March 2020 – Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity

March 30, 2020March 2, 2022

EVIE Keeps Evolving

The EVIE project is entering its third phase in the Global Development Lab at the Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity. Three years after its first public unveiling at Earth Day Texas in 2017, work on the mobile greenhouse has continued to push the boundaries of innovating a solution to Dallas’ fresh produce problem. The purpose of EVIE is to serve Dallas community members as a sustainable opportunity for fresh produce by encouraging their participation in the harvesting, maintaining, and general operations of a greenhouse.

EVIE’s name was derived from Eve, which is commonly associated with life and beginnings, appropriately matching the Institute’s goals for the project. In 2018, the Department of Agriculture identified 88 separate food deserts in Dallas County. Over half of the food deserts were in three southern portions of Dallas, encompassing close to 400,000 residents. EVIE is designed to be movable through areas lacking fresh produce and easily replicable to increase the availability of fresh produce across the food deserts. The first phase of EVIE focused on designing an easily replicable greenhouse model that could function in recycled environments, including an old, rickety Shasta trailer. In Phase II of the project, researchers from the Hunt Institute examined techniques that could facilitate irrigation, solar access, and temperature controls needed to maintain the greenhouse in any environment.

Plant Lab team lead Mitchell Dye works on the roof

Before Phase III could begin, the SMU Engineers Without Boards Plant Lab team gave EVIE a much-needed makeover. The roof had a leak. The makeover was completed right before spring break when the COVID-19 Global Pandemic hit the Unites States. Students are working remotely but unable to physically work on EVIE or in Labs as of June 2020. When they are able to return and resume work, Phase III of EVIE plans to make EVIE nearly autonomous to limit work and outside effort required to maintain the greenhouse. To achieve sustainability, EVIE will run off a solar panel to supply power for any water pumping or climate control measures. In addition, a rain collection system will provide irrigation to the individual planters. Through both of these additions to the current mobile greenhouse, EVIE will be able to provide fresh, healthy produce without requiring significant labor or effort on the part of community members.

The findings from this project hope to contribute to the agriculture value-chain development in rural and urban areas by promoting community involvement and educating local schools, food banks, and churches on environmentally sustainable, hydroponic, aeroponic, and vertical greenhouse growing methods.

To read more about the Hunt Institute’s work to develop future-focused solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems, please click here. For the latest news on the Hunt Institute, follow our social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We invite you to listen to our Podcast called Sages & Seekers. If you are considering engaging with the institute, you can donate, or sign-up for our newsletter by emailing huntinstitute@smu.edu.

March 24, 2020March 2, 2022

The Resilient Shelter Project: Phase I

The Resilient Shelter project team is excited to announce the completion of its market analysis report titled Seeking Low-Cost Seismic Protection for Urban Masonry in an Unstable Terrain. Phase I of the Resilient Shelter Project consisted of a market analysis of low-cost methods for seismic protection, specifically focusing on multi-story buildings in urban areas of developing countries. A prior blog post titled “Filling the Gap for Seismic Protection” explained more about the purpose behind the project.

With support from Marcial Blondet, Ph.D., Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, and Ph.D. student Kostas Kalfas, Nicos Makris, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the Lyle School of Engineering, is working diligently to formulate a solution that is safe, accessible, and suitable for residents of multi-story urban housing. Dr. Makris, Affiliate supervising the work in the report said, “Part of our role as structural engineers is the design and construction of structures that are affordable to the local society and meet acceptable performance levels at present and the years to come without compromising the ability of future generations to use them, maintain them and benefit from them.” Undergraduate Research Analyst Sam Borton and Undergraduate Project Manager JuliaGrace Walker worked with Kalfas, Dr. Makris, and Dr. Blondet to examine the low-cost seismic protection market and produce a report with their findings.

Discussing his motivation for working on the project, Kalfas said, “It is my steadfast belief that we, as the more benefitted, should always give back to society and especially to those who are not as fortunate” and that the Resilient Shelter Project gave him “the opportunity to contribute directly to the people who need our help.”

In the report, Borton and Walker summarize the existing low-cost propositions and discuss to what extent these methods are feasible for the aforementioned target population in Peru. Finding that even these “low-cost” solutions are out of reach for most of the middle-class residents of Lima, the report makes an alternate proposition. Rocking isolation offers great potential as an innovative and economical seismic protection alternative, but it has yet to be implemented as low-cost housing reinforcement. This emerging system of seismic protection could fill a gap in the market, as it may provide a sufficiently low-cost accessible manner of protecting multi-story buildings.

“After learning about the very real danger that earthquakes posed to certain Peruvian communities, as well as seismically-vulnerable communities around the globe, I was especially motivated to support Dr. Makris in this initiative,” said Borton.

As the report was finalized, the project encountered a delay brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting restrictions on international travel. It is the hope of the various collaborators on the Resilient Shelter project that progress on future phases will commence in the Spring of 2021.

Walker said of her experience with the project, “It has been exciting to work with a team that values and promotes cross-cultural and interdisciplinary relationships. I cannot wait to see what else the Resilient Shelter project can achieve.”

To read more about the Hunt Institute’s work to develop future-focused solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems, please click here. For the latest news on the Hunt Institute, follow our social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We invite you to listen to our Podcast called Sages & Seekers. If you are considering engaging with the institute, you can donate, or sign-up for our newsletter by emailing huntinstitute@smu.edu.

March 10, 2020March 2, 2022

Kelsey Shipman – Travel Feature

The Arabian Peninsula is typically not a top-tier destination for young, solo female travelers. But for the Hunt Institute’s Kelsey Shipman (SMU ‘20), spending part of her summer in several countries on the Peninsula provided unparalleled research opportunities.

Kelsey is a Richter Undergraduate Research Fellow at SMU, which allowed her to follow her research as it took her halfway

Kelsey Shipman stands in front of the Al Alam Palace in Muscat, Oman where she conducted some of her research over the summer of 2019.

around the globe. Dividing her time between Muscat, Oman and Manama, Bahrain, she explored the intersection between female participation in the labor force and economic growth in those countries.

“One of the reasons why I chose these two countries in particular is they have released ‘grand policy plans,’” Shipman said. “Increasing female labor force participation is a huge part of those economic visions, and I was curious to see if we saw any change in female labor force participation in these two states with the introduction of these policies.”

According to The World Bank, only 19.9% of females in Bahrain and 12.7% of females in Oman were participating in their country’s labor force in 2019. In contrast, both countries also fall within the top quartile of Gross National Income per capita in the world based on World Bank data from 2018.

“My goal is to investigate how we might be able to improve female labor force participation,” Shipman said. “And maybe isolate some of the factors that are contributing the most to this continuous low rate.”

Her trip to Bahrain and Oman was only the first phase of Shipman’s research project. The second phase, which is still ongoing, consists of analysis and drawing conclusions from the data she gathered over the summer. Shipman plans to return to both countries over spring break to meet with individuals who could provide guidance for this phase of her project.

A photograph of the Bahrain National Museum in Manama, Bahrain taken by Kelsey Shipman during her time researching abroad.

“I’ll be meeting with specific individuals who were not there over the summer,” Shipman said. “And meeting again with some of the people who I did have the chance to meet with, to talk through where I am in the project and get their feedback, given the information that I was able to find during my prior trip.”

As her project begins to wrap up, Shipman hopes to complete a final analysis by the time she walks at May graduation. Her report could provide valuable feedback to the governments of Bahrain and Oman on how they could continue to prioritize female labor participation.

“In my final product, I will be providing recommendations as to where the states could go from here, if female labor force participation is something they wish to prioritize as they have stated in these economic visions” Shipman said. “Policy analysis will be an important part of my final report. Even though these policies have not been in place for decades, I hope to see if we have noticed any distinct changes [in female labor force participation] since the policies’ introductions, and those kinds of conclusions will all be represented in this paper.”

Shipman says her experience in Bahrain and Oman helped her grow as a researcher by providing her with many opportunities to share her discoveries and conclusions with people who were completely unfamiliar with her work.

“Doing this independent project really strengthened my ability to articulate my project to individuals who might not be in academia whatsoever,” she said. “Even articulating the project to people who might not have any idea what the labor force participation rate is, or articulating it in a different language, and things like that. I think that that is something that will be continuously valuable for me throughout my career. I plan to pursue a PhD in Economics, and I know that the opportunity to pursue independent economics research abroad will prove to be valuable preparation for my future graduate studies.”

You can read more about Kelsey’s work at the Hunt Institute by clicking here.

March 10, 2020March 2, 2022

Rising Up to the Challenge

The STEM Up project is entering its second phase in the Hunt Institute’s Global Development. STEM UP Phase I: Empowering Engineering for Rural STEM Access focused on place-based education specifically targeting rural schools that do not have the same support for STEM initiatives as some urban schools do.

Phase II Centered around helping students interested in computer science develop an understanding of basic engineering principles, the project hopes to transform the classroom into a digital learning environment by offering easily accessible resources and instructions. The average school education plan does not have the resources to provide these educational tools for their students resulting in the students lacking an important part of applicable school concepts. STEM Up aims to bridge the gap between school education and affordable additional practice for young students to help them find or pursue engineering.

Originally, the STEM Up project aimed to create an educational kit using Raspberry Pi, LAN devices, and low-price tablets. The kit targeted students 10 to 14 years old in rural areas. It is specifically geared toward computer science applications because of its practicality in industries such as software and civil engineering, business, and information technology.

Phase II of STEM Up is evolving. We are redesigning the kit to be tested by students in Tintinto Primary and Secondary School located in a village in the The Gambia, a Western country in Africa. It will incorporate an Intranet setup and display devices to create a low cost, portable computer lab which can adapt to the lack of stable electricity and broadband connection in rural areas like Tintinto. The kit will contain all of the materials of an introductory engineering education to inspire students to pursue new topics in their education. Teachers will be able to curate and preload materials, media, and interactive games to augment their curriculum as they introduce computers and their functions to students.

Due to the restrictions in response to COVID-19, plans to travel to the school and interact with both teachers and students to better understand their needs has been delayed. We continue to test the kits capabilities in hopes that once the pandemic is over, we can resume working with the school to develop STEM Up kits that meet their needs.

To read more about the Hunt Institute’s work to develop future-focused solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems, please click here. For the latest news on the Hunt Institute, follow our social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We invite you to listen to our Podcast called Sages & Seekers. If you are considering engaging with the institute, you can donate, or sign-up for our newsletter by emailing huntinstitute@smu.edu.

March 4, 2020March 2, 2022

Map 4 Good is moving to Map InDallas

The Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity’s project “Map 4 Good” has evolved into Map InDallas. This transition includes an interdisciplinary advisory committee representing a range of key stakeholders for the project. While the name of the project has changed, the goals remain the same. Map InDallas looks to connect individuals in need with free service providers in Dallas to increase the number of eligible individuals taking advantage of local services.

Studies have shown individuals who are eligible for free services may have certain barriers that prevent them from accessing opportunities. Possible barriers can be attributed to lack of information about available services, physical access to services, or even misconceptions or stereotypes about the services. The map created by Map InDallas will empower individuals to use the services available to them by providing them with tools and resources to seek out services they require.

In addition to providing a database about local free services, Map InDallas plans to include a feature allowing users to search and sort through each service based on their eligibility, location, and what free services they are looking for. Once a user has found a service they would like to use, the map will provide them with contact information including a phone number and email address for the free service to coordinate any appointments or meetings necessary, putting clients in direct contact with the free services they would like to use and allowing them to coordinate availability.

Map InDallas plans to release the map through three main mediums: an online version available on a website and smartphone application, printed maps available in community centers like libraries, and interactive kiosks. Hunt Institute partners will play a large role in the dissemination of the Map InDallas map once it has been complete. For organizations looking to participate in Map InDallas’ efforts, the Hunt Institute is still accepting partners and local service providers.

If you would like to support the Hunt Institute’s projects, including Map InDallas, please click here.

To read more about the Hunt Institute’s work to develop future-focused solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems, please click here. For the latest news on the Hunt Institute, follow our social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We invite you to listen to our Podcast called Sages & Seekers. If you are considering engaging with the institute, you can donate, or sign-up for our newsletter by emailing huntinstitute@smu.edu.