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A design summit summer for IDIN
With the spring semester wrapped up for D-Lab students and instructors, the team from the International Development Innovation Network (IDIN) has begun one of its busiest summers yet. IDIN is sponsoring three design summits this summer—a marked increase over the one summit per summer that has been the norm since 2007. Each summit has a unique flavor that is best described by the summit organizers themselves in these interviews on the IDIN website. It is IDIN’s hope that the projects that emerge from this summer’s design summits will be a source of inspiration and motivation for D-Lab student projects this fall and in semesters to come!
- Tricia Matthews, Program Manager
International Development Innovation Network
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IDDS Zero Waste under way in Cali, Colombia
 The organizers, including the International Development Innovation Network, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Universidad del Valle, Autoridad Ambiental de Santiago de Cali, and AlcadÃa de Santiago de Cali, have brought together waste pickers, business leaders, municipal workers, students, and community members from Cali and around the world to co-create appropriate waste sector technology and business models. Follow the IDDS Zero Waste blog!
International Development Design Summit monitoring & evaluation fellows
 This year, the International Development Innovation Network has brought on two Monitoring and Evaluation Fellows to help them track, measure, and learn from this year’s design summits, IDDS Zero Waste, IDDS Aarogyam, and IDDS D'Kar. The fellows, Jimena Espinosa and Laura Lehman, are both Master of Public Administration in Development Practice students at Columbia University. Read full interview.
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Meet the 2015 D-Lab Scale-Ups fellows!
 The MIT D-Lab Scale-Ups fellowship program — which offers one year of support to social entrepreneurs bringing technology-based, poverty-alleviating products to market at scale — has announced its 2015 fellows. The new D-Lab Scale-Ups fellows are:
Read MIT News story!
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D-Lab: Energy and the power of poop!
 This past semester, Fernando Ruiz ‘16, Andrew Xia ’17, and Janet Lin ’15, all D-Lab: Energy students, worked on a biodigester project in El Salvador and at MIT. Specifically, they worked to convert organic matter (like manure) into methane gas and fertilizer under anaerobic conditions with methanogenic bacteria. Impressed by this possibility of using waste to create energy, they named themselves the “Poop Power†team. Read Janet's blog!
Compost toilet design in El Salvador
 Recent MIT graduate and new MIT D-Lab alumna Elaine Kung '15 has been awarded $5,000 by the MIT engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi to continue work on the design and implementation of compost toilets in Santa Ana, El Salvador. Working with longstanding D-Lab community partner ASAPROSAR, a Salvadoran organization focused on rural health, Kung's goal is to reduce the cost of materials and manual labor needed to produce compost toilets, thereby making them more affordable for the local community. Read MIT News article.
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D-Lab-based research scientist awarded $100k by Vodafone for low-cost, mobile pulmonary diagnostic tool
 D-Lab-based research scientist Rich Fletcher and Tata Center for Design and Technology fellow Dan Chamberlain, in collaboration with the Chest Research Foundation (CRF) in India, have won the $100,000 third prize in Vodafone’s annual Wireless Innovation Project awards program. Three awards are given annually to the top wireless innovations applied to social benefit around the world. Fletcher’s team, based at MIT D-Lab and at the Tata Center for Technology and Design, received the award for developing a low-cost mobile platform for diagnosing pulmonary disease. Read MIT News article!
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Three D-Lab alumni speak at MIT alumni event in New York City
 Last month, D-Lab co-director Victor Grau Serrat and development officer Peggy Eysenbach traveled to New York City to present at an MIT Connection event for New York City-area MIT alumni. Three D-Lab alumnae spoke on a panel about their D-Lab experience and how it had influenced their lives since graduation! Some highlights:
Tiffany Guo '09 (pictured): "D-Lab emphasized that we were co-creators, and by listening and respecting the communities and their values, we would be able to affect the most positive change."
Caroline Hane-Weijman '11: "D-Lab has given me a roadmap for what type of work I want to get back to doing, because it is where I found meaning and purpose."
Tina Leimbach (formerly Tina Ro) '10: "D-Lab gave me the opportunity to see how I could use my technical background in engineering to improve the world around me."
Read more of Tiffany's, Caroline's, and Tina's reflections on the D-Lab blog!
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