Author: spencer

By Sybil Lewis

Inspired by the depth and breadth of activity across the University of California to address challenges in the global food system, Big Ideas@Berkeley, the flagship student innovation contest, has launched a new contest category: Food System Innovations.

The category responds to UC President Janet Napolitano’s UC Global Food Initiative—an effort to catalyze all 10 campuses, UC’s Division of Agricultural and Natural Resources, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, various institutes and centers, and a multidisciplinary consortium of faculty, researchers, and students to address food security issues and the related challenges of nutrition and sustainability.

In her talks about the initiative, Napolitano has underscored that today a billion people, mostly in the developing world, suffer from chronic hunger or serious malnutrition, and another billion, primarily in the developed world, are obese. “Put on top of that the increasing pressure on our natural resources, land and water, and you can see the magnitude of what we have before us,” Napolitano said at the initiative’s launch in July at the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley. “The issue of ‘food’ is not just about what we eat. It’s about delivery systems, climate issues, population growth, policy. All of these and more come into play when you begin to think about the colliding forces that shape the world’s food future.”

The Big Ideas prize is leveraging this call to inspire students to craft creative solutions. “We hope the category will motivate undergraduate and graduate students throughout the UC system to come up with innovative ways to address the growing pressures facing our global food system,” said Phillip Denny, manager of Big Ideas and chief administrative office of the Blum Center for Developing economies, which administers the contest.

Can students develop new systems, technologies, or approaches to one of the 21^st century’s thorniest problems? Denny, who has seen scores of Big Ideas contest winners go on to create high-impact ideas, says yes. He also points to the wide constellation of UC professors and researchers who have incorporated food sustainability and security into their work and whose passion for agriculture, health, nutrition, energy, water, labor, and social justice will help inspire students.

The Berkeley Food Institute (BFI), a sponsor of the Food System Innovations category and member of the UC Global Food Initiative, is working to facilitate cross-disciplinary approaches to food security, food justice, and environmental sustainability issues. “Developing effective solutions to food and agriculture challenges requires multi-dimensional expertise and innovations in many disciplines and across sectors—from production to distribution to consumption of food,” said Ann Thrupp, executive director of BFI. “Addressing these challenging issues is a great way to encourage group learning, and to address problems collaboratively. Food can be a catalyst that brings people together in universities and everywhere.”

Several projects and courses on UC campuses seek to include students in problem solving for food security. On the Berkeley campus alone, there are more than 90 academic courses related to food and agriculture and more than 150 faculty and staff that teach and conduct food-related research.

The School of Public Health at UC Berkeley, for example, offers an interdisciplinary graduate course called “Eat.Think.Design,” which encourages students to connect with nonprofits and government agencies to implement projects that address challenges in food systems. Jaspal Sandhu, a lecturer in design and innovation at the School of Public Health and a former Big Ideas team mentor, said he designed “Eat.Think.Design” to “create links between the classroom and the real-world to motivate students and ensure a worthwhile learning experience.” Past students from the course include a computer scientist who traveled to Uganda to test a post-diarrheal zinc therapy and health writer now working on special programs for the Culinary Institute of America.

Sandhu is among those who believe that because the challenges of food security affect us all, solutions require interdisciplinary collaboration. “At the moment, not enough of our students and faculty are focused on food security,” he said. “Adding this FSI category to Big Ideas will bring the brightest minds to the table.”

Winners of the Food System Innovations contest will be announced in March, and student teams will receive cash prizes of up to $10,000.
Although in past years, there was no category for food innovation or security, students have won for related Big Ideas prizes. During their last semester as undergraduates at UC Berkeley in 2009, for example, Alejandro Velez and Nikhil Arora developed a plan to grow gourmet mushrooms from used coffee grounds. They submitted their idea for a project called “Back to the Roots” and won a $5,000 prize, which helped launch a company that is now in its fifth year of operation and boasts two products: the Mushroom Kit and AquaFarm, a self-cleaning fish tank that grows food. The company’s products are currently sold in thousands of locations, including Whole Foods, Nordstrom, and The Home Depot. In 2013, Back to the Roots was named a Martha Stewart American Made Awards winner and one of Forbes 25 Most Innovative Consumer Brands.

Velez said Back to the Roots aims not only to turn waste into food, but to redefine how people view waste. “More and more, we’re starting to appreciate the ecosystem that we’re a part of,” he said. “In reality, there is no ‘waste’ in nature. We just have to take the time to figure out what is its second life.”

By Tamara Straus

Growing up in a rural town in Kyankwanzi District, Uganda, Moses Rurangwa witnessed an epidemic of preventable blindness. In his community many people become blind or near blind from trachoma, an infectious disease that affects places with poor sanitation, crowded living conditions, and not enough water and toilets. Trachoma forces the eyelid to turn inwards and causes the eyelashes to scratch and eventually damage the eye.

“Many people don’t know they have the disease until it is too late,” said Rurangwa, “and they don’t know how to get medicine. The first stage is a small itching below the eyelid, which is not always noticeable. But the last stage, if there is no diagnosis or prevention, is impoverishing blindness.”
When Rurangwa moved to Kampala to enroll in Makerere University in 2011, he became a tech geek. He could not put down his cell phone. He decided to major in computer science.  Looking at the issues facing his country, he said he began to feel that “although ICT [information and communication technologies] is not very strong in Uganda, it is a path to solving our own problems. There is capacity—people just need motivation.”

Rurangwa, now 22, might as well been talking about himself. A year or so into his studies at Makerere, he decided to figure out a way to use ICT, specifically mobile phones, to diagnose and prevent trachoma, which 8 million (nearly one fifth of) Ugandans are at risk of contracting. He and two Makerere University classmates—Anatoli Kirigwajjo, a computer science student, and Kiruyi Samuel, a medicine and surgery student—developed an idea for an mobile phone app that would photograph the eye using a smart phone, and examine and compare the image for color, far- and near-sightedness, and the presence of cataracts and other conditions. The images could then be sent to doctors who could make an initial diagnosis, contact the patient for testing, and even track the progress of treatment, if medication was administered. Rurangwa, Kirigwajjo, and Samuel call their app E-liiso: “e” for electronic and “liiso,” the Lugandan word for eye.

Rurangwa says his reason for inventing the app is pragmatism; it could save time, money, and livelihoods. Diagnosing trachoma and other eye diseases is not terribly difficult, what has been difficult for Ugandans is the cost of ophthalmological examinations. A typical eye exam in Uganda costs approximately US$50, too high for a country where the annual per capita income is US$506. The number of trained eye professionals is also very small; most are found in big cities. And in village schools, there are no longer routine screenings because of government funding cuts. But Ugandans do have mobile phones. The Uganda Communications Commission reported there were 12 million subscriptions in the country in 2011 and the number could be slightly above 17 million today, among a population of 36 million.

To fund E-lisso, and its umbrella company, Sight for Everyone, Rurangwa and his colleagues have turned to innovation contests, especially ones with cash prizes and Western connections. In March 2014, they took third place in the BigIdeas@Berkeley contest, which had opened several contest categories for the first time to the seven universities in USAID’s Higher Education Solutions Network(HESN), which includes Makerere University.

“The E-liiso team was not the only Ugandan team that beat out hundreds of student groups from Berkeley, Duke, and Texas A&M,” said Phillip Denny, project manager of BigIdeas@Berkeley and Chief Administration Officer of the Blum Center for Developing Economies, which runs the contest. “There was another finalist from Makerere, behind an idea called AgroMarketDay, a mobile app for farmers. What this shows is that African students have plenty of social impact solutions for their own countries.”

Deborah Naatujuna Nkwanga, engagement manager at HESN’s Makerere-based Resilient Africa Network, said that the university is focusing on ensuring that more students and faculty engage in innovation and research activities that serve local needs. “By teaching entrepreneurship, Makerere is also striving to turn out students who are job creators rather than job seekers,” she said. “We have incubation centers within departments, where student ideas are tested, refined, and readied to be scaled.”

Nkwanga noted that Makerere students faced technical challenges that their American counterparts did not. “Internet and power were a regular problem,” said Nkwanga. “At one point, Phillip [Denny] extended the deadline of submission because of Internet and power problems.” Still, eight Makerere groups applied in the tech-dependent open data for development contest category.

The Sight for Everyone team is now finishing up its first testing phase. This has involved processing algorithms for more than 100 photos of trachoma-infected eyes that can serve as comparison images. The team is also testing its mobile application with doctors at Jinja Hospital, an eye center in Kampala, as well as improving its website so that users can post images of infected eyes and get responses from ophthalmologists.

Rurangwa says Sight for Everyone is seeking $30,000 in startup funds this year to proceed with commercial testing of E-liiso. It received $3,000 from the UC Berkeley prize and in 2014 participated in the Microsoft Imagine Cup and Orange competitions. Although the Ugandan government halted new e-health initiatives in January 2012 due to e-health “pilot-itis” and researchers there and at MIT are working on other eye disease apps, Rurangwa is not worried about competition.

“My main worry is that we do not have enough people embracing technology in the [Ugandan] medical sector,” he said. “The only real competition we are facing right now is faith. People wonder if this thing, e-health, can really work.”
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For those interested in learning more about Big Ideas past winners and how to apply for or support the contest, visit the Big Ideas website: http://bigideascontest.org

By Jenna Hahn

In 2006, Big Ideas @ Berkeley was launched to support multidisciplinary teams of UC Berkeley students interested in big challenges such as clean energy, safe drinking water, and poverty alleviation.

Nine years later, the yearlong student innovation contest has become a model for on-campus collaboration and action—and has expanded to 16 universities around the country and world, including the entire University of California system and the USAID Higher Education Solutions Network.

As Big Ideas moves toward its 10^th anniversary, it is facing big numbers. More than 4,000 students have submitted 1,248 proposals to the contest. During the last three years, participation from undergraduate students has increased dramatically—from 35 percent in 2010 to 70 percent in 2014.

According to an internal study from the Blum Center for Developing Economies, which manages Big Ideas, the contest’s 400-plus student teams and award winners have gone on to secure over $35 million in additional funding. Thirty percent of winners from 2006-2011 have won at least one additional award or business plan competition after participating in Big Ideas, and 50 percent have reported that their Big Ideas project is still running.

Among the projects that originated from Big Ideas are: Acopio, a data sharing software platform for agricultural producers now managed by Fair Trade USA; Nextdrop, which uses mobile phone technology to transmit water supply and distribution information for Indian consumers; and Back to the Roots, a U.S. company that sells mushroom kits made from coffee grounds.

“From the beginning, Big Ideas was about developing an ecosystem of innovation to help bright young people get from idea to reality,” said Maryanne McCormick, executive director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies. “The contest is run and organized around the belief that there’s a value to giving young people more autonomy early in their career—and there’s a value to encouraging them to identify something that they’re passionate about. Over the last nine years, we have seen those values bear fruit.”

This year’s contest will offer up to $300,000 in funding for winning teams. It also will offer applicants a new contest category, Food System Innovations, sponsored by the UC Global Food Initiative and the Berkeley Food Institute. The UC Global Food Initiative, launched in July 2014 by UC President Janet Napolitano, brings together the university’s research, outreach, and campus operations in an effort to develop and export solutions throughout California, the United States, and the world for food security, health, and sustainability, Napolitano said during the morning briefing.

The contest launches on September 2, and spans the academic year, beginning with the submission of a five-page pre-proposal by November 13. If selected, finalist teams will be then prepare a full proposal by mid-March.
This year’s contest categories include:

• Clean & Sustainable Energy Alternatives
• Conflict & Development
• Creative Expression for Social Justice
• Food System Innovations
• Global Health
• Improving Student Life
• Information Technology for Society
• Mobiles for Reading
• Open Data for Development
• Scaling Up Big Ideas (for past winners only)

From September to March, when the final proposals are due, teams have the opportunity to attend information sessions, idea generation and networking events, writing workshops, editing blitz’s, and office hours with Big Ideas advisors in person and online. In addition, teams will be matched with mentors with expertise relevant to their project from a range of social enterprises, academia, nonprofits, and businesses.

Unlike many business competitions, Big Ideas is focused on supporting projects focused on social impact. The contest challenges students to step outside of their traditional university-based academic work, take a risk, and use their education, passion, and skills to work on problems important to them.

“The Big Ideas Contest helped us to think beyond what we had initially envisioned and push past our boundaries,” said Priya Iyer, a member of the Sahay team that won third place in the Information Technology for Society category in 2014.

For more information about rules, categories, resources, funding, and contact information, please visit the Big Ideas website at http://bigideascontest.org

The U.S. Agency for International Development’s Global Development Lab (the Lab) and UC Berkeley are teaming up to launch an essay contest as a part of the Big Ideas@Berkeley annual contest. The pilot competition, “Blind Spots in International Development,” seeks to spotlight challenges in global development not widely recognized that are in need of greater attention or resources as well as innovative approaches to solve those challenges. In line with the mission of the Lab and the philosophy behind Big Ideas@Berkeley, the contest asks participants to draw upon their field experience and educational, professional, personal, or other backgrounds to analyze how development gaps can be bridged through science, technology, innovation, or strategic partnerships (STIP).

The Blind Spots Essay Contest was created to provide current students or seasoned career professionals with an opportunity to think outside existing frameworks and share cutting-edge perspectives on how best to deal with overlooked areas in global development. “This is an exciting new collaboration with USAID and the Lab,” said Phillip Denny, program manager for Big Ideas@Berkeley. “We are asking participants with field experience to be our eyes and ears, and teach the global community about those development issues that are not widely recognized, but are hindering programs and initiatives that aim to save the lives of millions. The goal is to increase knowledge sharing not only within our respective organizations and institutions, but also with the development community as a whole.”

Essay participants will answer the question “What is the most significant overlooked development challenge that can be addressed using STIP?” (One example of a STIP is USAID’s work with South African partners and researchers to fund the CAPRISA 004 trial, which resulted in a huge leap forward in women-controlled HIV prevention. The trial demonstrated that use of a microbicide gel containing an antiretroviral drug helps prevent the transmission of HIV.) The essay is also intended to encourage development practitioners to think about a topic holistically. It asks participants to explore the contexts of development challenges, including the various social, economic, political, and/or environmental barriers to approaching the problem, or the potential local, regional, or global impact a STIP intervention may have.

The contest launches on September 2 and is open to students from the universities within USAID’s Higher Education Solutions Network, global researchers in the Research and Innovation Fellows and Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research programs, and USAID Mission Staff. Awards are $3,000 for first place, $2,000 for second, and $1,000 for third, as well as publication through the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair and on numerous websites and networks. Essays must be 1,750 to 2,000 words in length and submitted by October 1. Winners will be announced on November 10.

To learn more, go to: http://bigideascontest.org/blind-spots/.

By: Jessica Ernandes Naecker

Since University of Texas at Austin held the first business plan competition in 1984, student prize contests spurring social innovation and entrepreneurship have become hugely popular. There are now hundreds of prize contests for undergraduate and graduate students from scores of universities, companies, and nonprofits. A McKinsey & Company report found that funds available for these innovation prizes have been escalating: between 1999 and 2009, the amount of money for the large prizes tripled to exceed $375 million.

But do contests that reward students or others for their society-improving ideas work? Are they worthwhile?

The McKinsey report warned that quantity doesn’t always equal quality, noting there are “many overlapping prizes and growing clutter.” In a 2013 SSIReview.org article, Kevin Starr, director of the Mulago Foundation, went further, calling the prize contests “exploitative.” He argued that the contests waste the time and energy of the applicants who don’t win and fail to provide them with adequate learning experiences.

Although five years old, the McKinsey report provides useful data on how the contests work and don’t work. The McKinsey authors surveyed the organizers of 219 prize contests and reported that they were succeeding in three categories: 1) defining excellence, 2) influencing public perception, and 3) strengthening communities of problem solvers. But they also found that contest organizers felt their competitions were the least successful in educating contest participants.

With this in mind, I spent the last two years studying what UC Berkeley—which has held an annual student innovation competition since 2006—could learn from its own experience and others. Some background about Big Ideas@Berkeley: it’s one of the oldest and most international student innovation prizes; it’s open to graduate and undergraduate students; it has about 10 contest categories—from Clean and Sustainable Energy Alternatives and Financial Literacy, to Global Poverty Alleviation and Information Technology for Society; and it’s increasingly popular. Last year, 187 applications were submitted by more than 600 students.

Big Ideas appears to be attracting students not just for the prize money and the attention the ideas might win, but also for the learning and feedback opportunities the competition provides. As far as I know, it is the only student innovation contest that is organized around a yearlong, academic process. Over the course of the year, students commit to participating in two application rounds, honing their ideas with help from advisors, judges, and mentors. Although some promising startups have emerged from Big Ideas, mostly the contest has introduced young people to project management, leadership, critical thinking, and grant writing—i.e., to the nuts and bolts of social impact organizations.

According to a survey of 187 applicants from the 2013-2014 contest cycle, those who participated in the first round of the contest (most of whom did not move on to the contest’s second round) reported increases “to a great extent” in skill development in areas such as leadership, critical thinking, and project management. For those who made it to the second round, 64 percent of participants expressed the highest level of satisfaction for skill development. In regard to mentoring, 96 percent of participants said having an advisor was either useful or highly useful.

Compare these data to the McKinsey report. Of 48 large-purse contest organizers surveyed, only 35 percent indicated that their contests had been somewhat or significantly successful at educating individuals.

Of course, universities have more resources to help students entering contests than, say, foundations or businesses. They are already in the business of educating students. But as many have pointed out, contests are designed to foster society-improving organizations and the United States doesn’t necessarily need new ones. It certainly doesn’t need more nonprofits. (Guidestar reports there are currently over 2.2 million of them.)

What it needs is well-educated civic innovators: people who can work in teams to solve the huge variety of problems the world is presenting to us.
So my advice for those starting new prize contests—especially for students, but ideally for anyone—is simple: include a learning and feedback process. That way, the hundreds, or in some cases, the thousands of applicants who enter your contest have a better chance of making an impact with their idea or, more likely, with someone else’s.

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Jessica Ernandes Naecker is a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, and a graduate student researcher at the Blum Center for Developing Economies.

By: Daniel Lynx Bernard, HESN Technical Writer

To encourage students to dream big about solutions to social problems, “Big Ideas@Berkeley” changed the way that campus innovation contests are run.

Rather than requiring fully fleshed-out proposals, the Big Ideas competition at University of California, Berkeley invites raw ideas, then provides contestants with assistance to elaborate on them. To reflect the energy of students and the dynamism of the innovation community, Big Ideas launches with enthusiastic campus support and culminates with a public “Pitch Day” when finalists take the mic and deliver their best appeal for extra support.

The format has been received with such enthusiasm on the Berkeley campus that HESN supported UC Berkeley in adding three categories of the competition that are open to all HESN-affiliated universities – Global Poverty Alleviation, Promoting Human Rights, and Open Data. This year, of the 187 pre-proposals received, 45 were submitted by student teams from HESN university campuses. Of those, 17 came from Makerere University, one of our leading universities in Uganda. And now, UC Berkeley is offering the format of Big Ideas for free to any campus that wants to hold its own version. UC-Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies, which began staging Big Ideas in 2009, has compiled its strategies and lessons in managing the event into a free, online Big Ideas Toolkit.

“We wanted to develop this toolkit to get down our best practices – from the emails we send to judges, to our reviews of the many contest platforms we’ve explored – so that we can inspire other campuses to develop their own competitions more effectively, and learn from what they create,” said Phillip Denny, Big Ideas program manager and chief administrative officer of the Blum Center.

During summer 2014, the HESN-supported Development Impact Lab (DIL) will actively share the toolkit with universities who may be interested in launching competitions or applying the Big Ideas approach to existing competitions. DIL plans to reach out to more than 100 universities including the HESN network, partners, and others in the U.S. and abroad, as well as hosting two webinars, the second of which will take place on August 12 at 10am PST. Make sure to register!

Big Ideas is designed to let ideas in rather than keep them out. Applicants are not required to submit final proposals, a level of effort that might deter some with promising ideas. Instead, in order to compete, a student team needs only to submit a “pre-proposal” of five pages’ length.

The most promising ideas are designated finalists — about 30% made the cut in 2014 — and then nurtured by the competition organizers. Finalists are paired with mentors from the university, private companies, or nonprofits who assist them for six weeks in turning their ideas into full proposals. The competition organizers hold workshops in proposal-writing, budgeting, and even how to get the most out of your mentor. “What we’re trying to do is create an educational scaffolding for budding social innovators to develop their ideas,” Denny said.

Another encouraging aspect is that finalists can win in different categories and levels. Approximately three in four finalists receive funding for their “big ideas,” an average of $5,000 per team, and ongoing support as they implement their projects.

Remember to register for the Big Ideas Webinar on Tuesday, August 12, at 10am PST, and join the Big Ideas @ Berkeley team as they share the toolkit, answer questions, and receive input.

Winners in this year’s competition are described in this article on the UC Berkeley website: “Launching new generations of social innovators.” Six finalists who went on to win additional support in the “Pitch Day” event are described in ” Students Pitch Big Ideas for Social Impact.”

This article was originally published in the Higher Education Solutions Network’s HESN Connector in July 2014. View the newsletter here.

By: Abby Madan, 2nd Year Political Economy Major

The end of this year’s BigIdeas@Berkeley contest has arrived, and the 56 finalist teams’ wait for the judges’ results has finally ended.

Since the start of the yearlong contest, many students transformed their ideas into promising initiatives through hard work. The Big Ideas contest is designed to drive student innovation by providing resources that help students nurture their ideas. An integral part of this supportive ecosystem is the mentorship component of the contest.

In January, Big Ideas finalists were matched with Bay Area professionals who hold years of experience and insight in a particular field. With a shared passion for improving society and promoting positive change, mentors and student teams bring together new and creative innovation with the skills and guidance that comes from experience. A good mentor is a confidante, a guiding voice, and someone who asks the difficult questions, students expressed.

“Our mentor was a perfect match… it really helped us focus and fill in all the gaps that were missing in our project,” shared Krishna Bommakanti, a 4th year Molecular and Cell Biology student and member of Wellness Water, a team designing a wetland system to purify contaminated water in rural South India. “We wanted a mentor who could help us not only bring out the innovative merit but who could also work with us on the technical aspects of wetland construction – that’s where we have a weakness.”

At Big Ideas, mentoring is a reciprocal relationship that often allows the mentor to learn from the team and feel a sense of pride from watching them grow. Wellness Water’s mentor, Dr. Syed Imran Ali, is a water and sanitation specialist with Médecins Sans Frontières and feels personally invested in his team’s project. With five years of experience as an environmental engineering researcher on safe water and public health in South India under his belt, Dr. Ali could advise the students of obstacles to anticipate, including cultural barriers.

“Because this project is in the stream of my PhD work, it almost felt like a vindication of everything that I’d learned,” confessed Dr. Ali. “I had made so many mistakes in my own PhD work, it was fulfilling, in a way, to advise these guys not to make those mistakes and fall into the same traps.”
Mentors are also an invaluable resource when it comes to networking and long term support. Mentor Kate Hamilton, communications director of Disability Rights Advocates, brought ten years of fundraising, outreach, community building and activism experience to her team, Heart Connection. Heart Connection is centered around a multimedia website representing the first generation of adults surviving complex congenital heart disease, creating a visual archive of the lived experiences of CHD survivors through artistic expression.

“From the first time we met her, Kate has been so encouraging. She listened to our stories and connected with us before helping us with our visions,” shared Kaitlin Kimmel, a member of Heart Connection and UC Berkeley senior in Interdisciplinary Studies. Hamilton and the members of Heart Connection share a passion for disability advocacy and plan to maintain their relationship even after the end of the contest.

“We’re supposed to be having a celebration dinner soon,” Kimmel laughed.

Big Ideas mentors help students with skill building, networking, and lasting relationships, all while getting to be a part of the next generation’s most creative social impact ideas. To learn more about the mentorship program and how you can get involved, visit http://bigideascontest.org/participate/mentors/.

The 2013-2014 Big Ideas@Berkeley competition launched in November 2013 when 187 teams representing 600 students from 75 majors submitted pre-proposals. After a preliminary review, 56 teams of finalists were invited to submit full proposals to compete in the final round. Finalists were paired with mentors and given two months to fine-tune their proposals. Congratulations to the 40 award winning projects listed below!
Categories

• “Scaling Up” Big Ideas
• Information Technology For Society
• Creative Expression for Social Justice
• Global Poverty Alleviation
• Improving Student Life
• Financial Capability
• Open Data
• Promoting Human Rights
• Clean & Sustainable Energy Alternatives

“Scaling Up” Big Ideas

Sponsor: The Blum Center for Developing Economies
Description of the Challenge: Prizes are awarded to student-led initiatives that have previously won the Big Ideas contest, and who have since generated excellent results that position them to make even greater progress.
Ekialo Kiona Youth Radio Initiative: (1st Place)
Team Members: Charles Salmen
EKR is Africa’s first wind- and solar-powered radio station, reaching 200,000 listeners across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania within the first year of broadcasting. In 2014-15, the second full year of station operations, EKR intends to “scale-up” the programming by integrating interactive radio technology, starting a Creative Expression for Youth Initiative and expanding community engagement efforts. By scaling the youth-led platform to engage more listeners into EKR’s programming, OHR intends to have significant impact in communities along the shores of Lake Victoria. Among EKR’s goals are: 1.Provide youth with a pathway to sustainable employment; 2. Expand ICT services for secondary school youth; 3. Create networking opportunities for young people to build mentorships with ICT experts; 4. Slow the degradation of traditional knowledge by using radio broadcast and social media create dialogue about the Suba culture; 5. Inspire excitement of technological literacy and its links to creative expression through broadcasting student-produced audio projects across Lake Victoria.
ReMaterials: (2nd Place)
Team Members: Pablo Rosado, Hasit Ganatra
With more than 1 billion people already living in slums worldwide, concerns for a safe and habitable shelter are growing rapidly. A good roofing system is essential for adequate shelter, but unfortunately it is highly neglected, largely owing to insufficient options in the market.
The team’s solution consists of two parts: (a) a unique material mix from recycled and natural materials; and (b) a self-developed manufacturing process to convert the mix to roofing panels. While these have been successfully developed at the prototype scale, the challenge lies in scaling up the manufacturing process while keeping the roof panels at low cost. To make the product available to families living in inadequate housing, the team needs to design a new method to streamline the manufacturing process and develop a marketing and sales strategy that will attract customers, investors and key partners.
Inserting Innovation into Vision: UC Vision Project in Cambodia: (3rd Place)
Team Members: Moon Parks, Silvina Bae
The project will deliver vision correction to the poor in Cambodia, using self-adjustable glasses that allow the user to self-diagnose their own prescription. Once individuals determine their own prescriptions, they will be able to choose from standardized eyeglasses that fit a range of prescriptions. This approach allows a reduction in the cost of vision correction in several ways: first, it bypasses the high cost of customized prescriptions by using self-adjustable eyeglasses to diagnose and standardized eyeglasses to wear. Second, standardized eyeglasses allow customers to exchange or return the eyeglasses if they are not satisfied, which is impossible with customized eyeglasses. Third, by applying self-refraction technology and standardized eyeglasses for vision correction, an affordable eyeglasses supply chain can be established with the end price to the consumer being as low as $2.50 USD. Finally, since the process itself of self-diagnosis allows people to experience better vision first-hand even before purchasing, the self-refraction approach can increase their willingness to pay for vision correction compared to the conventional approaches, which merely allow for the optometrist to diagnose without the patient actually experiencing better vision.
The Pachamama Project: (3rd Place)
Team Members: Rebecca Peters
The lack of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programs that take into account menstrual hygiene and management (MHM) creates asymmetrical negative impacts on women and girls. The Pachamama Project is the first MHM initiative of its kind in Mexico and Bolivia and builds on the successes and challenges encountered during its initial fieldwork and on previous health focused research efforts on MHM. MHM will not become a priority for gender, water, and rights concerns unless researchers and practitioners make deliberate efforts to mainstream MHM into human rights and WASH based initiatives. By framing MHM as a human rights issue, the Pachamama Project taps into larger discourses of justice and gender equality instead of sidelining MHM from the global water, sanitation, and hygiene development agenda. By fostering community discussion, education, and participation in MHM activities, the Pachamama Project will enable structural change on the communities’ terms, while broadening understandings of the human rights connection to water, sanitation, and gender equity.
Near Zero: Mechanical Flywheel Battery: (Honorary Mention)
Team Members: Andrew Sabelhaus, Sina Akhbari, Eduardo Wiputra
The Near Zero flywheel battery consists of a magnetically-levitated flywheel, combined with a motor, that can store and output energy like a traditional electrochemical cell. However, this design has almost no frictional losses, uses very little power in the magnetic levitation of the flywheel, and combined with high efficiency electronics, drastically outperforms chemical batteries in many ways. This flywheel battery is envisioned to replace inefficient and environmentally unsound use of “peaker plants” – power plants that only run when there is high demand for electricity.

Information Technology for Society

Sponsor: The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS)
Description of the Challenge: The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) is interested in stimulating new thinking on a broad range of social benefits of information technology in areas such as: energy and the environment, health, education and life-long learning, democratic governance, response to natural and man-made disasters, transportation, delivery of government services, quality of life for people with disabilities, economic opportunity for low-income communities, arts and culture, and the effectiveness of non-profit organizations. The challenge of this contest is to describe a multidisciplinary research project that demonstrates the capacity of IT to help address a major societal challenge.
Glucose ENOSE: (1st Place)
Team Members: Patrick Lyon, Benson Fan, Yayun Chen, Ray Chiu
In 2011, the CDC reported diabetes afflicted 25.8 million people in the United States. This disease can be controlled by strict blood serum glucose level monitoring, but the gold standard fingerstick test is painful and must be done multiple times every day. The team is developing a colorimetric sensor that could provide an inexpensive, non-invasive test for determining the level of glucose in the patient’s blood, providing a painless alternative to the fingerstick testing method. By developing a novel phage matrix material and smartphone sensor analyzer, the team hopes to create a non-invasive point-of-care sensor that can identify the concentration of these compounds on the patient’s breath and accurately report the patient’s blood glucose levels.
Dropsense: (2nd Place)
Team Members: Jeremy Fiance, Steve Yadlowsky, Vikram Iyer
Dropsense is developing a convenient, affordable hypoglycemia alert system to help diabetics better monitor their glucose levels. The technology comprises a sensor patch, mobile application, and machine learning analytics platform. The non-invasive Dropsense sensor sends data wirelessly to a smartphone, where a mobile app continuously processes the data with the machine learning algorithm to accurately identify hypoglycemic events. The app alerts users with an alarm or emergency phone call upon detecting low glucose levels so it can be treated before it becomes dangerous.
Remote Cleft Therapy for Young Children through a Mobile Game: (2nd Place)
Team Members: Zak Rubin
Speech therapy is not fun for children. It consists of frequent doctor visits and boring repetitive homework. Outside of the office, the therapist has no idea if the child performs the exercises correctly or at all. Modern speech recognition is capable of accurately detecting speech impediments, and the speed of current mobile devices makes it possible to use this in a game that reacts and responds to speech in real time. A tool like this on a mobile device will motivate children to practice their therapy exercises while also providing critical feedback and information to the therapist about how the child progresses outside of the office. This tool enables speech therapists to continue aiding children remotely, providing better care and enabling organizations to make an even bigger impact in a child’s life.
Sahay: (3rd Place)
Team Members: Priya Iyer, Seema Puthyapurayil, Eric Zan, Timothy Meyers, Ajeeta Dhole
Sahay is an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) platform connecting workers in the household informal sector (e.g. domestic help, cooks, drivers, security guards, etc.) in India with employment opportunities. Using the web page, Short Message Service (SMS) system, or Interactive Voice Response (IVR) interface, rural and migrant workers can search for jobs posted on Sahay’s platform by urban households. The solution will allow workers to search for jobs beyond their geographically restricted network. The platform will support technically literate job posters through a web interface, and will support workers in the informal sector through a mobile interface and IVR system.
Aeolus: Detecting Narcotics-Induced Respiratory Depression: (Honorable Mention)
Team Members: Vinayak Viswanadham, Brian Dick, Yumi Suh, Adrian Tabula
In order to sleep comfortably while recovering from surgery, hospital patients are often given narcotics for pain relief. However, this can cause respiratory depression, where the patients’ ability to breathe is hindered. This can lead to apnea (blockage of airways), respiratory and cardiac arrest, and death. Current approaches to early detection of NIRD chiefly involve detecting the blood saturation of oxygen and carbon dioxide. These strategies, however, provide imprecise information on patient respiration and often run into logistical difficulties. This project uses a detection system that employs visual, infrared, and ultrasonic surveillance of patient breathing, bodily changes, and positioning within the room. Software will also be built to integrate multiple sensory channels to construct a holistic portrait of patient respiratory status and NIRD risk levels over an extended period of time. This solution will hopefully change how medical staff intervene in cases of NIRD and also shift the paradigm of monitoring unpredictable and lethal postoperative situations.
Sign UP: (Honorable Mention)
Team Members: Thibault Duchemin, Achal Pandey, Pieter Doevendans, Justin Harnoss
Today, a deaf person cannot reliably connect with 99% of the people around him or her. The few interactions between deaf and hearing people are usually limited by the difficulty for the deaf person to understand the hearing person and to talk in an intelligible way. Sign UP wants to break this barrier of communication that stands between deaf people and the rest of the world. Sign language is the natural way of communication for most deaf people and a fundamental part of their culture. The solution is two smart gloves that will translate Sign Language in real time and enable deaf people to interact freely and seamlessly with the rest of the world. The S-Gloves will also provide speech-to-text support to facilitate a proper conversation.

Creative Expression for Social Justice

Sponsors: Committee on Student Fees; The Arts Research Center; The Townsend Center for the Humanities
Description of the Challenge: The Arts and Humanities provide many meaningful ways to draw attention and contribute to discourse, advocacy, and positive action related to poverty and inequality. The Creative Expression for Social Justice category invited proposals related to creating art, music, photography, written and spoken word, film, dance, new media, other forms of expression, or activities to facilitate such expression to address issues of poverty alleviation and social justice.
Heart Connection: An Interactive Multimedia Website for Adults with Complex Congenital Heart Disease to Empower, Connect, Advocate & Educate: (1st Place)
Team Member: Kaitlin Kimmel
In the 1980s, newborns with complex congenital heart disease (CCHD) began to survive past one year for the first time due to advances in cardiothoracic surgery and cardiovascular medicine. “Heart Connection” will be a website exploring what survivors of this condition experience daily, leaving evidence of how CCHD adults have been forced to reinvent and reimagine new ways of navigating the world with their tired bodies and busy minds, while creating meaning in their lives for the generations succeeding them. The project envisions three main pages. One page is for the artwork of adults with CCHD documenting their lives through audio, video, creative writing and photography. A second page is committed to inspiring and bringing hope to parents who have children with CCHD. A third page is dedicated for resources needed by CCHD adults and children to live meaningful and productive lives.
Addressing the Empathy Blind Spot of the Cal Community: (2nd Place)
Team Members: Esther Chung, Justin Kong, Emily Truax, Taryn Erhadt, James Huynh
Using a three-pronged approach, the project will address UC Berkeley’s empathy blind spot on homelessness by connecting the stories and voices of those who identify with homelessness and poverty and the experiences of the student community with these populations. The first prong, the visual campaign, will include posters displayed on campus about homeless and low-income individual’s stories and perceptions. The second prong, the visual project, will include a film depicting homeless and low-income individuals’ journeys as well as students’ experiences working and interacting with these underserved communities. Finally, the third prong, the education series, will include a sequence of seminars on these issues and a working partnership with varying student organizations on framing and speaking about these issues.
Documentary Movie about Adopted Kids: (3rd Place)
Team Member: Irina Lozhkina
The project strives to establish a communication between the United States and Russia that will discuss issues through authentic and open dialogue using social media. As a first step, the team will make a movie showing how Russian adopted kids have been raised in America. It will be a way to demonstrate that a recent politically-motivated ban of adoptions in Russia by American citizens hurts thousands of innocent kids.

Global Poverty Alleviation

Sponsor: United States Agency for International Development (USAID) The Blum Center for Developing Economics
Description of the Challenge: USAID and the Blum Center for Developing Economies support innovative approaches to poverty alleviation. Through its commitment to multi-disciplinary research and teaching, and emphasis on novel technologies and approaches, the Blum Center fosters student projects that tie UC Berkeley expertise to real-world problems. For this category, describe an action-oriented, inter-disciplinary project that would help alleviate poverty.
ElectroSan: Recovering Nitrogen from Urine in Nairobi, Kenya: (1st Place)
Team Members: William Tarpeh
4.6 billion people across the developing world lack adequate treatment of their feces and urine. ElectroSan will apply electrochemical cells that recover nitrogen from human urine. This product will be used to disinfect human feces and produce income as a fertilizer, making sanitation affordable in low-income communities like Mukuru, an urban Nairobi slum. This intervention can catalytically improve public health and environmental quality by treating and creating value-added products from waste.
Promoting Yogurt to Improve Child Nutrition in Far-Western Nepal: (2nd Place)
Team Members: Wenjuan Chen, Stacy McCoy, Sruthi Narayanan, Damarius Fleming
The causes of child stunting, a nutritional status indicator defined as poor height for weight, include inadequate caloric intake, low protein consumption (particularly of animal source protein), frequent diarrheal illness, and poor nutrient absorption in the gut due to chronic latent infection. Probiotic supplements, paired with an adequate diet, are a promising strategy for addressing child stunting. This project aims to promote the feeding of safely prepared yogurt to children between 6 months and 5 years of age in households throughout Bajura. Local women’s expertise in dahi production and child feeding will determine the best methods of efficiently and safely producing high quality yogurt, and prepare it with locally available fruits so that children enjoy the taste. These “best practices” will then be disseminated throughout the district at the monthly mother’s group meetings.
Spot-It!: (2nd Place)
Team Members: Shreya Condamoor, Annsea Park, Geunwon Jung
Anti-malarial pills are among the most highly counterfeited drugs in Africa. Malaria kills between 1 and 3 million people every year, with 90% of those deaths in Africa. This reduces productivity in Africa by $12 billion and devastates local economies. The project aims to identify counterfeit anti-malarial drugs by developing a new technique to detect the concentration of artemisinin (the active ingredient) in these pills. Due to the prevalence of counterfeit drugs that have minimal amounts of this active ingredient, identifying its concentration in a pill has become important. The innovative aspect of this technique Spot-It!, is that it achieves the challenging task of measuring the concentration of active ingredient by combining two elementary methods, Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) and a simple chemical reaction.
Mosquitoes Suck! Malarial Hotspots and the Opportunity for LAMP to Identify Asymptomatic Patients: (3rd Place)
Team Members: Laila Soudi, Carmen Conroy, Justin Abraham, Priyanka Athavale, Oscar Vazquez, Neve Keshav, Shannon Younessi, Anshal Gupta
The eradication of malaria is hampered by the ability of current diagnostic tools to detect very low density infections in asymptomatic patients. In response to this, the aim is to employ loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), an innovative and novel technique to test for asymptomatic malaria. This low-cost technique is faster and more accurate compared to currently employed diagnostic tests. In Kenya, the aim is to (1) conduct a hotspot identification campaign using LAMP techniques to detect the malaria parasite, and (2) build capacity to ensure sustainability and local participation in the hotspot identification campaign. Results of this hotspot identification campaign will become an essential tool in future anti-malaria interventions.
Uniting Mother and Child: A Battle Against Postpartum Hemorrhage: (3rd Place)
Team Members: Sandeep Prabhu
In developing countries, maternal mortality rates are shockingly high in comparison to the rates in developed countries. The most common cause of maternal mortality is postpartum hemorrhage (PPH). This devastating condition is easily treated in the developed world, where mortality rates due to PPH are close to nil. In the developing world, however, these treatments may take too much time and/or money to obtain or may require skilled workers to perform. Thus, women with PPH are instead treated with an anti-shock garment. This garment applies pressure to the suffering women in order to combat the effects of PPH, yet it has no pressure detecting or reporting capabilities. The project aims to reduce the overwhelming rates of maternal mortality associated with PPH in developing countries by creating a pressure detecting and reporting device, specific to the anti-shock garment.
AgroMarketDay: (Honorary Mention)
Team Members: Lisa Katusiime, Isaac Omiat
The increasing ubiquity of mobiles in Uganda presents both opportunities and challenges, especially for critical sectors such as agriculture. In their various designs and capabilities, mobile phones can be found in the pockets of the wealthy and poor alike. Even in rural areas of Uganda, mobiles are growing in number and sophistication. The increase in mobile phone use should make developing a market for agricultural products easier, but in many districts farmers lack access to potential customers. AgroMarketDay, a mobile application, will share farmers’ information with potential customers so that they are be able to check out market days in the different districts and which products will be sold in the different markets.
PowerTower: Empowering Global Communities: (Honorary Mention)
Team Members: Jacqueline Nguyen
PowerTower is an all-in-one compact energy harvesting unit that will provide communities around the world with pasteurized water, electricity for small devices, and instant flowing hot water. Much of the third world is currently living without many of the necessities taken for granted such as running hot water, electricity, or safe water. PowerTower will allow people living in rural communities to do things as crucial as charge cell phones and have clean water. The technology will be delivered through a cross subsidization model based on a domestically profitable product using the same technology called the PowerShower. This technology is inexpensive, not susceptible to weather conditions, and makes use of an energy source already widely utilized in the third world.

Improving Student Life

Sponsors: Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC)
Description of the Challenge: UC Berkeley is a rich and diverse milieu of student life and initiative. Proposals for this competition focused on new policy programs, initiatives or services that are aligned with the strategic priorities in the Division of Student Affairs: access, service, and engagement. Proposals included implementation plans that, among other things, outlined the specific roles of individual and/or groups of students, staff, faculty, and external collaborators in executing the idea.
LuxWalk: (1st Place)
Team Members: Jennifer Fei, Corbin Halliwill
The three main functions of the LuxWalk application are as follows. First, students can input their origin and destination on an app built into the application to find the safest route to walk, produced through an analysis of past crime data and the degree of street lighting. Second, students can also track the Night Safety shuttle and campus-funded Community Service Officers through the BearWalk program to gain estimates on when and where they can plan to dispatch a shuttle or officer. Third, students can connect to the application through their Facebook accounts, to see which friends are checked in at their location and are walking to the same geographical area. Ultimately, LuxWalk serves to connect students with information about Berkeley neighborhoods, campus-facilitated night safety programs, and fellow students in their community who can facilitate safety in numbers while traveling at night.
CloudCreations: (2nd Place)
Team Members: Adam Eastman, Andrew Kooker, Kaavya Reddy
CloudCreations will be the platform through which innovative and effective educational tools can work together simultaneously and seamlessly. This platform is for students to collaborate, create, and compete. The collaboration will occur inside and outside the classroom and will be customized for students depending on whether or not they are in class and what they are specifically collaborating on with their friends and classmates. The creation will occur mostly outside the classroom where students will be able to vote on the most useful resources submitted by students. The platform will allow students to create videos, infographics, example problems, helpful scenarios, problem solution walkthroughs, etc.
Berkcycle: (3rd Place)
Team Members: Hunjoo Kim, Hyun-Ho Jung, Woo Yong Choi
The Berkcycle system will consist of bicycles and bicycle racks that will be designed and manufactured by the Berkcycle team to fit the need of the students of University of California, Berkeley campus. The bicycle will have one-size-fits-all design that will allow all students to comfortably ride the bicycle anywhere on campus. It will also be fitted with an electric generator and lithium polymer battery so that bicycle can produce electricity, which will be used by the bicycle and the rack as their only energy source, making the system completely self-sustainable in terms of energy. It will be a “smart” rack that will be operated by microprocessors to make renting out and returning bicycle as simple as scanning Cal ID. Combining all these components together, the Berkcycle will be the ideal bike rental system for Cal students, addressing most of the problems that currently exist in using bicycle as transportation today.
Project-Based Learning: (Honorary Mention)
Team Members: Robert Chen, Michael Fuerte, Animesh Mehrota-Hajela, William Juang, Helen Park, Zach Zeleznick, Matt Zhang
Berkeley Engineers and Mentors (BEAM) is planning a program to develop, test, and implement project-based learning (PBL) curriculum in local schools. PBL is a nation-wide educational movement that aims to expose students to real-world challenges while emphasizing teamwork, communication of ideas, self-discovery, student-initiated learning, and creative approaches to problems. BEAM wants to join this movement by first pioneering a classroom curriculum model for PBL teaching that BEAM can implement in its own sites and then ultimately compile into an easily-utilized “BEAM Box” for broader use.
The Phoenix Scholars: (Honorary Mention)
Team Members: Aiden Nguyen, Kelly Yu, Daniel Dinh, Sean Sun, Leanza Tupfer, Bryan Lao
Due to state budget cuts, many California public high schools have cut their college counseling programs. As a result, many high school students have limited access to information regarding college admissions. This is most prevalent in underserved and impoverished areas of the state. There are many bright and talented students who are capable of succeeding at top universities but lack information and guidance. The Phoenix Scholars aims to fill that gap. The program will provide one-on-one mentorship between UC Berkeley students and high school seniors throughout the State of California to provide them with personalized help. Aside from guidance over college admissions and scholarship applications, The Phoenix Scholars will strive to provide a constant source of support for mentees through the whirlwind that is the college application process.

Financial Capability

Sponsors: The Charles Schwab Foundation; The Haas School of Business; The Blum Center for Developing Economies
Description of Challenge: Projects should seek to help ensure young adults, particularly those from low-income communities, have access to the tools, education, and resources necessary to manage money with confidence. Proposals submitted to this category should a) demonstrate an understanding of financial challenges faced by students and/or low-income populations, and b) develop a system, plan, or technology that allows individuals to effectively take control of their financial futures.
The Employment and Life Skills Academic Competition: (1st Place)
Team Members: Michael Signorotti
The Employment and Life Skills Academic Competition is a program that teaches teenagers resume writing, job interview and oral presentation skills, and financial literacy. The objective is to prepare high school students for life after graduation by not only making them competitive for the workforce but also teaching them information about managing their finances. The student participants prepare for the Academic Competition through an enriching afterschool program. A Resource Guide, which serves as an outline of the various skills and financial concepts to be mastered, is then distributed to all student participants. The Academic Competition includes four categories in which students will be evaluated as individuals or part of their high school team. The categories include an oral presentation, a mock job interview, a written essay focusing on financial literacy, and an objective section where the high school teams compete to answer financial-based questions in a game-show format.
InversionParaTodos.com.ar: (2nd Place)
Team Members: Luciano Colos, Alejandro Castillejo
InversionParaTodos.com.ar is a web based educational platform that will provide a set of tools that help individuals to manage debt, savings, public benefits, investments and other money related issues more effectively. The platform will target four million individuals from Argentina, between the ages of 20 and 40, who come from a low and middle class background, and who have access to the internet. These educational resources will take a holistic approach, including interactive graphs, tables, video lessons, and even live lessons with an instructor via the Skype API. The easy to use interactive platform will allow users to discover how inflation affects their personal assets and exposes them to liabilities. The main tool will allow users to enter their financial information, overlay different projections, and recommend an adequate course of action. The overall goal is to help people improve their personal finance knowledge and protect their savings against inflation. As a result, they will improve their economic status in the long term.

Open Data

Sponsors: USAID; AidData The Data and Democracy Initiative
Description of the Challenge: This category challenges students to develop a plan that leverages publicly available datasets to innovate solutions and address important social challenges. Projects may focus on several areas, including but not limited to mapping visualizations, transparency and accountability feedback loops, crowd-sourcing tools, monitoring and evaluation applications and spatial analysis. Strong consideration will be given to projects that can demonstrate broad impact, sustainability, and scalability to different countries or underserved areas.
Mapping Waterways: (1st Place)
Team Members: Rachel Gottfried, Winston Huang, Gabriel Schwartzman
Mapping Waterways will create a participatory mapping system that involves all aspects of the mapping process: from data collection, to map input, to visualization and organization. The mapping project will incorporate government and community-collected data to bridge current water mapping endeavors. This meets the need to integrate data analysis with community participation and improves access to water-quality information, which communities can then use for political projects. The project will require a collaborative process to implement participatory mapping, and to generate the necessary data to launch the online organizational interface. The team will visit three communities in the summer of 2014 to train and pilot the community data collection process. The data will then be uploaded to a web interface to add local context and community control to the mapping process. This will provide community groups with information on water quality and its impact on local areas that otherwise might require funding for specialists. This web interface stands to save groups in underserved areas funding and time in their efforts secure water rights.
Open Data for Developing Communities: (2nd Place)
Team Members: Carleigh Snead, Anson Rosenthal, Sara Rock
The project’s goal is to create a collaborative platform to promote open data literacy. This platform will provide a curriculum that is focused on making open data more accessible and usable to students, policymakers, civil society organizations, journalists, and researchers. The team will distribute these materials to a network of partners who already have boots on the ground, who can teach the material while also implementing their own mapping projects, and who have a focus on development and developing countries. In addition, the curriculum will be hosted on an interactive online platform offering content, data, tools, and learning materials for public access. A goal of the project is to increase the availability of this data on mobile devices, since their far exceeds that of personal computers in developing countries.
Transparent Living: Using Data to Bring Transparency to the Competitive Housing Market: (2nd Place)
Team Members: Anil Jindia, Vanessa Cordero
The goal is to build an intuitive website that will use public and crowd sourced data to depict the real willingness to pay for housing by city/street/zip and in real time. The system will allow property owners to electronically collect short profiles of prospective renters, including their monthly income, credit score, references and willingness to pay. Once a property owner has accepted a submission, the remaining submissions would receive a summarized feedback loop of how their submission varied and an eventual recommendation of where to focus their search based on overall area trends.
Sight 4 Everyone (e-Liiso): (3rd Place)
Team Members: Rurangwa Moses, Kirigwajjo Anatoli, Kiruyi Edward
Doctors and optometrists using e-liiso will be able to check patients’ abilities by just taking a flash picture from a phone camera to see color, test for long and short-sightedness, and also detect the presence of cataracts and other eye conditions. The app uses smartphones’ cameras, flashlights and display to check how the eyes react to stimuli, while doctors can also track the progress of individual patients and easily keep a record of their geo-location.

Promoting Human Rights

Sponsors: USAID; The Blum Center for Developing Economies; The Human Rights Center;
Description of the Challenge: The challenge for this competition is to develop a proposal that will, in some way, combat the causes or consequences of corruption and thus directly or indirectly foster the rule of law. Alternately, a proposal might focus more generally on preserving or promoting the protection of individuals’ essential human rights. Examples of some focus areas could include, but are not limited to: issues such as genocide or mass atrocities including physical and mental cruelty, corruption, gender inequality, slavery and trafficking, political oppression, civil rights abuses, or forcible relocations.
Youth Empowerment Centers for Marginalized Mexican Communities: (1st Place)
Team Members: Cristian De Leon, Jose Flores, Sergio Garcia
The Adelante youth empowerment center will work with at-risk teens from Mexico who are academically demotivated or who have few resources available to them. It will motivate and empower them, supporting young professionals to be agents of change in their communities. The summer program centers will provide teens and communities with a safe haven dedicated to the professional advancement of youth and the development of Mexican communities. The franchise method of providing these centers throughout Mexico will identify local community youth and Mexican college students to lead the center in subsequent years, while the work on the expansion of Adelante youth centers across Mexico continues.
Maji Yaja Kwanza: (2nd Place)
Team Members: Ashley Miller, Rebecca “Becky” Mashaido
Vision 2030 is Kenya’s national planning strategy for “becoming a middle-income country by 2030.” Despite economic advancements, roughly 17 million of Kenya’s 41 million people lack sufficient access to safe drinking water, and 28 million are without adequate sanitation. Maji Huja Kwanza (Water Comes First in Kiswahili) aims to bring lasting inclusiveness, representation, and opportunity to the people of the coastal province of Kenya. The project aims to bring piped water and sewage access to public primary schools in the coast, beginning in Kaloleni with Kizurini Primary and Twinkle Star Primary, serving roughly 1000 children. The goal is to improve WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) practices in the coast and enable children, particularly girls, to participate in school successfully and to avoid unnecessary illness such as cholera and typhoid. Long-term plans include a technical training program for plumbing and maintenance skills, and expansion to serve orphans’ homes, adult schools, and private homes. This will contribute to sustainable growth and the livelihood of this region.
Reach! Leadership Camp for Tibetan Girls: (2nd Place)
Team Members: Krista Chan
Reach! is a summer leadership camp for Tibetan teenage girls to empower them to become the first female graduates of high school and college in their communities. The plan is to train top Chinese university students to serve as camp counselors for teenage girls from the Tibetan plateau. In the process, they will gain exposure to Tibetan cultural education in order to bridge the deeply polarized Han Chinese and Tibetan communities. This also establishes a valuable network of leaders for Tibetan girls to have access to in the process of pursuing their education.
The Recreation House: (3rd Place)
Team Members: Elena van den Berg, David Lee
The Recreation House will be a center for the development of teenagers and orphans in Vidin, Bulgaria. Located in an accessible location near the center of the city, a previously identified facility will be developed as multi-recreational and educational facility open to teenagers throughout the city, providing them with an environment where they have a chance to pursue their dreams and be encouraged in the process. The second aspect of the Recreation House fills a different need in the community. While the teenagers are at school during the day, the plan is to bring in children from the local orphanage and provide them a place 5 days a week where they can work on their developmental skills. Those skills include playing, reading, and writing, so that by the time they are moved on to the next facility at the age of eight, they will have the basic skills everyone should have a right to.
East Bay Youth Against Trafficking: (Honorable Mention)
Team Members: Katharine Hinman, Sarah Singh, Chloe Gregori, Joshua Ho, Karem Hererra
The Berkeley Anti-Trafficking Coalition (BATC) will expand upon Not For Sale’s (NFS) education outreach program. NFS visits local high schools to give educational presentations about human trafficking, in which they challenge students to use their own skills and passions to take action in the anti-trafficking movement. The presentation includes videos, information on sex and labor trafficking, stories of survivors in the Bay Area, and examples of local action being done to combat human trafficking. BATC seeks to revamp the curriculum, increase the number of classrooms visited, build a larger team of Berkeley students through a formalized training program, and provide the necessary resources and assistance for students to start their own BATC high school chapters. A strong student network for the abolitionist cause, with the BATC as a resource for high school students, will inspire future leaders in the anti-trafficking movement.

Clean & Sustainable Energy Alternatives

Sponsors: The Blum Center for Developing Economies; Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research
Description of the Challenge: The aim of this category is to encourage the adoption of clean energy alternatives that are sustainable and have the potential for broad impact. Proposals may focus on the design, development, or delivery of sustainable energy solutions and can be domestic or international in scope. However, all proposals should clearly demonstrate the relationship between the proposed intervention and its impact on the environment.
Solidge: An off-grid, solar-powered refrigerator: (1st Place)
Team Members: Rami Ariss, Othmane Benkirane
In developing countries, electricity is often a luxury. People living in off-grid communities are not able to have a refrigerator, even though it is often the appliance they want the most. By integrating energy generation, storage and use into the same appliance, Solidge, an off-grid, solar-powered refrigeration system, solves grid unreliability by simply not using the grid. Solidge users can safely store food, unsold crops and vaccines for longer periods of time. Solidge will directly increase off-grid communities’ health and overall lifestyle by providing them with an affordable refrigerator. Solidge will first deploy in Morocco, taking advantage of the region’s sun and accessibility, as well as gather user feedback and refine Solidge’s design. However, Solidge has a broader mission. Designed from the ground up to become a globally deployable unit, Solidge will provide off-grid refrigeration for developing and developed countries alike.
Graphene Supercapacitor: Graphene based energy storage solution: (2nd Place)
Team Members: Henry Chen, Louis Kang, Jian Zhao
Traditional lithium-ion batteries are produced at an increasing rate and each year at the end of their lives, they introduce over a hundred million pounds of chemical waste into the environment. The project’s main objectives are to develop a supercapacitor that serves as an energy storage alternative to traditional mobile device batteries and to create a paradigm shift in how people understand energy storage. The project aims to engineer an energy storage alternative that can be manufactured with little to no impact on the environment, produce a nominal amount of chemical waste, be fully charged in seconds and supply power for long periods of time.
The Food Bikery: (3rd Place)
Team Members: John Romankiewicz, Jason Trager, Laura Moreno, Pierce Gordon
The Food Bikery seeks to prove that food bikes are an economically viable, safe, and legal alternative to food trucks. In transitioning mobile food off of trucks and onto bicycles, the Food Bikery will: 1. Lower oil consumption; 2. Stimulate economic opportunities for low-income food entrepreneurs; 3. Increase physical well-being and health; 4. Foster awareness about the power of bicycles. The Food Bikery will harness the positive aspects that food trucks foster (economic opportunity, bringing fresh food into “food deserts” and community space), while minimizing their harmful environmental impacts. A prototype will be built of a scalable, turn-key food bike that can be used as a model to boost small business ownership among aspiring, environmentally conscious entrepreneurs, while shifting the current mobile food-business portfolio towards a low-carbon model.