Lyle School of Engineering – Page 4 – Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity

December 15, 2020January 7, 2021

2020 Social Enterprise Cohort

Our 2020 Cohort took a journey none of us could have planned or expected. We celebrated as both Dr. Lynch and Jin-Ya advanced in their work, we moved forward as Mohammed Nijie’s work branched out into a new phase, and we expanded to add a new Social Entrepreneur, Clara Rulegura Ford. This cohort focused on clean energy and community development.

Below is a brief description of each social entrepreneur’s venture along with links to their work in order to read more and/or follow their progress in the future.

Janta Energy

Founder: Mohammed Njie

Njie completed his business plan, launched his website, and remotely worked on a pilot project in Tintinto, The Gambia. In January of 2020, a team installed five 330-watt 24-volt solar panels, two 250 amp 12-volt solar batteries, and a 50 amp solar charge controller to power four classrooms and a staff room. The pilot is designed to test the panel’s effectiveness as a solution to bring electrical connections for lights, fans, and eventually computers. All supplies and labor were sourced locally, supporting the local economy.

Njie continues to communicate with Principal Amadou Kinteh following the progress of the project. Innovation in Tintinto tells the story of teachers leveraging cell phones to design and implement distance learning for their students during the pandemic shutdowns. His goals for 2021 include raising the necessary funding to finish the project so the entire school is powered by solar panels. Njie explains, “As a pilot project, we were limited to installing a limited amount of panels. We used those panels to provide 100% energy for half of the school. The idea was that after we did a successful pilot project, then we will install more panels to extend the power to the other side of the school.”

Principal Kinteh talked about how the students were able to attend night classes due to the solar power stored in fuel cells helping students to catch up in their studies, “…we benefited from night classes, as children living near or in the village were assisted by the teachers during the night because electricity is now available and the place is quiet, so children would come and read and they would be assisted by the teachers. This has helped our students a lot. They performed extremely well in the grade 9 examinations.”

Kijiji Innovation Solutions

Founder: Clara Rulegura Ford

Clara Rulegura Ford. Ford is the Founder and CEO of Kijiji Innovative Sustainable Solutions (K.I.S.S.) and a Class of 2020 commitment maker with the Clinton Global Initiatives University (CGIU). Ford holds an MA in Sustainability and Development from the Lyle School of Engineering where she began fleshing out the design and plans for KISS as her capstone project. Phase I of the project was completed in the Summer semester of 2020. Partnering with the Hunt Institute Global Development Lab, the project produced a broader impact report titled Building Bridges to Build Connections. Ford soon became an obvious choice to include in the Social Enterprise program. She is finishing final touches on her overall strategy, has assembled an advisory board over the years, and launched a competition for the design of The Rulegura Centre, Kijiji ISS, Kasisa Tanzania.

Ford says, “Our vision is of a Tanzania that is aware of its role on environmental stewardship and takes development initiatives that are conscious of environmental impact on future generations. A Tanzania that remains as a paradise island with its wildlife protected and natural resources replenished in the course of its economic development.”

As we approach 2021, we look back on the great accomplishments of this cohort and prepare to continue accelerating their important work.

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.

December 1, 2020February 28, 2022

Controlled Environment Agriculture Technologies

After working at the Hunt Institute over the summer of 2017, Adrienn Santa decided to continue her research in controlled environment agriculture in an attempt to help address the issue of food deserts in urban areas like South Dallas. Adrienn grew up on a family farm in Hungary. She expressed her surprise when she discovered how difficult it was to find fresh food in urban areas and deep sadness at the reality of food deserts in one of the most prosperous countries in the world.

The video in this post explains her passion and vision for high-tech, small, urban greenhouses to help mitigate extreme climates in order to bring fresh fruits and vegetables closer to the consumer.

In the Fall of 2017, Adrienn recruited a team and together they began their senior design project monitoring Evie, the mobile greenhouse. As shown in the images, Evie was invited to the Science Place at the State Fair of Texas. Adrienn led her team as they installed sensors to read temperature and humidity in the small mobile greenhouse during the length of the State Fair.

Santa said, “My main goal is to be able to apply my educational and life experiences to this research and to contribute to finding a solution to this pressing global problem of food deserts found in low-income communities.”

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) is a technology-based food system used in large high-tech greenhouses for the purpose of controlling the temperature, humidity, airflow, and light in the building. With a greenhouse, the growing season can be expanded to be year-round if the inside conditions are controlled properly according to the requirements of the plants. With CEA, technology can assist the growers and reduce both the number of people and the amount of time needed to monitor and care for the plants. In the case of Evie, where the space available to grow is small, there are no low-cost solutions to grow food efficiently in small urban spaces as of the writing of this post. Combined with vertical gardening, technologies like hydroponics and grow lighting CEA can help to address food production issues anywhere from the most remote rural areas to urban areas.

The best possible orientation and structures of a greenhouse, heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, and glazing as well as insulation materials are discussed in Adrienn’s report. Adrienn says, “Results show that the most efficient and sustainable technologies are currently more expensive initially than the other ones. Due to this fact, most of the time small urban farmers are not able to afford sustainable and energy-efficient technologies.”

The findings of her report Controlled Environment Agriculture Technologies, the team’s research, and their observations of Evie’s sensor readings were that Evie was too small for CEA technology. This led her to conclude that CEA technology needed to evolve in order for it to be useful and affordable for small-scale farming operations.

Adrienn Santa graduated SMU in 2018, and she married one of her teammates Osama and is now Adrienn Alolabi-Santa. She and her husband live in Austria where she is pursuing a Masters in Sustainable Energy Systems at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria.

To read more about Hunter & Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity’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 to the work, or sign-up for our newsletter by emailing huntinstitute@smu.edu.

November 10, 2020August 31, 2021

STEM Up Phase 1: Empowering Engineering for Rural STEM Access

The video above is from SMU’s Giving Day in 2019 when the Hunt Institute’s project focused on the idea of bringing STEM education resources to rural communities. With motivation from personal experience, Cydney Snyder researched the potential of developing STEM camps in rural areas.

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 many urban schools do.

The result of Ms. Snyder’s work was a report titled STEM UP: STEM for Rural Communities that proposed the use of place-based education to teach students about STEM in a summer camp setting. In the summer of 2019, STEM Up took on a different shape. After attempts to connect with camps in rural communities, the problem became clear – a growing number of rural areas did not have the resources to support summer camps.

With this revelation, the Institute partnered with the Caruth Center for Engineering Education to implement a STEM Up project, Evie-in-a-Box, with Caruth’s summer campers to test the interest level of the students. It was a huge success. The Institute made an open-sourced how-to video with a PDF containing instructions and dimensions for the project. All supplies are available at a typical hardware store or through Amazon.

In the summer of 2020, due to the global pandemic, summer camps were held virtually. As a result, the Caruth Center used the kits for remote camps, testing the true capabilities of the kits. Similar to the previous year, campers reported the kits being one of their favorite activities.

Snyder said, “Once when jokingly describing how I could see cows grazing outside the window of my US History class, a peer asked me, ‘if you came from a place like that, why are you normal?’ This project is important because millions of students grow up in rural communities and believe that their community is not good enough.”

Snyder’s concluding remarks in her paper sum up the spirit of Phase 1, “In development, growth is seen as an indicator of progress which leads to a lack of understanding of places that choose and rejoice in staying small. When students have to leave their communities in order to find more educational opportunities, they are not taught about subjects that relate to their experiences and their communities. Furthermore, when students leave their communities, they quickly find that people think of small rural communities as lesser. As a result, these students learn to reject small-town values and traditions, deny the good parts of their upbringing, and repress those aspects of their background that make them feel [like the] “other.” This camp, and in general the movement of place-based education, can provide students with a new narrative of what it means to be from rural areas while also giving them the opportunity to have a more well-rounded and adequate STEM education.”

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, 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.

November 9, 2020February 11, 2021

Innovation in Tintinto, The Gambia

Janta Pilot project, Global Development lab, The Gambia, rich with natural resources for clean energy — Janta’s pilot project in Tintinto Village, The Gambia in West Africa. The Gambia is rich with natural resources for clean energy.

As the world continues to brace for the unknown while fighting the global pandemic, schools remain closed or partially open all around the world. To make matters worse, in The Gambia, a West African country surrounded by Senegal, just 48% of people have moderate, yet sometimes unreliable, access to electricity (typically in urban areas) and the remaining 52% have no access (typically remote rural areas). For children in rural areas, virtual learning as we define it in the United States is not possible, causing the children to fall behind in their studies during COVID-19 shutdowns.

The Tintinto Primary and Secondary school, founded in 2009, has 936 students enrolled. In December of 2019, they agreed to be a beta test site for Janta’s pilot project, a project designed to bring clean reliable energy to The Gambia. The project was funded by a partnership with the Hunt Institute’s Global Development Lab and the Hart Center for Engineering Leadership.

In January of 2020, a team installed five 330-watt 24-volt solar panels, two 250 amp 12-volt solar batteries, and a 50 amp solar charge controller to power four classrooms and a staff room. The pilot is designed to test the panel’s effectiveness as a solution to bring electrical connections for lights, fans, and eventually computers. All supplies and labor were sourced locally, supporting the local economy.

Shortly after the solar panels were installed, the pandemic made its way to The Gambia. Fortunately for the students in the village of Tintinto, their teachers are innovative. Although they were unable to connect with students through virtual platforms because students do not have laptops or computers at home, nor do they have electricity or the internet. But, they do have cell phones.

Principal Amadou Kinteh spoke of his teachers’ innovation, “Most teachers used their mobile phone, charged them, and tried to create a platform to help the students because face-to-face learning was impossible. But with solar power, they were able to charge their mobile phones. Those platforms [cell phones] helped the students very well. In other schools, students were at home doing nothing, but our teachers … [created their own] online teaching.” This significant effort is a testimony to both the resilience of the people of The Gambia and the indomitable spirit of the teachers in demonstrating their love for their students.

In October, the students were allowed to return to their classrooms and are working hard to catch up with their peers in urban areas. Although the entire school is not powered yet, there are plans to do so. Mohammed Njie, the founder of Janta, explains, “As a pilot project, we were limited to installing a limited amount of panels. We used those panels to provide 100% energy for half of the school. The idea was that after we did a successful pilot project, then we will install more panels to extend the power to the other side of the school.”

Principal Kinteh talked about how the night classes are helping the students to catch up in their studies, “…we benefited from night classes, as children living near or in the village were assisted by the teachers during the night because electricity is now available and the place is quiet, so children would come and read and they would be assisted by the teachers. This has helped our students a lot. They performed extremely well in the grade 9 examinations.”

Njie has been in communication with Principal Kinteh, and both are pleased with the results. Together, they are looking forward to future panel installations, which will expand solar energy access to the rest of the classes. Once that is completed, they will advance to the next phase – STEM Up X Janta Ed.

Mohammed Njie and Manuela Murillo Sanchez were contributors to this blog post. Sam Borton edited and revised this post. Thank you for sharing our post and spreading the word about the work we do in the Hunt Institute’s Global Development Lab.

November 3, 2020November 5, 2020

Counting Our Breakthroughs

October is over and November is upon us. Our team at the Hunt Institute continues to push through the normal stress of a college semester, project delays, and constant challenges that seem to pop up out of nowhere – not to mention a historic presidential election and the news of surges in COVID-19 globally.

We choose to count our breakthroughs.

Most students at SMU have completed their midterms, officially marking our halfway point for the semester. With approximately seven weeks to go in this semester, here are some of our breakthroughs. In the Global Development Lab, we have seen projects take off and pick up momentum while others stalled and have been put on hold. Through it all, we have been able to produce several deliverables including The Resilient Shelter Project finalizing their report Seeking Low-Cost Seismic Protection for Urban Masonry in an Unstable Terrain, the Moments that Matter project continuing to host Virtual National Focus Groups in partnership with the Veteran Women’s Enterprise Center over the Fall semester, and The Kijiji Project producing their report Building Bridges to Build Connections.

More deliverables are in the making right now, as we continue to find creative ways to work around delays and learn as we go. The Institute’s Assistant Director says about the strength of the team members, “Even more than the pride I feel in our finished work, I have so much pride in our team members. It is hard enough to navigate college, then add working for an Institute that is producing work that is impactful in people’s lives — that is a different level of strength of character. I am very proud of our team, watching them set aside fear and embrace potential.” One example is Sam Borton who is a third-year student. He joined the Institute in January of 2020. He quickly rose to a leadership position, as he naturally reached out to help his teammates over the adjustment period. He co-leads the researcher team and consistently supports the communications team with editing. Borton says, “The research team has faced numerous challenges due to the pandemic —stalled lab research, cancelled travel plans, and staying connected while virtual— but I am proud of each researcher’s resilience to stay productive even while facing challenges out of our control.”

One team has risen to the challenge to keep everyone connected both internally and externally, the communications team. Cullen Blanchfield is the communications team lead and a senior student with a passion for videography. He has been with the Institute since he was a freshman, filming and editing visual content. He was in his study abroad semester when the pandemic hit, resulting in his return to the states, after which he immediately jumped back into working with the Institute to further our mission. He has driven the team to new consistency over the summer months, working with and celebrating the contributions of each team member along with working towards including more visual content via social media and our weekly update. He speaks to the challenges his team continues to push through, “The communications team has had to pivot our internal workflow and adjust our content due to the pandemic, but we’ve stayed very productive and grown tremendously.”

Rachel Levitt is an MBA candidate in marketing at the Cox School of Business. She is the lead for the Social Enterprise and has helped three social entrepreneurs with their business plans by developing business models depending on each person’s need and value proposition. Levitt has written nineteen blog posts during her time at the Institute that started in May 2020. Rachel speaks to her challenges in running the social enterprise, “The social enterprise team has had to postpone on-boarding a new cohort of social entrepreneurs. However, it has given us the opportunity to focus on educating the public about the importance of social entrepreneurship, especially during these trying times.”

October 20, 2020February 28, 2022

Improving Engagement with Veteran Women Entrepreneurs

The Hunt Institute’s Global Development Lab project with the Veteran Women’s Enterprise Center (VWEC) in Dallas, Texas called Moments that Matter is hosting virtual focus groups with the goal to improve engagement with women veteran entrepreneurs. In order to obtain first-hand information, the project seeks to find veteran women business owners to inform the creation of a national assessment tool. The shift from in-person to online due to the COVID-19 response has resulted in an unexpected benefit – the focus group can have national representation.

Undergraduate research analyst Scott Zuo reflects on his experience working on the project, “So far, after inputting data and transcription from the past focus groups, I realized that most of the data is really valuable and meaningful for analysis purposes. The questions are so well developed that all the responses and answers to them perfectly represent the background of each participant. And it helps a lot for us and our affiliate to find patterns and moments that matter the most from the data.”

The sessions are open to veteran women entrepreneurs who are currently in business and have owned that business for at least one year. Eligible candidates can USE THIS LINK to register for a focus group that coordinates with their schedule. Focus groups will run through the end of November 2020 and are small by design to afford a depth of conversation and feedback over the course of an hour that would not be possible with larger groups.

In this era of COVID-19 economic disruption, real-time data-driven decisions are critical to the recovery, stabilization, and growth of small business communities that help build local economies. The tool will reflect first-hand feedback that will help chart the pivotal moments of running a business and finding the most important needs in those critical intersections. Because the groups are national, this tool will be able to study the recurring business patterns that women veteran entrepreneurs have in common and how their experiences may differ from non-veterans. The perspective provided by participants in the focus groups will inform decisions made by veteran support agencies, like the VWEC, to better provide the resources needed to overcome their challenges and contribute to their successes.

The Moments that Matter focus groups are the passion project of VR Small. She speaks to her motivation, “Why I am so determined to drive the collection and application of real-time data about women veteran entrepreneurs is because I know the impact; I know we are not just building businesses; we’re transforming lives. When we help a women veteran owner’s business succeed, we strengthen our family structures, create community resources, and fuel our nation’s economy. My personal slogan is changing the way we see the world and do business, and as a leader that’s what I strive to achieve every day.”

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.

October 13, 2020February 28, 2022

Restorative Farms, AHA Foodscape Innovation Finalist – Vote Now!

The Seedling Farm at MLK Community Center

We are excited to share that Restorative Farms, one of the first social entrepreneurs in the Hunt Institute’s Social Enterprise Program, has been selected as a finalist for the American Heart Association Foodscape Innovation Awards based on their meaningful work in the South Dallas community. A panel of expert judges selected the top 3 of 26 innovative leaders across the nation that are working to build a healthier, more equitable, and sustainable food system. Now, it is up to the voters to decide which of the finalists will win. Vote for Restorative Farms here, and then pass the link along to your friends and family so that they can do the same! Support Restorative Farms in expanding their impact by making sure to vote before 10/15/20!

According to a 2017 City of Dallas report from the Office of Economic Development, “Almost 20% of the Dallas County population faces food insecurity and lacks needed fruits and vegetables in their diet.” Restorative Farms is addressing this issue by establishing a sustainable urban farming system in South Dallas.

At the core of this system is the Seedling Farm at the MLK Community Center, which offers professional advice to local growers and provides them with a reliable source of affordable seedlings. Those in the greater Dallas area can purchase seedlings from the farm through Restorative Farm’s GroBox program. All proceeds from the sales of Groboxes are reinvested back into the system, thus supporting the sustainability of the nonprofit’s efforts. Due to the popularity of their GroBoxes, Restorative Farms has been able to subsidize boxes for community members and local churches to grow fresh produce in their own backyards. Moreover, the Seedling Farm’s various initiatives have created several jobs for community members, including a seedling manager, farm manager, seedling growers, and GroBox delivery drivers.

The second phase of Restorative Farm’s multi-stage plan is the Hatcher Station Training and Community Farm, which launched in March 2020. Hatcher Farms will serve as an aggregation hub that will package and sell CSA boxes with produce from local farmers. This will provide farmers with easier access to the market and help them reap more value for their product. Restorative Farms will offer CSA boxes to community members for a reduced price, and one of their partners will provide guidance on healthy ways to cook the produce. Additionally, the Farm will act as a training ground to teach local citizens how to grow and harvest nutritious food.

Looking ahead, Dr. Owen Lynch, co-founder of Restorative Farms and a Hunt Institute Senior Fellow, says that the goal is to scale the organization by creating multiple farms in the South Dallas area, similar to Hatcher Farms, that will be a sustainable source for both jobs and local production of food.

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.

September 29, 2020February 28, 2022

The Kijiji Project, Tanzania

Clara Ford, CEO of Kijiji Innovative Sustainable Solutions, Kasisa Village, a rural village in Tanzania

The Hunt Institute’s Global Development Lab partnered with Jessie Zarazaga, Ph.D, Director of the Master of Arts in Sustainability and Development from Lyle School of Engineering, to work with Clara Ford, Founder, President, and CEO of Kijiji Innovative Sustainable Solutions (KISS) and MASD alumni on what we call the Kijiji Project.

Born in Kasisa Village, a rural village in the East African country of Tanzania, Ford is especially motivated to improve the quality of life of its residents. Ford has directed her efforts toward building a community center with goals of reducing cyclical poverty and empowering the local people with technical skills. The locals of Kasisa Village are stakeholders in the planned center, which will function as a testing ground for social impact implementation in their community. This partnership for community development is a core value for Ford, the KISS Board of Directors, and the Hunt Institute.

Zarazaga explains the importance of this project, saying, “The energy and focus invested in the Kijiji project is valuable for the village of Kasisa, Tanzania, but it is equally valuable for the skills of my students, as future sustainability professionals. It is not enough to talk about sustainability, it is not an abstract activity. Each solution is embedded in a real situation with people and territory; this is where learning takes place.”

“The opportunity to work with Clara, who connects those in the village, where her father was born, with her classmates in MASD, is unusual and powerful. I have a deep connection with Africa for my own family history and find it emotionally powerful to be able to share that passion with the SMU student team.” – Zarazaga

This project experienced considerable delays at the onset of the Spring Semester’s COVID-19 response, including a canceled trip to a conference for Zarazaga, a campus shutdown, and the steep learning curve for doing remote work on a global scale. Despite these challenges, Zarazaga says, “Covid, and the necessity to work at a distance, made us learn how much we really can do remotely. Now we see that connecting to Dar es Salaam (near the Kasisa village) is no harder than connecting to my office at SMU. Our way of collaborating is changing: we are working with Tanzanian students and professionals more than we had planned or anticipated; this is good for the sustainability of the project in powerful ways.”

Phase I wrapped up over the Summer Session with remote work, and Phase II is in progress during the Fall Semester with a hybrid system of remote and in-person work. The teams in both countries continue to find resolve and resilience to serve a higher purpose–designing access to a higher quality of life for community members in the Kasisa Village of Tanzania. Next week, we will share the findings of Phase I through the Hunt Digest, Building Fences to Build Connections.

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.

September 15, 2020February 28, 2022

Why We Do What We Do: Part II

Daily, a steady stream of student workers can be seen coming in and out of the Hunt Institute. They find creative ways to orchestrate meetings, stay connected with colleagues working remotely, and keep a positive attitude amidst a world that at times can feel turned upside down. Fanned out across the Institute’s main meeting area are carefully-positioned seating arrangements designed to facilitate the traditional “Town Hall” Monday Meeting while accommodating appropriate distancing and staying under the ten attendee limit. Seats are positioned in an effort to simulate a circle, including the students working remotely who attend the meeting via Zoom. Their faces can be seen on the TV mounted on the wall by the students seated in the Institute.

The Assistant Director, Corrie Harris, leads the meeting with the Undergraduate Program Manager, Manuela Murillo Sanchez. The communications team recommended a discussion on the theme “Pushing Through” for the Fall semester. It was unanimous; everyone agreed it was the best way to describe the present circumstance of juggling the pursuit of normalcy and the pandemic. Mariana Midolo, the Creative Development Lead, said, “The hardships of this time right now affect us as a team. That is why we want to focus on pushing through together.” Cullen Blanchfield, the Communications Team Lead, chimed in and said, “I think this theme is effective on a societal level, but outside of that, on an Institute level we have obviously gone through a lot of changes with more changes to come for the team, which means we are definitely going to have to push through together.”

The group continued to discuss the impact of the phrase. Varsha Appaji, the Researchers Team Lead, said, “I think it is a really great theme and I am glad that we are doing it. I think it would be great to emphasize that a lot of our work has to do with sustainability and promoting societal equality and inclusion which definitely fits in with the times right now.” Heads nodded across the group.

Mohammed Njie, Undergraduate Researcher and Social Entrepreneur, said, “I think it is important to realize that here at the Institute we are involved in a lot of projects where we can impact the lives of a lot of different people. For their sake, it is very important that we push through… they are waiting for us.”

Following the meeting, teams formed breakout sessions to plan their week, set priorities and goals, and brainstorm steps to push through together.

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

September 9, 2020February 28, 2022

Mike Brown, Hunt Institute Fellow

Mike Brown, EIT, CEM, LEED AP BD+C, Energy Systems Design Engineer at HKS, Inc. and Fellow in the Hunt Institute

As Energy Analyst & Energy Systems Design Engineer with HKS, Mike is an Energy Engineer working alongside architects and engineers to help building owners/developers create high-performance buildings that save energy and are healthy for the environment. Mike joined the Hunt Institute as a Fellow and an Inclusive Economy Consortium Leadership Council Member.

An Engineer in Training, LEED Accredited Professional, and Building Energy Modeling Professional, he has been in the green building industry for over 7 years collaborating on projects all over the U.S., for a variety of project types.

Utilizing building energy modeling and other innovative sustainability tools, he has been able to help owners save an estimated $7.2M in energy cost and over $1.3 M in water costs on both LEED and non-LEED projects.

Passionate about his profession, Michael is currently involved in a variety of professional organizations including Board Member of Texas U.S. Green Building Council, Member of North Texas National Association of Energy Engineers, and the National Society of Black Engineers.

When asked why he was drawn to work with the Hunt Institute he replied, ” I’m passionate about applying my acquired technical skills and talents to building projects that contribute to the health of individuals, the community, and the planet. My work allows communities and clients to develop the design, construction, and operation of highly efficient and sustainable projects. By solving technical and constructability issues, we can save energy and water, which have a direct effect on depleting resources, polluting the environment, and equitable human ecosystems.”

AFFILIATIONS
International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA)
North Texas Association of Energy Engineers (NTAEE)
American Society of Heating Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers
(ASHRAE)
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
US Green Building Council (USGBC)

LEADERSHIP
North Texas Region (Texas Chapter) US Green Building Council
(Board Member 2015 –present)
DFW National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Professionals
(President 2015-2016, Finance Chair 2016-2017)
International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA)
(Vice President 2018-present)
North Texas Association of Energy Engineers (NTAEE)
(Social Media Committee Chair 2018 –present)

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.