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MCEDC Quarterly Digest - Q1 2018
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The Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities (MCEDC) combines classroom work, research and development, and real world, on-the-ground experience to train engineers to work in partnership with organizations in developing communities worldwide. Our goal is to create sustainable and appropriate solutions to meet people's basic needs.
Learn more about the center on our website, http://www.colorado.edu/mcedc.
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Dr. Amy Javernick-Will Receives Prestigious Daniel W. Halpin Award for Scholarship in Construction
Dr. Amy Javernick-Will,
Mortenson Center Associate Director for Graduate Education and Research, received this prestigious award for outstanding scholarship in the areas of disaster recovery and for enhancing the global quality of life through socially sustainable infrastructure. The award celebrates her contributions to advancing construction engineering through scholarship, mentoring and a commitment to diversity. She accepted the award and give a presentation during the Construction Research Congress in New Orleans. A
video about her work is below.
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Katie Chambers Receives RIO Seed Grant
Graduate student and Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre intern Katie Chambers, along with CU Environmental Engineering's Sherri Cook, were awarded a 2018 Research & Innovation (RIO) Seed Grant for their project, "Resilient and Sustainable Sanitation Systems: Characteristics, Links and Barriers." The seed grant will provide funding to evaluate the social, economic, and technical characteristics of resilient sanitation systems and integrate this work with existing sustainability research to develop strategies and recommendations to increase access to, and long-term performance of, sanitation systems.
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Kaitlin Mattos Is an Arcadis Scholarship Recipient
Kaitlin Mattos has been selected as the 2018-19 Arcadis Scholarship recipient from the American Water Works Association. This award provides support to a masters or doctoral candidate seeking a degree in water with potential to provide leadership in the water service industry and pursuit of graduate work advancing the science and engineering of drinking water. Mattos is working on her PhD in Environmental Engineering with a focus on Engineering in Developing Communities with Professor Karl Linden, working with small communities in rural Alaska.
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Kimberly Pugel Heads Back to the U.N.
USAID Sustainable WASH Systems research student Kimberly Pugel is part of the U.N. Major Group for Children and Youth (MGCY) where she serves as the Technology Focal Point for the Financing for Development Working Group. In January, she presented at the U.N. Economic and Social Council Youth Forum working with eight other U.N. agencies to run a session on using science, technology and innovation to facilitate youth engagement, development of skills, and resilience. Pugel is now prepping for the MGCY's participation in the Science, Technology and Innovation Multi-Stakeholder Forum in June. She is especially interested in SDG 6, which calls for ensuring "access to water and sanitation for all". This is also the focus of her doctoral work with Associate Professor Dr. Amy Javernick-Will.
Read more.
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EDC Faculty Search Wrapping Up
This Spring we completed a search for one or more tenure-track faculty positions for individuals whose research, teaching and service activities will primarily focus on Engineering for Developing Communities. The search resulted in identification of many qualified candidates and we are in the process of finalizing offers to selected candidates. We are looking forward to announcing the faculty selected soon.
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EDC 2.0 Assessment Efforts Also Wrapping Up
During the past academic year, the Mortenson Center's leadership team has surveyed alumni, current students, and board members regarding experiences and expectations of our program and what changes might be necessary to move forward into our second decade. Dr. Robyn Sandekian has been compiling the data and will produce a report with recommendations that will be shared with our community in mid-April.
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Upcoming EDC Seminar & Past Highlights
WASH Seminar With Bruce Gordon
Tue. April 17, 2018, 5-6:00pm
SEEC Building, Room C120 (4001 Discovery Dr)
Bruce Gordon, the Coordinator of Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Health at the World Health Organization (WHO) will be presenting a special seminar titled, "A global perspective on water, sanitation and health: Deep-rooted challenges and emerging issues." The presentation is a part of the International WHO meeting being hosted by the University of Colorado. Gordon will review global status on water and sanitation, review efforts made by countries to address the challenge and discuss WHO's strategy for prioritizing and tackling these issues.
Read about EDC's Professor Karl Linden's involvement in this meeting and what he and his students are doing to carry out a systematic review of the Guidelines for Drinking Water Quality that is currently being updated by WHO.
Flood Modeling and Early Warning Assessments for Downstream Communities of Koka Dam, Ethiopia
EDC PhD student Katie Chambers gave a presentation discussing quantitative and qualitative data collected as part of the Climate Centre internship in Addis Ababa and rural communities in Ethiopia. The primary goal of the study was to access the feasibility of expanding self-learning algorithms (FUNES) to Koka Dam, Ethiopia's oldest hydroelectric
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Design for autonomy and fairness of new technology users in the Global South
Senior UX Researcher at Google, Dr. Nithya Sambasivan, presented on her
work that aims to empower new technology users with increased autonomy and fairness through technology. As technology penetration and ecosystem maturity increase, there is a growing intent to use technology for socio-economic development for new technology users. However, complex long-standing challenges like affordability, safety, and socio-religious diktats affect people at the cusp of the Internet. Nithya presented her prior work on (i) design and evaluation of a cost transparency tool intended to help new mobile Internet users; (ii) design to tackle abuse and safety vectors for women in Internet technologies; and (iii) design and deployment of an information broadcasting system for urban sex workers in India. She showed how prevailing human-computer interaction (HCI) assumptions of privacy, trust, and user identities need to be challenged as Internet advances to reach all edges of human society.
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This year's WASH Symposium took place March 6 & 7, and was a great success. This Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Symposium is an annual conversation with experts on ensuring WASH services for everyone. The hosted speakers were from organizations including: Container-Based Sanitation Alliance; Factor(e); iDE; USAID Sustainable WASH Systems; Water for People, and more. Topics ranged from regulation and policy, the future of WASH, market-based approaches, and public health to name a few.
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Post Disaster Reconstruction
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Dr. Amy Javernick-Will and her Global Projects and Organizations research team, including EDC Alumnus Aaron Opdyke, recently shared findings on their study of post-disaster reconstruction following Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.
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 Want to read our past weekly digests?
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If you are interested in seeing the types of information we publish weekly, check out the
Weekly Digests Page on our website.
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