In California, just as low-income residents struggle to find affordable housing, farmers also face a cutthroat farmland rental market. If beginning farmers can’t find land for agriculture, then the ‘young farmer movement’ is a pipe dream. In California, 41 percent of all farmland is rented out to others, and new tenants face exorbitant rental prices, lands of poor quality, and predatory leases. There is a tremendous opportunity to leverage emerging data science and geographic information system methods to address the land access issue. In collaboration with California Farmlink, a farming direct service provider, Farmview is a tool that assists beginning farmers in the acquisition of farmland. Farmview combines public data about land ownership with local knowledge contributed by farmers to show farmers the location of available land and its associated attributes. This project will run workshops with farmers in California, conduct user testing, and roll out a statewide tool.
Housing has gotten unaffordable across much of the US. With home prices having gone from 2X to 4X the median family income over the past 40 years, 53-77% of the population can’t afford to buy today in metro areas across the country. This means that they are forced to rent for years on end instead of building their assets, perpetuating the cycle of being locked out of the market. HomeSlice is putting home ownership within reach for people who can’t afford to own today by making it easy to buy homes in groups. By removing the current barriers to fractional ownership – from the creation of co-owner agreements to the elimination of liability for co-owner default – it is making shared home ownership a viable and attractive option for millions of Americans. Its mission is to democratize home ownership.
Access to clean water is a luxury many of us take for granted. Yet, millions of people worldwide are not so lucky. Our team will use existing infrastructure and familiarity with solar technologies, off-grid, bio-inspired desalination through synthetic transpiration to help enable the provision of clean water access to nearly 75 million households in India alone. Synthetic transpiration is a bio-inspired desalination technology that requires no external energy inputs besides sunlight. Mimicking water transport mechanisms found in mangrove trees, this technology uses sunlight to induce water evaporation, which serves as the driving force for filtration. Evaporated water is then condensed as drinkable water. The technology is enhanced by the use of graphene-oxide based nanomaterials that increase evaporation rates and augment passive water transport throughout the technology. This technology is being implemented in southern India to combat groundwater salinization that is causing widespread hypertension throughout urban areas.
Millions of homes waste enormous amounts of energy through needlessly heating water heaters which they do not always need. PowerTank wants to change this by integrating three simple, existing pieces of technology, adding machine learning, and unleashing the energy storage potential of things we already own. Consider this: a 50 gallon hot water tank with water at 150°F stores about 11 kWh of energy. And they already exist in millions of homes across the country. On the other hand, battery energy storage remains a niche market, and with an installed cost of around $400/kWh. The team believes that PowerTank can provide energy storage at a price an order of magnitude less than existing batteries, and can achieve scale far faster than batteries because they leverage existing assets that are already in homes. This technology can be installed by a professional in a less than 30 minutes, and saves the customer money through lower energy use, lower energy bills (particularly when on time-of-use rates), and shared payments for the grid services that the PowerTank provides.
Each year, over 4 billion pounds of citrus pulp waste are produced by the juicing industry in the USA and Brazil. This waste has caused significant disposal problems, but could be repurposed as a polymer to account for all the plastic bottles required by the orange juicing industry. The ZestBio Orange Bottle project is a synthetic biology effort that aims to convert citrus pulps and peels into plastics using eco-friendly conversion technologies. This project aims to give familiar wastes new life by fermenting them with highly engineered microbes that can produce chemicals normally produced from oil. Put your orange juice back in the peel with ZestBio plastics.
Three-year-old Alan lying face down on the shore of the Mediterranean has become the iconic photograph of the Syrian refugee crisis. Photography and visual art are powerful and universal tools to foster human-to-human connection. Through partnerships with aid organizations permanently working in refugee camps, DepArt facilitates art workshops and the flow of art supplies into refugee camps in Greece. DepArt then connects refugee artists via mobile phone to a central online platform, through which they can digitize and publicize their art, find mentors and sponsors, and make their work visible to large-scale audiences. Furthermore, the online platform facilitates the buying and selling of refugee art. This model not only encourages art as a constructive tool for self-expression, but also connects refugees to a global marketplace. Finally, the spread of refugee art will increase the global community’s exposure to the refugee crisis.
There are over 100 languages spoken in San Diego, and its 1.3 million people population is majority comprised of minority individuals. However, there is a lack of knowledge and awareness about different cultures, especially in children from marginalized communities living in a political climate of divisiveness. Movement Exchange at UCSD is part of a global community of dance diplomats creating positive social change through dance. The chapter was founded last year, and notably brought diverse cultural dance to partnered orphanages in Panama for the first time this summer. Dance education benefits child development and cross-cultural understanding, particularly in the second largest city in California, San Diego that is cross-border and majority minority by census. This project will develop the first informed curriculum for free and child-friendly culture and dance lessons, spearheaded by a diverse team of dancers. The team intends to trial evidence-based lesson plans, host an inaugural community-sponsored showcase, and expand internationally.
“There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.” Pythagoras appreciated these hidden potentials. Thinking in mathematical and musical concepts opens up a new understanding of the world. For adolescent Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE) coming from countries where poverty, disaster, civil unrest, persecution, or gender restrictions have affected their development of literacy and opportunities for education, the need to access this understanding is especially critical. This Big Idea is an after-school program for Oakland high school refugee/asylum-seeking immigrants that fuses math with musicianship to facilitate language learning. Music increases both the surface area and volume of the brain and promotes emotional healing; basic math is essential to academics and daily living; English is necessary for schooling. This project offers an accelerated learning capability—let’s unlock their hidden potentials and see them thrive in their new home.
Unauthorized migrants are now held in U.S. detention facilities in greater numbers than ever before. More than 40,000 people—a new record—are currently held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Many unauthorized migrants report that they experienced human rights violations in prison ranging from severe overcrowding, inadequate healthcare and even sexual assault. President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he plans to deport 2-3 million undocumented immigrants, indicating that the increase in the incarceration of immigrants will likely continue. MigRadio, a new podcast produced in English and Spanish, will feature deported immigrants relating their personal experiences in U.S. detention facilities and prisons. The show will be produced from a migrant shelter for deported immigrants in Mexico. This bilingual podcast about the fastest-growing federal U.S. conviction—unlawful reentry—can explain the story of immigrant detention to U.S. listeners, advise lawmakers about the consequences of our immigration policies and educate migrants about their rights in detention.
