change  
June 19-July 2, 2017
Bogotá, Colombia

IDDS Sisaket
July 21–August 9, 2017
Sisaket, Thailand
 


Fall 2016 D-Lab Classes


Fall Registration Day Open House: Tuesday, September 5, 12-1 pm at D-Lab!

D-LAB: DEVELOPMENT EC.701/EC.781/
11.025/11.472 (G)
A hands-on introduction to international development and appropriate technology. Enrollment limited by lottery; must attend first class session. Instructors: Libby Hsu, Bish Sanyal, Amy Smith

D-LAB: MOBILITY
EC. 721
Student teams conduct semester-long wheelchair projects relating to hardware design, manufacturing, biomechanics modeling, and business plan development. Instructor: Matt McCambridge

DESIGN FOR SCALE
EC.729 /2.729
Students work with social enterprises to develop established prototypes toward market-ready products. Lessons are hands-on and case based. Students from all majors encouraged to enroll. Instructors: Matt McCambridge, Kate Bergeron, Harald Quintus-Bosz

DEVELOPMENT VENTURES  
EC.731/MAS.665/15.375
An exploratory action lab on founding, financing, and building entrepreneurial ventures targeting developing countries, emerging markets, and underserved consumers everywhere. Instructors: Joost Bonsen, Sandy Pentland

D-LAB: SUPPLY CHAINS  
EC.733/15.772J
Introduces concepts of supply chain design and operations with a focus on supply chains for products destined to improve quality of life in developing countries. Students conduct projects on supply chain design or improvement.   Instructor: Stephen Graves

D-LAB: WASTE  
EC.716/EC.786
A multi-disciplinary approach to waste management in low- and middle-income countries with strategies that diminish greenhouse gas emissions and provide enterprise opportunities for marginalized populations. 
Instructor: Kate Mytty


New: D-LAB: GENDER
Stay tuned!

MIT & USAID to Host TechCon 2016
at MIT, Nov 10-12

    
A convening of researchers, students, entrepreneurs and innovators, development and field practitioners, and private sector representatives focused on highlighting cutting-edge solutions to critical development challenges. 

Sign up here for updates! 

Read advance MIT News story here!

 
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Header Images (l-r):

1) Participants from IDDS D'Kar (Botswana) 2016 at work.  

2) Participants from IDDS Educación in Colombia show off their completed project..  


3. New D-Lab Scale-Ups fellow Heather Beam facilitates a workshop in Ghana.












 

D-Lab founder Amy Smith talks about Creative Capacity Building

For the past seven years, D-Lab has used its Creative Capacity Building (CCB) methodology in classes at MIT, at international development design summits, with community partners, and in youth programs as well. The goal of CCB is to train participants to create or adapt technologies that will improve their lives and strengthen their communities. During a spring CCB training in Kafue, Zambia, D-Lab Founder and Co-Director Amy Smith took some time to discuss the origin, goals, and evolution of CCB – and some special “aha” moments she had along the way. Read Dana Gorodetsky's interview with Amy here!

International Development Innovation Network (IDIN)

 

Meet the IDIN Innovation Center Partners!



Check out this wonderful crowd-sourced video about the IDIN Innovation Center Partners! Innovation center partners are community organizations connecting people to resources, education, infrastructure, and support for the development of technologies that will have an impact on communities living in poverty. Centers featured in the video are located in countries including Brazil, Ghana, India, Kenya, Pakistan, and Zambia! Watch the video!

IDIN Local Chapters Receive Grants to Fuel Growth of Innovation Ecosystems

IDIN local chapters in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ghana, India, and Peru have been awarded small grants to host events, trainings, and workshops that will fuel the growth of their local innovation ecosystems over the next six months. IDIN local chapters are groups of IDIN Network members around the globe who organize to support local innovation initiatives and each other’s projects year-round. Read more!

New D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellows!
 

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!

D-Lab Academics
 

D-Lab and MIT IDEAS Global Challenge: Lessons in Mentoring, Transdisciplinarity and Real World Engineering for Sustainable Development

Lecturer Susan Murcott, creator and instructor for two D-Lab courses (D-Lab: WASH + ENV and D-Lab: Water and Climate Change) published (Springer, World Sustainability Series) an article, which is a reflection on her teaching at D-Lab and the engagement of her students in the MIT IDEAS Global Challenge over the past 14 years (2002–2015). Read the full article here!

Practical Impact Alliance
 

New publication! Fostering Co-Design in Base-of-the-Pyramid Markets

PIA announces a new publication from the 2015 working group on Fostering Effective Co-Design in Base-of-the-Pyramid Markets. Featuring case studies from PIA members the Melton Foundation, Danone, and World Vision, as well as from JustMilk, a social enterprise founded during the 2008 International Development Design Summit.






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