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Mortenson Center Quarterly Digest - Q1 2019
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The Mortenson Center engages in global engineering and combines education, research, and partnerships to positively impact vulnerable people and their environment by improving development tools and practice. Our vision is a world where everyone has safe water, sanitation, energy, food, shelter, and infrastructure. Learn more about the center on our website,
http://www.colorado.edu/mcedc
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Global Engineering Awards
The Mortenson Center's First Annual Global Engineering Awards took place on March 4. The evening began with a reception that was co-hosted with the CO WASH Symposium. The reception was followed by opening remarks from Director Evan Thomas, who introduced Bobby Braun, Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science. Dean Braun laid out the vision of the college to achieve global impact and how the Mortenson Center contributes to this vision. After the opening speeches, three Global Engineering Awards were given out and the evening concluded with a keynote speech by Greg Collins, the USAID Resilience Coordinator.
The following are the inaugural Global Engineering Award winners:
Dr. Bernard Amadei is the winner of the Global Engineering Humanitarian Award. Dr. Amadei is a Distinguished Professor and Professor of Civil Engineering at CU Boulder. He is the Founding President of Engineers Without Borders-USA and the co-founder of the Engineers Without Borders International network.
Dr. Elizabeth Hausler is the winner of the Global Engineering Outstanding Professional Award. Dr. Hausler is the founder and CEO of Build Change and a global expert on resilient building and post-disaster reconstruction.
Kathy Ku is the winner of the Outstanding Student Award. She is a medical student at Stanford University School of Medicine, where she manages a free health clinic and conducts cost-effectiveness research to maximize care. She is also co-founder of SPROUTS Water in Uganda.
From left to right: Laura MacDonald, Amy Javernick-Will, CEAS Dean Bobby Braun, Bernard Amadei, Kathy Ku, Elizabeth Hausler, Greg Collins, Evan Thomas
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Three New EDC Related Publications
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Davis, A.,
Javernick-Will, A.,
and Cook, S. (2019). "The use of qualitative comparative analysis to identify pathways to successful and failed sanitation systems".
Science of the Total Environment.
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Davis, A.,
Javernick-Will, A
., and Cook, S. (2019). "Priority Addressment Protocol: Understanding the Ability and Potential of Sanitation Systems to Address Priorities"
Environmental Science and Technology
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Palagi, S., and
Javernick-Will, A
. (2019). "Institutional Constraints Influencing Relocation Decision Making and Implementation."
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction
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Mortenson Center Awarded Grant
The Mortenson Center was awarded a grant to conduct a health and economic impact evaluation of Bridges to Prosperity-constructed footbridges in rural Rwanda. The grant is funded by Bridges to Prosperity (B2P) and an anonymous donor.
Since 2012, B2P's field program in Rwanda has led to the construction of 37 footbridges that provide safe, reliable access for an estimated 225,000 people. They are slated to construct 350 more in the next five years. Read more about B2P and the
Impact Evaluation.
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Mortenson Center Awarded Grant
The Mortenson Center has just signed a $250,000 contract with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US Government agency, to study distributed water services in Freetown, Sierra Leone. As part of this work, we will be installing remotely reporting sensors on a series of water kiosks across the city, and looking at service delivery from the Guma Valley Water Company, services to customers, and the interfaces in these public-private partnerships.
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New Book From Bernard Amadei
Volumes 1 and 2 of Professor Bernard Amadei's new book titled A Systems Approach to Modeling the Water-Energy-Land-Food Nexus has been published by Momentum Press.
Over the next 50 years, rapid population, urbanization and economic growth worldwide will create unprecedented needs for water, energy, land and food (WELF) resources.
This two-volume book describes a flexible and adaptive system-based methodology and associated guidelines for the management and allocation of community-based WELF resources. Read more and buy the book.
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Bernard Amadei Receives 7th Honorary Doctorate
Former Mortenson Center Director Bernard Amadei has been awarded his seventh honorary doctorate degree, this time from the College of Environmental Science and Forestry at State University of New York (SUNY). SUNY said the award honors Bernard's environmental leadership through the founding of Engineers Without Borders USA. There are more than 100 student chapters including one at CU Boulder and one at SUNY. Bernard is now a doctor eight times over.
View the other institutions that have awarded him doctorates.
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Outstanding Graduate for International Engagement and Mortenson Center Graduate Austin Riley was recently interviewed by CU journalist Jeff Zehnder. About the Mortenson Center Austin says, "I wouldn't have been interested in a Master's otherwise. I've learned so much. It fits in exactly with what I want to do as a career."
Read about Austin's journey and where he's going next.
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Grant Winners
Matthew Bentley, Allie Davis and James Harper are all recipients of a Rotary WASH Scholarship Grant. The grant provide funds to help recipients attend WASH conferences or help with their applied WASH field research.
Allie is also a winner of the EEF Mini Grant from their Fall 2018 grant cycle. This award will be used to partially fund her dissemination work in India.
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Student Highlight - Matthew Bentley
Mortenson Center student
Matthew Bentley is currently in China and Southeast Asia working on various projects related to development research. Project highlights include:
- Water treatment system installation on a coffee farm in rural Yunnan, China utilizing both slow-sand filtration and biochar adsorption for removal of both pathogens and chemical contaminants.
- Low-cost connected weather sensor for longitudinal tracking of weather and soil conditions in a climate-vulnerable agricultural region in China to improve agricultural activities and water use patterns.
- Surface and groundwater quality testing for metals and organic chemicals in various agricultural regions in Southeast Asia.
- Improvement field production methods for biochar in resource-limited scenarios to improve filter life and reduce chemical exposure of vulnerable communities.
Matthew (left) completed his practicum with Yunnan Coffee Traders more than two years ago and he has been working on various research projects with them ever since.
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Opportunities at WHO
Sat. April 28, 2019 - Start Date
The World Health Organization is currently seeking a Laboratory Technical Officer Consultant, a Cholera Case Management Consultant, a Health Promotion Consultant, and a WASH & IPC Consultant.
Read full descriptions.
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IBM Pilots Blockchain and IoT Sensor Solution To Track Sustainable Groundwater Usage In California
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BM Research is partnering with The Freshwater Trust (TFT), a nonprofit working to protect and restore freshwater ecosystems, and SweetSense Inc., a provider of low-cost satellite connected sensors, to pilot blockchain and IoT technologies for monitoring ground water usage in one of the largest and at risk aquifers in North America. The University of CO Boulder will provide additional research support.
Read the article in Forbes.
Read more on the IBM site.
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