Category: Uncategorized

By Sarah Bernardo

Preeclampsia–a pregnancy complication characterized by high blood pressure, swelling, and protein in the mother’s urine–is the second leading cause of maternal mortality worldwide. Nearly 76,000 women and 500,000 babies die from preeclampsia complications annually; deaths that could be prevented with early detection of the condition. To address this global health crisis, a team of public health students, with support from the Big Ideas Contest, are designing a preeclampsia diagnostic tool that will save lives in resource-constrained settings globally. The urinary-based test is affordable, easy to use, and can be used at home by women to self-screen for the onset of preeclampsia.

“This test is important in low-resource settings where women don’t have adequate access to pre-natal care screenings,” said Denali Dahl, a Duke University Global Health master’s student and co-creator of the device. “Preeclampsia is pretty common and its prevalence is similar worldwide, but women in high-resource settings have greater access to pre-natal care screenings. In places where women don’t have those pre-natal care screenings, the complications often go undiagnosed until they become severe or fatal.”

The motivation to develop a preeclampsia diagnostic test first arose when two of the tool’s co-founders, Brian Matovu and Zoe Sekyonda–undergraduate Bioengineering students at Uganda’s Makerere University, noticed that preeclampsia was a huge problem in their hometown of Kampala, Uganda. OBGYNs and nurses at Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala affirmed that the high number of preeclampsia and eclampsia cases posed a serious concern.

“In Uganda, women will go in for one pre-natal care visit when they first realize that they’re pregnant, but then don’t return to the hospital until they have a severe complication or it’s time for them to give birth,” said Dahl. “We want women to know when they’re developing [preeclampsia]. The earlier a woman is diagnosed, the sooner she can receive the necessary care to help herself and her child.”

Dahl attests that the biggest barrier to seeking treatment for women in low-resource settings, like Uganda, is lack of accessibility.  When pregnant women living in rural areas begin to feel sick, they are given herbs or traditional remedies. If that fails they may visit a local clinic or hospital, which often doesn’t have the resources to make an accurate diagnosis. From there, women are referred to the National Referral Hospital in Kampala. However, getting there involves high financial and time costs.

“If a sick woman needs to go to Kampala, she has to go the bus station and wait several hours for the next bus to come,” Dahl said. “Then, it may be a 12 hour bus ride to the hospital. When she gets to the hospital, it’s overcrowded, so she has to wait several hours before she can see the doctor.” Dahl and her teammates hope that their test can help women with preeclampsia better navigate these barriers.

The idea for the diagnostic tool was developed in a graduate-level course that is jointly offered between Duke and Makerere University. What began as a class project quickly morphed into a functional development plan, and grew from there. As the innovation continued to iterate, the team applied to the Big Ideas Contest in the hopes that seed funding would allow them to successfully refine and deploy their tool. The team utilized Big Ideas resources to successfully develop their innovation, noting how the program’s mentorship and support allowed them to bring their idea to the next level.

“When we first started this competition, we had a vague idea of what we wanted to do but didn’t really understand how to do it.” said Dahl. “Our mentor, Dr. Richard Lowe, was phenomenal and helped us think through the process.” Cross-cultural and multidisciplinary was also key to the team’s success. “The power of collaboration between students of engineering, global health, medicine, and social innovation in the United States and Uganda was incredible.”

Looking to the future, the team’s one year goal is to move beyond the proof-of-concept stage to develop and deploy a functioning prototype. Over the next two to five years the team plans to focus on implementation of the product while gaining a deeper understanding of the broader innovation ecosystem. The team is committed to ensuring their tool is contextualized and fits the needs of the end user in Uganda.

While the diagnostic tool will enable early diagnosis, the team recognizes that lack of access to health care in Uganda is a multi-faceted systemic problem. “Our diagnostic test is not a silver bullet to fix all of the problems associated with accessing health care, but rather an early warning method so women can begin the lengthy process of seeking care weeks before they currently do,” said Dahl.

Future Plans:

After receiving her Masters of Science in Global Health at Duke University this spring, Dahl will be starting a PhD program in Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Sekyonda and Matovu will both be graduating in June with a Bachelors of Science in Bioengineering from Makerere University. Sekyonda hopes to pursue a higher degree in the field of molecular biology, but also in line with biomedical engineering. Matovu plans to seek employment after graduation while concurrently seeking opportunities for higher education in the biomedical field.

By Morgan Hillenbrand

It was standing room only in Blum Hall Wednesday night as seven teams competed in Berkeley’s 6th Annual Rudd Family Foundation Big Ideas Grand Prize Pitch Day.

Each year, the Big Ideas competition brings together teams of students from across disciplines to design creative solutions for social impact. This year, 326 teams representing more than 1,000 students from 16 universities submitted proposals. Of those, 44 teams were awarded seed funding for their ideas after two rounds of review, and seven were selected to present at Grand Prize Pitch Day.

In front of a panel of high-profile judges comprised of industry leaders and social entrepreneurs, finalists described how their innovations would effectively address issues related to affordable housing, healthcare, human rights, energy, and waste management. These new and creative ideas included ventures that aim to bring light to rural India, more effectively diagnose pneumonia, and give a voice to immigrants who have been detained and deported.

Former White House Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation and Big Ideas founder, Tom Kalil, was impressed by the caliber of contestants this year. “It’s great to see the ambition of students at Berkeley and other campuses to tackle major societal challenges – both at home and abroad,” Kalil said. Other esteemed judges included Christine Gulbranson, Senior Vice President of Innovation & Entrepreneurship, UC Office of the President; Danielle Cass, Silicon Valley Tech Sector Liaison, USAID; Jean Shia, Head of Portfolio and Investment, Autodesk Foundation; and Jeremy Fiance, Managing Partner, The House Fund.

Each team was given three minutes to pitch their big idea in front of a packed audience. During the question and answer session that followed, judges asked  tough questions about each team’s innovation, pilot methodology, sustainability plan, and implementation model. While nerve-wracking, teams relished the opportunity to dive deeper into their ideas. When the pitches were complete, judges retreated for 30 minutes to deliberate.

“The teams all did well,” said Christine Gulbranson. “All 10 UC campuses were represented in this competition, which demonstrates the innovation, breadth, and entrepreneurial spirit across the UC system.”
When the results were determined the winners were announced as follows:

1^st Place ($5,000 prize):

• Tabla (UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco): Pneumonia is the number one killer of children under five, globally. Tabla, an apple-sized device that costs $70, is a portable, accessible, and inexpensive diagnostic tool that will reduce child mortality in resource constrained settings.

2^nd Place Winners ($3,000 prize):

• Point-of-Care Diagnostic Test for Preeclampsia (Duke University, Makerere University): Each year, 76,000 women die of preeclampsia. Team Preeclampsia developed a safe and effective urinalysis diagnostic tool for early detection of preeclampsia in low-resource settings, allowing women to seek treatment before symptoms become life threatening.
• ZestBio (UC Berkeley): The juice industry produces 20 billion pounds of waste each year. Team ZestBio turns orange peel waste into plastic bottles, reducing food and plastic waste, and carbon emissions.

3^rd Place Winners ($2,000 prize):

• Undergraduate Lab at Berkeley (UC Berkeley): University faculty often seek research assistance with prior research experience, limiting opportunities for undergraduates looking to gain the experience they need to progress in their education and careers. ULAB helps freshman and sophomores gain lab skills and solve real world problems, building the next generation of social innovators.
• HomeSlice (UC Berkeley): Lack of affordable housing locks many—and particular young people—out of home ownership. HomeSlice makes it easier for people who can’t afford to buy on their own to buy in groups—empowering them to build their assets instead of being forced to rent.

Honorable Mention ($1,000 prize):

• MakeGlow (UC Davis, Texas A&M University): 25% of India lives in the dark. MakeGlow is a low-cost solar lantern designed to teach students in low-income rural communities about the environmental benefits of using solar, while providing them with light for their homes.
• MigRadio (UC Berkeley): Over 3 million immigrants have been deported in the last decade. MigRadio is new podcast that explores immigration policy through the lens of deported immigrants who tell their stories in their own words.

The Big Ideas contest is made possible by the generous support of the Andrew and Virginia Rudd Family Foundation. We invited you to join us at the Blum Center for the Big Ideas Awards Celebration next Wednesday, May 3 from 5:00 to 8:00 pm. RSVP here to attend the event.

By Sarah Bernardo

Grace Nakibaala, Isah Ssevume, and Molly Mbaziira Nannyonjo from Makerere University formed the PedalTap team to prevent the spread of infection at communal handwashing facilities in Uganda. The PedalTap is a free-standing, universally-fitting connection that can be attached to any water tap. Rather than turning the tap on and off using their hands, users can control water flow by stepping on a foot pedal that is made from a bicycle brake handle and a spring-loaded water cut-off mechanism.

Transforming the PedalTap from an idea into a usable product was a challenging process for the team. Grace Nakibaala, team lead for PedalTap explains, “We were stretched in ways we never imagined, way beyond our comfort zones.” She continues, “One of the challenges we faced quite early on, as a multidisciplinary team of students, was in making time for our project. Our schedules never seemed to align, but we quickly learned that if this was important to us, which it was, we had to make time for it.”

Besides finding the time to work collaboratively on the process, the PedalTap team was also challenged in the piloting stage. Nakibaala elaborates, “We did not have the resources to pilot the product in the community and turn our idea into a viable product on the market. We knew it was important to iteratively engage the end-user in the design, development, and testing stages before taking our product to the market but did not have the means to do so.”

PedalTap submitted their product to the Big Ideas Contest in November 2015 , and ultimately won 3rd place in the highly competitive Global Health category which received 66 submissions that year. According to Nakibaala, “The $5000 prize that we secured from the Big Ideas competition was the first award we ever got. It went a long way in showing us that someone believed in PedalTap and in facilitating the piloting phase of implementing our project. We also received mentorship from engineer Cosmos Mwikiriza, who we were matched with through the Big Ideas competition and who has continued to guide us individually in our different career paths and as a group in turning our idea into a viable business.”

Since winning the Big Ideas prize, PedalTap has piloted their product at Mulago Hospital, Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), Makerere University, and the Infectious Disease Institute (IDI). PedalTap focuses on three types of usage for their product: humanitarian emergencies, general health care, and the private sector. Based on the needs of each case, the team has developed three different products. Through the initial pilot, PedalTap received valuable feedback from users which allowed them to make improvements to their design. PedalTap is now producing ten new taps which they will install at the test sites. The taps are free and will be piloted for an additional month with continuous monitoring and feedback from users.

PedalTap maintains a blog online, and their work in Uganda has garnered media attention. The PedalTap was spotlighted in local newspapers and on several television programs. Most prominently, the project was featured in a segment on BBC World News. “The media coverage has helped increase PedalTap’s visibility and has drawn in a large clientele that is anxiously waiting for PedalTap to hit the market. But more importantly, the media coverage has helped share our vision and our story, and I believe this is what people have fallen in love with- the potential impact of PedalTap in communities,” says Nakibaala.

Looking to the future, PedalTap is focusing on branding, marketing, and scaling up their product. Nakibaala says that their next goal is threefold: “One, to further refine our product using the feedback from our initial pilot. Two, to increase our reach and impact through partnering with organisations like the Ministry of Health in Uganda that align with our vision as PedalTap. Three, to increase our capacity as a team. We have registered PedalTap as a business and currently outsource some of the work in developing the PedalTap, but we want to be able to produce the entire product in a workshop we own. We believe this will lower production costs and will therefore contribute towards a more affordable product.”

PedalTap also hopes to develop more partnerships to help their project grow. The team’s current partnerships with Big Ideas and USAID have provided funding as well as support through mentorship and training. Big Ideas and USAID have also connected PedalTap to the ResilentAfrica Network which has given the team a physical space to work and access to a reliable internet connection–two resources that are essential to entrepreneurs but are often difficult to acquire in African countries such as Uganda. Nakibaala explains that PedalTap is now looking to partner with other organizations that share their vision of lowering the spread of infection through promoting proper hand hygiene while also conserving water. Ultimately, the team hopes to build partnerships that will enable them to secure their own workshop and increase their capacity for mass production of the PedalTap.

In addition to seeking new partnerships, PedalTap continues to enter their product in various competitions. Nakibaala says, “[The] PedalTap team is also very excited and preparing to take part in the TechCon Innovation Marketplace. We are determined to be the winners of this year’s marketplace.” TechCon is an annual convention hosted by the Higher Education Solutions Network and USAID. The convention brings together a wide range of people from students and development experts to entrepreneurs and researchers. One feature of TechCon is the Innovation Marketplace in which young innovators and students compete as individuals or teams in one of two categories: “products & services” or “research.” The final round of winners from each category will win financial and/or mentorship support. This year, PedalTap will be going to MIT on November 10-12 to participate in the “products & services” category. Along with winning a prize, Nakibaala says, “the thing I’m looking forward to most is identifying and meeting potential partners that can help scale our innovation.”

By Peter Bittner

The UC Berkeley Blum Center for Developing Economies is thrilled to announce an exciting new partnership with the Autodesk Foundation, which includes launching a new Big Ideas contest category, “Hardware for Good,” and supporting project-based immersive learning experiences within the Development Engineering (DevEng) program. As the Autodesk Foundation’s first-ever academic partner, the Blum Center is proud to bring impact design thinking to the UC Berkeley campus.

On September 28, nearly 100 eager students attended an informational event on campus at UC Berkeley to learn more about the “Hardware for Good” category. Attendees learned about the competition timeline, available resources, and fundamentals of “impact design,” which brings together social, environmental, public-interest and other related design disciplines focused on creating positive change and lasting impact.

Heather Lofthouse, the Blum Center’s Director of Special Projects, said “the Center is eager to infuse more impact design training and focus into all of our initiatives through the partnership.”

The new Big Ideas Hardware for Good category offers opportunities for mentorship, consulting and up to $10,000 in funding to teams of students from universities across the globe committed to leveraging the “Hardware Revolution” for large-scale social benefit.

In the past, the output and scalability of game-changing hardware innovations has been restricted by the high level of capital and resources required to develop physical goods. With the recent rise of developments such as 3D printing, computer aided design (CAD) software, and makerspaces, the cost of prototyping and manufacturing hardware products at low volume has plummeted, allowing young innovators to develop solutions faster, cheaper, and more conveniently than ever.

“As barriers to entry continue to drop and hardware solutions grow and develop, so too do the opportunities to harness them for social good,” said Joe Speicher, Executive Director of the Autodesk Foundation. “We are excited to partner with the UC Berkeley Blum Center to support young innovators in this space.”

Student innovators in the Big Ideas Hardware for Good category will be able to develop real-world projects in everything from wearables (think Fitbit and Google Glass) and assistive technologies to devices to improve agricultural productivity, and smart home systems which improve energy efficiency and safety.

Past Big Ideas winners have focused on developing hardware-oriented solutions to pressing global problems, but the new category represents an unprecedented opportunity for students in that unparalleled financial and human resources will be expressly devoted towards this end.

BCAPI, a 1st Place Winner in the IT for Society category in 2015, is a great example of a Big Ideas team devoted to developing creative and scalable hardware solutions. BCAPI is developing a powerful software and hardware package that will enable developers and researchers to create a range of Brain Computer Interfacing technologies to assist millions of people with physical disabilities who lack control of their bodies, but can control their minds.

The UC Berkeley Blum Center-Autodesk Foundation partnership also means expanding and enhancing already robust resources for Berkeley students in the pioneering Development Engineering program, which is making major contributions to the emerging interdisciplinary field centered on technology interventions to improve human and economic development.

“We’ll host a series of pop-up courses centered around impact design for the DevEng program – from workshops for building sensor networks to Fusion 360 trainings aimed at non-STEM majors,” said Ms. Lofthouse.

The pop-up modules will be taught by teams of instructors representing a variety of different disciplines and perspectives focusing on human-centered, high-impact design. The mini-courses will be the first in a series that focuses on hands-on design coursework. The partnership with the Autodesk Foundation will also support future impact design workshops and travel grants for DevEng students seeking to collaborate on location.

As part of the new partnership, the Blum Center will actively engage with the Impact Design Hub, drawing from its strong ecosystem of impact designers to share their insights with broader audiences.

The current 2016-2017 Big Ideas contest deadline for the pre-proposal is due on November 16, 2016. For more information, please visit the Big Ideas website or email the Big Ideas team to set up an advising appointment!

Blum Center News

Time is ticking for University of California students to submit their world-changing concepts to Big Ideas@Berkeley, one of the nation’s oldest and most international student innovation competitions.

Three page pre-proposals for the competition, which awards up to $300,000 in prizes, are due November 12 at 12pm PST. Contest categories include Art & Social Change, Energy & Resource Alternatives, Financial Inclusion, Food Systems, Global Health, Improving Student Life, Information Technology for Society, and Mobiles for Reading. Winners are announced in May after a two-month mentorship period and a March 9 full proposal deadline.

Big Ideas’ mission is not only to identify and award promising student innovations, but also to support multidisciplinary teams through a multi-stage, yearlong process. Expanded advising drop-in hours and remote appointments are available with Big Ideas advisors through November 12, from 9 am to 4 pm, in order to help students with their pre-proposals.

For many student innovators, Big Ideas has served as the first step in turning a grand hunch into a viable proposal. Last year, Amelia Phillips and her Big Ideas team won the first place award in the Conflict & Development category for the Somo Project — a socially focused, non-profit venture capital investment firm that works to identify, train, fund and mentor entrepreneurs looking to drive social change. Phillips credits the process of competing in Big Ideas and the resources available to students as critical elements in getting her project off the ground. “More important than just funding, Big Ideas@Berkeley opened up a community that has been and continues to be vital to growing The Somo Project,” says Phillips. “Through advising from the Big Ideas team, I have improved the way in which I describe what we do and how we plan to develop and grow the organization’s impact.”

Since 2006, the contest has provided support to student teams who have gone on to secure over $55 million in additional funding for their for-profit, nonprofit, or hybrid ventures. Innovations and enterprises seeded by Big Ideas include: Cellscope, which turns the camera of a mobile phone or tablet computer into a high-quality light microscope; the Cal Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of UC Berkeley students, staff, and faculty now pushing to achieve carbon neutrality on campus by 2025; Captricity, which sells data capture software to digitize hand-written forms; and Back to the Roots, which creates sustainable food products from coffee grounds and other food waste.

The Big Ideas contest is made possible through the generous support of its contest sponsor the Rudd Family Foundation, as well as category sponsors including UCOP’s Carbon Neutrality Initiative, the U.S. Global Development Lab, the All Children Reading Grand Challenge, the Global Center for Food System Innovations, the Center for Information Technology in the Interests of Society, the Berkeley Food Institute, and the Associated Students of the University of California.

“This contest is multidisciplinary and high touch,” said Phillip Denny, manager of the Big Ideas Contest. “It 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.”

For more information on the Big Ideas contest:
Website: bigideascontest.org
Email: bigideas [at] berkeley [dot] edu

 By Sybil Lewis

Despite India’s robust government immunization program—which provides 11 different vaccinations free of cost—immunization rates remain low, particularly among poor populations. According to a 2015 University of Michigan study, only 57 percent of children younger than three in India are fully vaccinated. A nationwide survey conducted by UNICEF in 2009 found that many children are not fully immunized because their mothers and caretakers did not understand the vaccines, did not know where to get them, did not feel they were needed, or found vaccines shortages at health clinics.

With this in mind, three UC Berkeley MBA students— Anandamoy Sen, Erik Krogh-Jespersen, and Sanat Kamal Bahl—and Julia Walsh, a Cal professor of maternal and child health and international health, began in 2012 to rethink potential solutions. The team decided that the Indian vaccine deficit was due not to lack of supply, but to an information problem—and could best be addressed through a cellular vaccination tracking technology, which they called Emmunify.

“When we looked at household surveys in Uttar Pradesh that asked why children were not getting vaccinated, we found the major problems were the families didn’t know the importance of them, didn’t know when they were supposed to go, and when they did go there were tremendously long wait times and possibly no vaccines,” said Professor Walsh, co-founder of Emmunify. “So when a mother does a mental cost-benefit analysis of waiting to get the vaccination or working for a day, she does not see the benefit of the vaccine.”

Another challenge to universal immunization is the paper record keeping system in India; records are often easily misplaced, resulting in missed or duplicated vaccinations. The most recent National Family Health Survey in India found that only 38 percent of mothers were able to show their child’s vaccination card.

To address these challenges, Emmunify plans to provide a portable electronic medical record that digitizes and stores immunization records, replacing cumbersome paper records. It also plans to send SMS reminders to families about when their next vaccinations are due and where they are available.

Emmunify got its start through the UC Berkeley’s 2012 Hacking Health competition, which awarded Sen, Krogh-Jespersen, and Bahl the grand prize of $2,000 to build a prototype. With Walsh as their faculty adviser, the team then won first place in the 2013 Big Ideas@Berkeley competition in the maternal and child health category and used the $8,000 award money to send two team members to the New Delhi slums in July 2013 to test Emmunify’s usability and feasibility. By partnering with Aarushi Charitable Trust, an organization of community health workers in the New Delhi slums, Emmunify was able to conduct stakeholder interviews with health workers and focus groups with mothers.

The Emmunify team aims to implement a multi-step process. First, a village health worker would use a portable, battery-powered tablet with Emmunify’s software to register a family’s health information and assign each family an ID number, which is programmed onto a portable chip (RFID tag) placed on the family’s phone. Once the family is registered, it will receive SMS or voicemail reminders about upcoming child vaccinations. When the family arrives at the clinic, its RFID tag will be scanned to confirm and update immunization records, preventing duplication. The final step is to store the health information from the tablet onto the Cloud, where an application will generate and send future automated messages.

Anandamoy Sen, Emmunify’s co-founder and mobile technology professional, said the organization’s main innovation is its adaptability to India’s rural health context. He noted there have been other prototypes of electronic record vaccination systems, but they require a Wi-Fi connection, which is scarce in rural villages, and use bulkier hardware that is easily damaged. What sets Emmunify apart, he said, is its offline design. An Internet connection is used only to send information to the Cloud; during the registration and vaccination process, no Internet, phone service, or electricity is required.

Much of what Emmunify aims to do is enabled by India’s robust mobile phone market. According to a 2010 UN report, for every 100 people there are approximately 45 cell phones. Emmunify can rely on SMS reminders because the RFID tag placed on families’ phones is designed to operate on any type of mobile.

Emmunify may be attractive to health care providers due to its simplicity and cost effectiveness.

“Paper [vaccination] cards are estimated to cost about a US$1.25 per child, whereas the tag is inexpensive, costing US$0.25-0.50 each,” said Professor Walsh. “We also can buy consoles and tablets for the health workers at less than US$100 each.”

Walsh noted that developing the necessary software and cloud analytics is the most challenging and costly aspect of Emmunify’s technology. The software—the tablet-chip interface, the tablet-cloud interface and cloud analytics, and the automated family reminders—will be interconnected. To date, the team has completed the RFID tag and has progressed with the user-interface for the health workers console. But they are still working on the Cloud-console software and analytics.

The potential impact of a technology like Emmunify extends beyond the health benefits of vaccinations. “If you are fully vaccinated, you will be better nourished, do better in school, stay in school longer, and have the chance to get out of poverty,” Walsh said. “We estimate that in places like the New Delhi slums and the poor populations of Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, if you vaccinate an additional hundred kids, you save two lives.”

In the long run, Sen said health information stored in the Cloud could help health clinics forecast supply and demand for vaccinations, preventing shortages that have deterred mothers from getting their children vaccinated.

The Emmunify team has always known that cooperation with and buy-in from the Indian government is essential. The government plays a large role in the administration of vaccinations through its Universal Immunization Programme, which since 1978 has provided vaccinations of preventable, yet life-threatening, conditions to children free of charge.

In October 2010, the Indian government implemented a voluntary Universal ID program (UID), which stores citizens’ biometric data and assigns them a unique identity number, with the goal of improving and reducing corruption in the distribution of public services. Emmunify does not plan to integrate with the UID program because, said Sen, many rural clinics do not have the scanning technology to obtain biometric UID data and the UID program does not include the vaccination reminder software. However, Emmunify may use the national ID as a verification method for families’ RFID tags.

Next steps for Emmunify include registering as a nonprofit and pilot testing. Emmunify recently won third place in the 2015 BigIdeas @ Berkeley Scaling Up competition, receiving a $5,000 award that will help the team test all of Emmunify’s technology—from the chip to the SMS reminders—with families in the New Delhi slums in early 2016.

Emmunify’s technology may not be limited to India. Walsh said Emmunify is working closely with DHIS 2, an open source information system functional in 30 countries, including eight Indian states. Once the pilot test is complete, Emmunify plans to adapt its software to be compatible with DHIS, allowing for the possibility of expansion into other countries.

Public voting has begun for the 2015 Big Ideas People’s Choice Video Contest. Twenty-five innovative, student-led teams are now vying for $2,500 to support their social impact projects. The videos represent the broad scope and diversity of the projects in this year’s Big Ideas contest, covering issues such as clean water, mobile education, food security, and renewable energy.

Since 2005, the Big Ideas@Berkeley contest has supported student social innovation. The annual competition now spans 18 universities across the U.S., Uganda, and Australia. In November 2014, more than 200 student teams, representing over 700 students submitted ideas. Since then, finalists have been through two rounds of judging, an eight-week mentorship period, and numerous workshops to help them refine their ideas. Winners will be formally announced at the Big Ideas Awards Celebration on May 5, 2:00-4:00pm, in B100 Blum Hall at UC Berkeley.

The People’s Choice Video Contest is an additional way for teams to gain funding and support for their ideas, as well as a means to showcase the variety of this year’s projects. “The video contest is a terrific opportunity for these student innovators to talk directly to the public about the incredible work they are doing,” said Big Ideas Manager Phillip Denny. “Anyone who watches these videos will immediately sense the passion of the students and be inspired by their creative projects to improve society.”

Videos are now available for public vote on the Big Ideas Facebook page. Don’t miss your opportunity to help choose this year’s winner: http://bit.ly/1bLj4fP Voting will take place until Monday, May 4. The video with the most votes will receive a $2,500 award and will be announced at the Big Ideas Awards Celebration on May 5.

For more information, please contact the Big Ideas team:
bigideas [at] berkeley.edu
(510) 666-9120

Big Ideas Gets Bigger and Better in its Eighth Year on Campus

Got an idea that could be the next big thing? The 2013-2014 Big Ideas@Berkeley contest is now underway — offering $300,000 to help you turn your idea into reality.

Big Ideas@Berkeley gives students the opportunity to channel their passion for social change into creative and pragmatic solutions. In addition to offering new categories, more workshops, and a broader pool of professional mentors, the 2013-14 contest offers a chance for applicants to compete with students across California and around the country. Find full contest details at bigideascontest.org.

As past participants know, Big Ideas is more than a contest; it’s an entire ecosystem designed to empower students. “Winning a Big Ideas prize is definitely a different experience than success in other areas of life at a university,” said Nicholas De Raad, a member of the GoodWheels team that took 2nd Place in the “Scaling Up” category in 2013. “Unlike success in academic or internships, for this competition, the initiative and the idea that a team works on is developed out of personal interest to further a social cause.”

Over the course of a school year, the contest provides funding, encouragement, and advice to Berkeley students. In addition to writing and budget workshops, applicants have the opportunity to be matched with mentors from social enterprises, industry, and non-profits who are eager to help students develop their ideas.

“I can now say I have written a successful grant, can write a budget, create a proposal, plan a two year timeline, identify potential future plans, and anticipate different types of training that will be needed,” said Adena Ishii, whose project Berkeley City College Service Community tied GoodWheels for 2nd in 2013. “These are skills that most people have to learn after they’ve left school, and I’ve been given the opportunity to practice them now.”

Undergraduate and graduate students at Cal are encouraged submit proposals in one of the following categories:
• Global Poverty Alleviation
• Creative Expression for Social Justice
• Clean & Sustainable Energy Alternatives
• Financial Capability
• Improving Student Life
• IT for Society
• Open Data
• Promoting Human Rights
• Scaling up Big Ideas

With two info sessions (9/4 & 10/7) and two writing workshops (9/26 & 10/16) Big Ideas is designed to support students from all parts of campus. The info session on September 4th (6-7pm, B100 Blum Hall) will feature an inspiring talk by past Big Ideas@Berkeley winner Nikhil Arora, Co-Founder of Back to the Roots Ventures, followed by an overview of the Big Ideas Contest.

In addition, applicants have access to drop-in advising sessions and all finalists are given the opportunity to work with professional mentors for eight weeks beginning in January.

Pre-proposal applications are due by November 5th, 2013. For more information about rules, categories, resources, funding, and contact information, please visit the Big Ideas website at http://bigideascontest.org.
Big Ideas@Berkeley is sponsored by the following: