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.
University: UC Berkeley
ReMaterials
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.
East Bay Youth Against Trafficking
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.
Near Zero: Mechanical Flywheel Battery
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.
Transparent Living: Using Data to Bring Transparency
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.
Sign UP
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.
Aeolus: Detecting Narcotics-Induced Respiratory Depression
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.
Sahay
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.
Dropsense
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.