Acarí takes the hated and feared invasive armored catfish or ‘devil fish’ as it is colloquially known in Mexico and transforms it into tasty, nutritious food products to increase employment in rural fishing communities and provide a healthy, sustainable alternative to beef jerky. To Acarí, the devil fish is much more than an invasive ‘trash fish’; it is an opportunity to improve the livelihoods of marginalized fishermen across Mexico. Though the devil fish has perplexed politicians and development professionals for nearly two decades, Acarí considers it to be a marketing problem first and foremost and has begun to develop the sales channels and supply chain to effectively transform the devil fish from plague to a protein-packed snack that makes their customers say, “Quiero más.”
Awards: 3rd Place
Scaling Dost Education
Dost Education empowers parents of any literacy level in India to get their 3-5 year old kids ready for school. By simply dialing a number, parents join Dost’s program and receive daily, 2-minute podcasts on their phone about topics like numeracy, language and socio-emotional well-being. Typically, Dost customers are mothers who are motivated to get their kids the best education but have minimal education experiences themselves. They love Dost because the podcasts are entertaining, actionable, and integrated into their daily routine. Voice calls are a powerful way to reach the estimated 35 million illiterate mothers in urban India who now have access to a mobile phone.
SAFR: Scalable and Affordable Fluoride Removal
Globally, 200 million people are at risk of irreversible, crippling deformities by drinking groundwater contaminated with fluoride levels exceeding the WHO limit (1.5mg F-/L). Although many defluoridation technologies have proven to be effective in labs, most have not scaled sustainably in remote rural regions of the developing world. We propose to implement and scale up our bauxite-based Scalable and Affordable Fluoride Removal (SAFR) process in India, through our recently created nonprofit social enterprise (Global Water Labs). Rigorous lab testing has shown that our SAFR process has the potential to be (a) locally available/affordable, (b) highly effective at remediating a wide range of fluoride concentrations, (c) culturally appropriate, (d) technically feasible and robust in a rural setting, and (e) operated and maintained with minimal labor. We need additional funding to further test our SAFR process in the field setting, which will allow us to iterate our technology and business model prototypes.
Paladin Drones
We live in an era of technological opportunity, where information sharing and exchange is at the forefront of technological innovation, and the pace at which it can be distributed is aggressively evolving. But this technology hasn’t been utilized to solve widespread public safety problems, like household fires, despite having simple applications to it. In Berkeley and similar cities, firefighter response time is a brisk 3-7 minutes, but unknown traffic and fire scene conditions can add up to 5 minutes before fire fighting begins. Paladin Drones, a Berkeley-based drone startup, aims to eliminate this uncertainty and further decrease response times. Paladin’s drones autonomously rush to a fire scene well before first-responders, analyze hotspots and traffic conditions using a thermal camera, and relay the stream to units through a webapp. With access to this stream on their firetruck laptops while en route, firefighters can start firefighting immediately upon arrival, dramatically decreasing response times.
Information for Action
Information for Action (IFA) is dedicated to social change powered by citizens and technology. IFA deploys user-centered design strategy and believes communities should determine features and technology solutions. After months of gathering community feedback, IFA is launching the first-ever browser extension and web application to link news to action. When a natural disaster strikes and you read about it online you will be able to click the IFA icon and immediately sign up to hand out meals to victims, distribute supplies, and help people find shelter. Community organizations can post actions to advocate for their work, then see views, clicks, and RSVPs of their posts through a personalized account integrated with other social media platforms. These organizations can also subscribe to advanced analytics tools. The IFA team is comprised of experts in journalism, community organizing, policy and planning, and technology development.
React!: A Board Game that Makes Organic Chemistry Fun
Organic chemistry is one of the most “feared” classes amongst all undergraduates across the nation; this is partly because organic chemistry forces students to think visually about molecules and see how they can come together to create unique compounds. React! is an innovative and collaborative board game intended to address many of the challenges to learning organic chemistry. Created by a team of students who have proficiently mastered and taught all the subtle aspects of organic chemistry, React! is designed to meet the needs of students learning organic chemistry for the first time. The team has worked hard to structure the game such that players perceive organic chemistry as a challenging, yet rewarding puzzle as opposed to a series of facts to memorize. Ultimately, we hope React! empowers students to think critically about organic chemistry in a collaborative and entertaining environment.
Lamprey
Laparoscopy is a form of surgery done through a series of small incisions that is becoming the standard for many procedures. Graspers are important tools used in laparoscopy, which allow surgeons to grip and manipulate tissue. Current graspers use a compressive head made of metal jaws with teeth that grip tissue. These graspers have a risk of injury, including perforating, tearing, or crushing delicate tissues. Complications from this form of tissue injury lead to negative health outcomes for patients and increased costs for hospitals. Our proposed solution is Lamprey, which helps surgeons perform laparoscopic surgery without tissue damage by facilitating atraumatic tissue manipulation. Lamprey uses vacuum power to grip tissue and thus spreads applied force over a greater area, resulting in lower pressure. This makes Lamprey safer than conventional graspers while still providing a strong grip on tissue.
Sensen
Many international development organizations strive to improve livelihood around the world by providing products and services to those in need. Organizations rely on field surveys with target communities as the primary form of data collection to uncover the progress of their programs, but these methods are subject to response biases as well as being expensive and time-intensive. Sensen aims to strengthen the reliability of information between international development organizations and the beneficiaries they serve. The Sensen platform provides organizations with a robust and cost-effective solution for monitoring and evaluation to understand usage and performance of products in remote, low-resource settings. The core components of the platform are a cellular-enabled datalogger and a web analytics dashboard. The datalogger attaches to devices to measure, track, and upload information about product usage. This usage data is processed by analytical algorithms and turned into actionable information to support organizational decision-making.
mDex – Your Smart Sickle Cell Diagnostic Tool
mDex is a smartphone based, low cost, reusable, near-instant point of care diagnostic tool aimed at increasing access to sickle cell diagnostic services in low-resourced areas.This equips medical personnel with no hematology skills to diagnose the sickle cell disease (SCD) accurately to facilitate early diagnosis. Diagnostic tests for SCD are expensive and time-consuming and without “proof” of disease, patients may not be able to receive the care they need in a timely manner. mDex bridges the knowledge gap and the feedback loop between the time of testing and results.