Public Service Grantees: Summer 2009

The Americas

United States: Massachusetts

Caroline Huang ('10 Course 9) will continue her work with Camp Kesem MIT, which she founded as a freshman in 2006. Camp Kesem is a college student-run nonprofit that provides a free, week-long summer camp for kids whose parents have or have had cancer. This summer she will focus on the sustainability and financial viability of the MIT branch. Caroline will also intern with Camp Kesem National to develop fund-raising tools and program guidelines for Camp Kesem campuses across the country.

Sam Kronick ('10 Course 4) & William McKenna ('09 Course 4) will continue their work with Prospect Hill Academy Public Charter School in Cambridge. They are leading a series of workshops in architectural design that will result in the design and assembly of a customizable outdoor classroom. Their aim is for this structure to serve as a multi-use teaching tool that will empower students to participate in the creation of their own learning environment.

James Madden (G Course 11) will work with the Madison Park Development Corporation in Roxbury, MA on community engagement in support of real estate development in the area. He will also assist in transitioning the RoxVote coalition from its focus on periodic voter registration and Get-Out-The-Vote efforts to a focus on continuing, issue-based campaigns.

Washington

Anju Somani ('11 Course 14) will spend the summer with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a division of the World Bank, in Washington, D.C. Anju will be researching the effectiveness of microfinance in developing countries, and devising plausible solutions for the lack of financial services in these impoverished regions.

Chile

Liz Theurer ('10 Course 2) will work with RECYCLA, an e-waste recycling company in Santiago, Chile, to research the causes of the high costs of e-waste recycling. She will travel to a recycling site in Germany to look at factory layout and worker efficiency and then travel to Chile to optimize the workstations at RECYCLA to increase their daily throughput.

Africa

Eletha Flores ('10 Course 6) will work from MIT for the African Center for Renewable Energies and Sustainable Technologies (ACREST), to research and develop low-cost, efficient, and innovative ways to distribute hydro-electric power to communities in Africa. She will focus on designing and building an electronic load controller which will help to manage power distribution from hydro-electric generators for safe and effective use by local communities in Africa.

India

Ethan Bates ('09 Course 22) & Richard Bates ('09 Course 2) have received a Yunus Challenge grant to develop an affordable solution for the pressurization, storage, and transport of biogas, a byproduct of the fermentation of organic waste. They will travel to Kerala, India, an established biogas-producing community, to do further research on creating a more efficient biogas digester to convert organic waste into fertilizer and combustible biogas that can be used for stoves, lanterns, and heaters.

Neeharika Bhartiya ('10 Course 2) will travel to Mumbia, India to work on the manufacture of small-business wheelchair attachments. In collaboration with a local NGO, Ratna Nandhi Charitable Trust, Neeharika will design and produce 5-10 user-friendly, cost-effective, easily reparable business attachments for pilot users, thus enabling disabled people to generate their own sources of income through small business run from their wheelchairs.

Asia

Sean Liu ('10 Course 6) will deploy a high-speed carrier-class internet network as part of China's efforts to develop wireless internet access in major cities. His team will work on the evaluation of a new integration method that may reduce costs by coupling new hardware and software into a single device; they hope to create and test this new device in Fuzhou, China.

For more information on these Grantees, contact Sally Susnowitz, Director, MIT Public Service Center

Posted on May 12, 2009