PT-E generator proposes to build a device that can harness the energy generated by the impact of moving vehicles onto highway and city road surfaces. This energy is then converted into electricity that can be stored in batteries or uploaded into the electric grids to power residential and public facilities. The device uses the same mechanism of an automatic watch to store and release the mechanical energy collected from vehicles. This project may help solve the ever-increasing energy demands while reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and cutting back the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere that cause global warming.
This project seeks to provide a feasible and sustainable solution for growing energy demand in Africa. Its core innovation is in the village-scale solar power system that is currently being prototyped at UC Berkeley. One team member’s extensive contacts in renewable energy organizations in Ghana gives this team a platform and local access to start implementing pilot systems. Ghana’s growth rates for energy need, population, and development approximate Sub-Saharan Africa’s on a whole, and therefore can be used as a suitable benchmark for testing. This team utilizes an array of inexpensive solar panels to provide remote generation. A predictive back-end will provide energy generation forecasts up to three-days ahead, and will convey expected generation shortfalls through SMS to end-users. Electricity sales will be on-demand and sold via mobile credits, expecting to generate USD $50 per month for a 2kw system.
Many science students at UC Berkeley view science as a tool that allows them to advance the frontiers of human knowledge and have a positive impact on society. For many students, the gap between their work and its real impact on society makes it difficult to believe that their work is relevant, leading to a loss of motivation and ultimately to high attrition of these talented individuals from science-related degrees and careers. This attrition and disconnection is at odds with an increasing need for access to scientific knowledge and research in many communities. Science and technology are fundamental to problem solving, and access to science and research often dictates who has a voice in policy and societal decision-making processes. This big idea is to translate community research questions into projects that undergraduate and graduates can carry out. By facilitating and fostering the relationship between community non-profits or small businesses and students’ research in the Bay Area, which has a distinctive landscape of non-profit organizations in diverse fields, business startups and progressive local governments, Science Shop will spark distinct solutions for social and environmental problems.
Six years ago, as a junior at UC San Diego, Michael Bakal received a student grant to coordinate a health fair in the indigenous community of Rabinal, Guatemala. Since then, Michael has returned to Rabinal 10 times and formed a non-profit organization. Named Voces y Manos, his nonprofit originally sought to improve health through direct provision of medical care. However, feedback from the community enlightened him to the reality that this was just a band-aid solution to a much deeper problem: the community’s lack of control over its own health. This project seeks to address this issue by empowering a group of indigenous teenagers to form their own Youth Leadership Association to design and implement innovative solutions to the community’s most pressing health problems. After receiving extensive training, the Youth Leadership Association will be given total control over a $4,000 budget, which they will have one year to allocate toward developing innovative solutions to the community’s most critical challenges. This will not only incubate sustainable solutions to local health challenges, it will also prepare the next generation of indigenous youth to assume leadership in addressing the most pressing challenges facing their communities.
To survive, California’s National Parks must become relevant to people of diverse cultural backgrounds. But even as California’s population continues to diversify, people of culturally diverse backgrounds have been less likely to use National Parks and other public lands than others. If the percentage of African Americans and Hispanics who visit, volunteer, donate and lobby for parks does not increase, California’s parks could face substantial gaps in funding and support as its population becomes more diverse. Drawing on ten years of research describing what brings underserved populations into parks, this team proposes implementing ParkExperienceMap, an online participatory mapping system for creating custom visitor and staff-authored park maps, to be distributed both online and in print. ParkExperienceMap will harness crowd-sourcing and paper-based interfaces to provide park maps to underserved populations while simultaneously gathering their thoughts on the park experience. Working with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, they will build and test whether this application can encourage visits by under-served minority groups.
The Pachamama Project strives to eradicate taboos and stigmas associated with menstruation and improve the human right to clean water and education in Bolivia. The goal of the project is to develop and disseminate information regarding menstrual hygiene management (MHM) in underserved peri-urban indigenous and migrant communities in Cochabamba, Bolivia. By fostering community and school level participation in discussions and education about water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH), and MHM, the Pachamama Project seeks to broaden understandings of the human right to water, gender equality, and basic human rights. This project, in collaboration with the NGO, Water for People, will collect information in areas overlooked by the government, facilitate community organizing, lead education initiatives, and involve local stakeholders in project decision making. By framing MHM as a human rights issue, it can tap into larger discourses of justice, equity, and gender equality instead of remaining a taboo subject with complex stigmas assigned to it.
Flowbit will build a low-cost, flexible system that is capable of providing the following services to developing world projects: remote monitoring, remote control, and accessible data storage. Flowbit will improve the scalability of existing developing world projects while improving transparency and service to the people who depend on them.
Cashify seeks to innovate what financial literacy means for over 65 million young adults. Cashify provides a sustainable business model for an engaging social platform and a series of exclusive events that empowers students with the financial knowledge and long-term access to relevant resources necessary to make informed financial decisions.
Emmunify enables patients in the most underserved regions of developing countries to easily keep an electronic copy of their vaccination record on their cell phone. Emmunify’s electronic record allows health workers to easily identify patients, track their vaccination status, and administer the right vaccine at the right time.
