Category: News

By Tamara Straus

There are three innovations without which, CellScope—a breakthrough microscopy project of Dan Fletcher’s bioengineering lab at UC Berkeley—would not be possible. They are also part of landscape of innovations that may revolutionize global healthcare.

The first is the 3D printer. Before these printers were mainstreamed, students in Professor Fletcher’s lab assembled prototype mobile microscopes from sheets of plastic that had to be cut and glued by hand. New engineering designs usually took weeks and were difficult to modify quickly. With the lab’s Stratasys 3D printer, polished prototypes are now being created in as little as a day.

The second innovation that seeded Fletcher’s leap forward in microscopy is energy-efficient LED lights. Whereas traditional microscopes rely on powerful arc lamps that cost $200 per bulb and burn less than 300 hours, the CellScope uses long-lasting LEDs that cost as little as $2.50 per bulb, provide up to 20,000 hours of use, and function on battery power in areas with unreliable electricity.

The third and probably most important innovation on which CellScope depends is the mobile phone. CellScope has been able to piggyback on tens of billions of dollars of R&D investment by cell phone companies, which have resulted in, among other things, powerful built-in cameras and the mass production of affordable components. As Fletcher pointed out in a Sept 20, 2013 Wall Street Journal op-ed:

“New phones with larger screens and better cameras may not markedly improve our lives, but the push for more powerful devices—and manufacturers’ willingness to respond to demand—is on track to improve the lives of millions of people living in extreme poverty. That’s because customers set on having the latest, greatest smartphones are driving a dramatic decrease in cost and increase in functionality that will benefit people whose total annual income is often less than the cost of a single phone.”

Back in 2006, when one-megapixel cameras started appearing on phones, Fletcher challenged students in his Optics and Microscopy class to see if the camera of a cell phone could be modified to capture images of human cells similar to those captured on his lab’s $150,000 research microscope. Continuing the project the summer after the class ended, Fletcher and a group of students attached a standard set of lenses to his sister’s Nokia phone and were able to image blood cells, malaria parasites, and the bacteria that causes tuberculosis. It was one of those moments that scientists dream of.

“We had discussions, during the course, with doctors about how broadly microscopy is used in clinical medicine, particularly in the developing world. I hadn’t realized that basic optical imaging is still so important to disease diagnosis and that the most definitive diagnosis for many diseases is seeing the actual disease-causing agent in a patient sample,” said Fletcher. “That’s when I realized that if we could do microscopy properly on a mobile phone, the device could be very useful.”

Not only was the potential for disease diagnosis outside of hospital infrastructure considerable, Fletcher and his team knew that mobile manufacturers were in a race to integrate phone cameras with computation, SMS, email, Internet access, and friendly user interfaces. In a few short years, this would mean that CellScope could provide diagnostic solutions at pretty much the same rate as any digitally enhanced microscope in a well-equipped hospital.

Members of the Fletcher lab could even foresee a time when patients’ blood or sputum smears could be imaged with a mobile digital microscope and then—using a computer algorithm for automated disease detection—proceed immediately to treatment, without the patient stepping foot in a city hospital or medical lab. It would mean, for example, that tuberculosis, which annually kills more than 2 million people and sickens approximately 15 million, could be tackled in places where laboratory facilities are scarce but mobile phone infrastructure is extensive. It would mean that a new point-of-care diagnostic was possible for many diseases that go undiagnosed in many countries, ranging from debilitating eye disorders to chronic blood parasites.

The Fletcher Lab began making its case for the potential impact of CellScope slowly, as it was a side project in a lab focused on making cutting-edge biophysical measurements of cells. In May 2007, CellScope won a Big Ideas@Berkeley award of $8,500, and in January 2008 it received a $100,000 grant from Microsoft Research. By May, The Economist, ABC, Wired, and other media had picked up news of CellScope. In April 2009, the team won another $100,000 grant from Intel’s Inspire-Empower Competition, followed by support from the Vodafone Americas Foundation. And in July 2009, it published its first academic journal paper—in PLoS ONE, documenting how CellScope captured images of the parasite that causes malaria in humans, the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, and sickle-shaped red blood cells. The team also showed in a 2012 National Institutes of Health paper how their images of tuberculosis bacteria could be automatically counted using image recognition software.

By 2011, CellScope had raised a total of $500,000, thanks to additional grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies and the Center for Information Technology Research as well as the Vodafone Americas Foundation, and was ready to field test its first device.

Its first large field experiments took place at health clinics in Hanoi Province, Vietnam. In partnership with the Vietnam National Tuberculosis Program and the University of California, San Francisco, Fletcher’s group deployed 15 CellScopes for a full year, to evaluate their uptake and ability to detect TB at health care facilities with little medical or IT infrastructure. The Hanoi Province pilots showed that community health care workers were able to operate the CellScope and that disease diagnosis met the standard quality available at major Vietnamese hospitals. This work motivated development of a second generation device that is being tested in Hanoi.

Recently, another CellScope device was field-tested in Cameroon where the Gates Foundation and the U.S. National Institutes of Health had been struggling to find a way to restart mass drug administration programs to fight the roundworms that cause river blindness and lymphatic filariasis. The problem health workers faced was that patients were at risk of serious health complications, including death, if they were given river blindness medication while co-infected with the Loa loa worm. But to test for Loa loa, health workers needed to draw several milliliters of blood and prepare two blood smears for observation under a traditional microscope—costly and time-consuming steps impossible to carry out across the country. Health programs were basically stuck; they could not proceed with large-scale treatment.

Then in February 2014, CellScope trials of 120 people proved adept at counting Loa loa worms, using only a finger prick of blood and a few minutes of analysis time. The trials also validated CellScope’s automated detection of worms in whole blood, and thus the elimination of time-consuming lab diagnosis. Larger tests involving thousands of patients are planned for 2015.

“The Loa loa trials may be the ones that allow us to bring the CellScope to scale in developing regions,” said Clay Reber, a UC Berkeley master’s student in bioengineering who has been on the CellScope project since 2010. “They could show that the CellScope meets conventional diagnostic methods and will be cheaper and easier to use than current methods. They could enable the much-needed mass drug administration programs against river blindness to restart. Worldwide, there are 130 million people at risk of being infected with the river blindness worms and about 13 million people with Loa loa.”

Another testing ground for CellScope devices is Thailand, where there are only 648 ophthalmologists for the entire country (1.52 doctors per 100,000), with most located in the urban centers of Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis, which disproportionally affects HIV patients and can lead to blindness, is treatable, but infection rates are high and diagnosis rates are low. Since 2012, community health workers and other non-specialists have a half dozen Ocular CellScopes to test their utility for patients at risk of CMS. Results are forthcoming.

Professor Fletcher admits it’s challenging to address the many diagnostic opportunities that CellScope could address simultaneously. “The key,” he said, “is great collaborators—great clinical collaborators who have embraced the technology, contributed to its design and implementation, and allowed us to plug into existing field studies and test sites with this alternate technology.”

With so many potential applications and field tests for CellScope, it is no wonder that the team has at times felt overstretched. CellScopes have been sent and used literally around the world. In Hawaii, the education nonprofit Kahi Kai is using the mobile microscopes to collect data for various water quality indicators, such as plankton. In Egypt, Dr. Annika Guse of Heidelberg University took CellScope for coral reef monitoring. There is even a CellScope in Antarctica, and Parisian artist Geneviève Anhoury is opening a show this December using images taken with a CellScope.

Perhaps the strongest example of CellScope’s wide applicability and embrace is its for-profit spinout, CellScope, Inc. In June 2013, Khosla Ventures invested $1 million in the company founded in 2010 by Erik Douglas and Amy Sheng, two former students of Professor Fletcher’s. Since then, the company has secured additional funding on the promise it will create a “smartphone-enabled digital first aid kit.” CellScope Inc.’s first product is an iPhone otoscope that enables parents and physicians to remotely diagnose ear infections in children, an ailment that results in an estimated 20 million U.S. doctors visit per year. The release date for the otoscope is set for 2015. Douglas said 800 doctors and clinicians have been testing it since last December, and 100 California families have been using the device at home.

For Fletcher, the CellScope represents not so much new science as a new approach to the old problem of disease diagnosis, one that moves clinical microscopy forward by solving integration, implementation, and usability challenges. “I think it’s really exciting to see how a technology that has come from an academic lab, was created on a 3D printer, and is intended for use by minimally skilled healthcare workers can help someone in a developing region receive better healthcare and maybe even help seed an industry here in the U.S,” he said. Fletcher has no objections to the domestically oriented for-profit spinout, but hopes “there is continued attention—and funding—to support solving the often very different healthcare problems of developing countries with these devices.”

Fletcher’s mind tends toward scientific skepticism, toward the need for real-world proofs and repeatable results. But he is willing, after some urging, to forecast his device’s possible impact. “My hope is that CellScope will present a new way of delivering healthcare,” he said. “It has the potential to provide much faster access to disease diagnostic information as well as more regular information about our own healthcare. Our technology is part of a fundamental change in healthcare that will see each of us able to take much better care of ourselves by collecting and analyzing personal health data with devices like mobile phones. And CellScope is just one device in that direction. The mobile healthcare revolution has begun.”

By Sybil Lewis

A dozen UC Berkeley graduate students eager to learn about different campus initiatives on international development participated in the second “Innovation Crawl” Nov. 20, hosted by the Development Impact Lab (DIL) and the Blum Center for Developing Economies.

With the support from the U.S Agency for International Development, DIL hosts events such as the Innovation Crawl and funds projects that are at the intersection of technology and international development. The Innovation Crawl was organized by DIL’s Idea Team—a group of interdisciplinary graduate students dedicated to bringing together students, researchers, and faculty working on international development and promoting cross-campus exchange.

“Top-tier research, professional development, and graduate initiatives in international development are going on across this campus, but the average individual misses them,” said Pierce Gordon a member of the DIL Idea Team and MS/PhD Student in the Energy and Resources Group. “DIL’s Idea Team, which was founded last year, aims to gather the communities passionate about global poverty issues and to introduce the great work being completed on this campus.”

Participants at the Innovation Crawl come from diverse interests, countries, and disciplines. They included Master’s and PhD students in Public Health, Business Administration, the School of Technology, Development Practice, and Public Policy.

“The university, like much of the world, operates in silos. For someone like myself who is on the policy side of social issues, I see the importance of understanding what everyone is doing in different departments,” said Sasha Feldstein, a first year Masters of Public Policy student at the Goldman School of Public Policy.

Inspired by the spirit of “bar crawls,” the Innovation Crawl included a tour of four labs and centers on campus.

The first stop was the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), which focuses on four core initiatives—Energy, Health Care, Intelligence Infrastructure, and Data and Democracy—to address pressing social and environmental issues facing California. Brandie Nonnecke, a research and development manager of the Data and Democracy core, presented the California Report Card, an online platform that allows visitors to grade the state’s performance on policy issues such as immigration and higher education. The report card was developed by CITRIS in collaboration with the office of Lt. Governor Gavin Newson to harness technology for increased democratic participation.

The group crawled onward to the Berkeley Institute of Design, where Mechanical Engineering Professor Alice M. Agonino showed different human-centered, interdisciplinary design projects, ranging from data collection on Massive Open Online Courses to sustainable design projects in Native American communities.

The final stop was at the Visualization and Control of Biological Assembly Lab, also known as the Fletcher Lab, where students got a first-hand look at tools being engineered to improve the landscape of disease diagnosis around the world. Frankie Myers, a research scientist at the Fletcher Lab, presented CellScope, a technology that turns the camera of a mobile phone into a high-quality light microscope to image patient samples and diagnose diseases such as tuberculosis. Ali Mohammed, a Somali healthcare practitioner who attended the Innovation Crawl, said that in his home country devices such as CellScope could be crucial, as many deaths occur from curable diseases that are not diagnosed due to lack of equipment, energy, or trained medical professionals.

The DIL Idea Team plans to have more Innovation Crawls that are tailored to themes such as sustainability and health and that address the changing field of international development.

By Andrea Guzman

A 2013/2014 UNESCO report found that 250 million children across the globe are not learning basic literacy and numeracy skills. Of these, 57 million children—a disproportionate number of whom are from disadvantaged backgrounds, live in conflict-afflicted countries, or are disabled or simply girls—aren’t enrolled in school at all.

Big Ideas@Berkeley and USAID’s Global Development Lab are aiming to change these numbers through the Mobiles for Reading contest category by inviting students to develop novel technology-based innovations to enhance reading skills for youth in developing countries. This new contest category is sponsored by All Children Reading:  A Grand Challenge for Development, a partnership between USAID, World Vision and the Australian Government.

The creation of the category comes amidst a growing international movement to use mobile technologies as tools for enhancing children’s reading skills. Numerous studies have shown that children who do not develop reading skills during early primary education are on a lifetime trajectory of limited educational progress and economic opportunities. Meanwhile, mobile devices are ubiquitous, even in low-income regions. According to the International Telecommunications Union, 96.2% of people on the planet have mobile cellular telephone subscriptions.

To Rebecca Leege, project director of the All Children Reading initiative, mobile technology can be a particularly effective tool to disseminate local language instruction materials. “Evidence confirms that children best learn to read in the language with which they are most familiar,” said Leege in an email. “However, many children enter schools where they are taught in a foreign language and have little or no access to mother tongue reading resources, making it difficult for them to gain the foundational skills needed to learn to read. This, coupled with low engagement from family or their community to support their learning to read, limits the reinforcement needed to develop a proficient reader.”

Leege added: “A basic phone or tablet can provide new and vital mother-tongue reading resources to engage children’s curiosity and interest in reading in communities with sparse access to books.”

While mobiles for reading remains a new approach, some programs have illustrated promising results. A pilot program for illiterate women conducted by the Afghan Institute of Learning showed that between May 2011 and May 2012 reading via mobile halved the time in which students were able to attain literacy at a basic 2 level. Teachers sent daily texts to students, who read the incoming messages and responded via SMS, demonstrating reading comprehension and writing skills. Researchers found that cell phone texts generated excitement among students, as literacy became not an “abstract skill” of alleged importance, but a tangible skill that could bring the students to “another level of understanding of the world around them.”

Over the past few years, a growing number of NGOs, academic researchers, social entrepreneurs, donors, and policymakers have begun to develop and support mobiles for reading technology. On October 15-16 2014, USAID and the mEducation Alliance held the third annual Mobiles for Education Alliance Symposium in Washington, DC, which brought together 185 participants from the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Middle East to discuss trends and topics to advance the field.

Although participants repeatedly underscored that technology and mobile devices are exciting new tools to foster inclusive and quality education, many also pointed out that the human element is crucial. “What matters is the human interaction,” said Brian Gonzalez, the symposium’s keynote speaker and director of the global education sector at Intel. “But not one-to-one, but one-to-many in order to improve the way teachers teach and children learn.”

Leege believes that among the greatest barriers to innovation in mobile reading are access to electricity and connectivity. “To assist those learning to read in low-resource settings, low-cost and open source materials easily maintained by the user are vital,” she said. “We would like to see student innovation that addresses unreliable—or absent—electricity and connectivity in low-resource communities.”

The Mobiles for Reading contest is open to over 500,000 students across 18 universities, from Uganda to Australia (for a full list of eligible universities, visit the Mobiles for Reading webpage.) Students who wish to participate must develop novel mobile technology-based innovations to enhance reading scores for early grade children in developing countries. Alternatively, proposals may use existing mobile-based technologies to improve early grade reading scores by adapting or applying those technologies in new and innovative ways. A five-page pre-proposal is due November 13 to the bigideascontest.org website. Three to to six student teams to be selected to continue on to the full proposal round in the spring. Winners will receive awards up to $10,000 to go toward further developing their idea.

“We hope to capitalize on student’s creativity, knowledge, personal experience of learning to read, as well as their desire to innovate for a better world,” Leege said.

By Abhik Pramanik

On October 20, the Blum Center for Developing Economies hosted a talk by Alex Thier, head of the Policy, Planning, and Learning Bureau at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Entitled “Ending Extreme Poverty: What UC Berkeley Can Do,” Thier’s talk centered around the Post-2015 Development Agenda, USAID’s role in the development community, and the need for bilateral and multilateral donors to partner with innovative entrepreneurs to make a difference.

Thier reminded the packed hall that today roughly 1 billion people, or 18 percent of the world population, live in extreme poverty, which the World Bank defines as earning or consuming less than a $1.25 day. Although these numbers may seem alarmingly large, extreme poverty rates are actually down from more than 40 percent in 1990. This reduction represents a fulfillment of Millennium Development Goal 1: to halve the rate of extreme poverty by 2015.

With the imminent expiration of the Millennium Development Goals, the international community is now debating development goals for the next 15 years. Yet one objective is clear: almost every bilateral and multilateral organization, including the World Bank, USAID, the European Union, and the African Union, has set a target of bringing the number of people living in extreme poverty to zero by 2030.

Thier argued that the elimination of extreme poverty is a distinct possibility. While some scholars have talked about severe poverty as inevitable, the remarkable economic movement over the past two decades—which saw 700 million people lifted out of extreme poverty—proves otherwise. Moreover, the political will to tackle the problem seems to be growing. In his 2013 State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama declared that the U.S. would band together with its allies and partner to end extreme poverty by 2030. Additionally, both USAID and the World Bank have changed their mission statements within the past year to commit to ending extreme poverty.

Though naysayers still exist, Thier said he believes that the outcome ultimately rests on choices—at the individual, village, institutional, and country level to fight for economic development. He noted that the biggest obstacles to ending extreme poverty are fragile institutions and weak governance. Citing the examples of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Botswana, and the Republic of Korea, he summarized how each country took a divergent path since enduring various weaknesses in the 1960s.

Due to rapid industrialization, foreign capital investment, and intensive manufacturing, South Korea is now a high-income country, with a higher life expectancy than the U.S., and it has created its own agency for international development. The DRC, on the other hand, has experienced botched governmental policies leading to debt crises and a bloody civil conflict that has raged for decades. As a result, citizens of the DRC are currently among the world’s poorest. In another example, Botswana has experienced years of high growth followed by sharp economic downturns and even sharper rebounds because of its over-reliance on extractive industries. The lack of economic diversification has hindered Botswana’s development, but the country is still much better off than the DRC. Thier said he believes that the key distinction among these nations’ economic growth is their level of good governance and effective institutional capacity.

As a result of these insights, USAID recently adopted a “New Model of Development,” which centers on leveraging local ownership, engaging in public-private partnerships, scaling up innovative ideas, and using cutting-edge technology to deliver measurable results. To illustrate how this works, Thier talked about two USAID programs: Feed the Future and Power Africa. The former, started in 2009 in response to the global spike in food prices, works with local farmers to increase their crop quality and yields. The initiative currently runs in 19 countries and already has improved nutrition for 12 million children and pushed 7 million farmers out of extreme poverty. Power Africa was launched in 2013 to help the 400 million Africans who currently lack access to electricity. It aims to double the number of people with access to electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa through the use of innovative financial tools and by applying the lessons learned from the Feed the Future initiative. Within a year, Power Africa has leveraged $25 billion in capital with more than half coming from African nations and the private sector.

Thier ended his talk with a plea to the next generation of problem solvers. He said he hoped UC Berkeley students would heed his call to develop new ideas and technologies to help make development assistance more effective, so that by 2030 extreme poverty could be eliminated. Some of this work is being done by the Blum Center’s Development Impact Lab (DIL), which received a $20 million grant from USAID in 2012 to help transform the way universities source, design, evaluate, and scale up technologies that have a potential to alleviate extreme poverty. Currently, 90 DIL innovations are being tested and scaled in 30 countries, involving more than 500 interdisciplinary students, and over 400 industry, government, and social sector experts.

By Sybil Lewis

In the summer of 2012, an interdisciplinary research group at UC Berkeley set out to study the demand for and effects of community-level, solar-powered microgrids in Western Kenya. To the surprise of the members of the group—led by Professors Edward Miguel (Economics), Catherine Wolfram (Business), and Eric Brewer (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)—they could not identify many communities that were truly “off grid.” There just always seemed to be an electricity line nearby.

As a result, the group shifted its focus to populations who were “under grid”—in other words, people whose homes and businesses were near but not directly connected to the grid network. In partnership with Innovations for Poverty Action, the research group began the time-consuming process of mapping out 150 communities in order to gauge each household’s relation to the grid. The census data quickly began to generate a lot of interest from local policymakers and led to the July 2014 working paper “Barriers to Electrification for ‘Under Grid’ Households in in Rural Kenya,” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

To make available the significant economics and engineering findings of the NBER paper, supported by UC Berkeley’s Development Impact Lab, the Center for Effective Global Action, and the Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions, we asked lead author Ken Lee, a PhD student in Agricultural and Resource Economics, the following questions.

1. What is the main difference between “off grid” and “under grid” electricity connections, and what policy implications does this distinction have for African countries?

The International Energy Agency estimates that in Sub-Saharan Africa, 600 million people live without access to electricity. What follows quite naturally is an assumption that most of these people are “off grid”—or too far away to realistically connect to a national electricity network. As a result, we’ve seen growing support for off grid, distributed energy technologies, most of which are best suited for regions without access to grid power. Yet many countries are expanding the reach of their national grid infrastructure. In Kenya, for example, there has been a recent push to connect all of the country’s secondary schools, health clinics, and markets, suggesting that a large proportion of the population is now within walking distance of an electricity connection.

We are hoping to change the framework in which we view this problem. It is possible that a substantial portion of the 600 million people without electricity are not “off grid,” but are “under grid,” or close enough to connect to a low-voltage line at a relatively low cost, and this is what we illustrate in our research paper. This distinction is important because the policy implications for off grid and under grid communities are quite different. In under grid communities, it may be preferable to focus on supporting policies that will leverage existing infrastructure with the goal of increasing “last-mile” grid connectivity.

2. Your research showed that despite Kenya’s strong push for rural electrification, national electrification levels remain below 30 percent. What have been some of the biggest challenges in effectively connecting rural communities to power grids?

The most important barrier to grid connectivity has been the high price of an electricity connection. Currently, the price of a household connection is $410, which is incredibly expensive even by American standards. In a country where gross national income per capita is $1,730, this price is simply unaffordable for poor, rural households. There are several other barriers to electrification as well. For example, even if the price were lower, it may still be necessary to provide households with an option to finance their connections, so that they could pay back the principal amount over time. Finally, rural households in Kenya tend to be spread apart and there are few straight lines through which one could easily run a power line. This makes it challenging for electricity planners to build out cost-effective low voltage networks, particularly when they are unable to connect all of the neighboring households at the same time.

3. What effect does reducing energy poverty have on other aspects of development, such as income, well-being, and education?

There is no question that access to modern energy is a key input for economic development. For example, electricity opens up the possibility for households to extend their lighting hours, changing the way that people use their time, and allowing children to (hopefully) study later at night. It also allows households to engage in all kinds of new income-generating activities. In one of our study sites, we met a woman who had already begun selling cold fruit smoothies to her neighbors, within a month of gaining an electricity connection.

Given the high cost of rural electrification, there is a need to rigorously document the socioeconomic impacts of modern energy. There is also a need to better understand how newly connected households will consume energy moving forward. Our research team is currently implementing a randomized evaluation of grid connections in Western Kenya, and through this project, we hope to shed additional light on these questions.

4. What are the options available to poor rural Kenyan households to finance electricity installation and continued use?

Currently, the options available for households to finance installations and appliance purchases are limited. Although the national utility had offered a financing plan in the past, the program encountered many challenges. There is, however, high demand for financed energy solutions. The recent success of the “pay-as-you-go” solar home system offered by M-KOPA provides an interesting example. Households are paying as much as $200 over the course of a year to finance a limited solar home system product. What makes their financial model work is that the daily payments can be processed through the M-PESA mobile money platform. So while there is a general need for additional financing options for grid connections, the example illustrates that there is an equal need to develop innovative billing and collection technologies for financed grid connections that will incentivize both lenders and borrowers in a sustainable way.

5. How can governments in Africa design projects to improve national electrification levels? 

Our study region in Western Kenya has high population density and extensive grid coverage, making it an ideal setting in which we would expect to observe rapid rural electrification. Yet the vast majority of the 15,000 rural households and businesses that we document remain unconnected despite being located within connecting distance of a power line. So the real issue is not the lack of an electricity supply, but the fact that both the price of a connection and the cost of supplying that connection is prohibitively high. It just doesn’t make sense for a utility to spend lots of money to connect a single household in a remote, rural community, even if the grid is physically present.

The most promising strategies for improving national electrification levels will vary from country to country. Wherever there is grid coverage, however, governments may wish to consider policies that will leverage existing infrastructure, while taking advantage of the economies of scale in supplying last-mile connections. Connecting multiple households at the same time would not only reduce transportation costs but also would allow utilities to plan local distribution networks that minimize costs. Coordinating these connections poses the collective action problem that would need to be solved through a government policy, such as a mass connection program. The idea of subsidizing last-mile electricity connections to households is, of course, nothing new. This is how many developed nations, including the United States, reached universal electrification.

By Andrea Guzman

In 2010, Sergio Venegas Marin, an ambitious student at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento, was aiming to transfer. He looked at eight universities, and settled on UC Berkeley because of its Global Poverty & Practice (GPP) minor.

Born and raised in Cadiz, Spain, Venegas said the GPP minor attracted him because poverty and social problems were part of his everyday life. The youngest of three children, he was raised by a single mother who worked several part-time jobs.  Venegas said it seemed unfair that his mother had to work 20-hour days sometimes in order to provide basic necessities for her children.

“It was complicated to make a living,” Venegas, now 25, said. “It was difficult and it didn’t feel right that it was that difficult.”

In Spain, Venegas’ family and many of his neighbors relied on social assistance programs to make ends meet. But when more conservative political parties took office, the programs were cut, school dropout rates increased, and many youth became involved with crime and drugs. Cadiz, a southern port city that has long struggled with high unemployment, is now experiencing rates of 40 percent. Venegas said his old friends from Cadiz are living “completely different lives”—marked by low job prospects and economic struggle.

When he was 17, Venegas’ life changed. He followed his mom and dad to Sacramento, California, where his father’s family lived. There, he learned English and enrolled in community college.

At Cal, he majored in economics and took as many classes with a development focus as possible. He said the GPP minor enabled him to channel his passion for social and economic justice. He found like-minded fellow students—people with similar experiences and interests and who sought to use their education to reduce poverty and inequality in the United States and around the world.

After graduating in 2012, Venegas searched for jobs and discovered that many social sector positions were unpaid. Frustrated and worried about money, he applied to investment banking and private sector jobs. But at the interviews, he realized those jobs were not for him. Seeing the lack of minority professionals reminded him of the social problems that need to be addressed. He decided to turn down a $75,000 job offer, and worked part-time as a campus host at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and as a part-time instructional assistant at his community college in Sacramento.

“I was very frustrated, because I felt every opportunity in the development field was open only to people who didn’t need to be paid, who already had an economic advantage,” said Venegas.

But he soon landed a job as an analyst at a consulting firm called Mission Analytics, which evaluates and provides technical assistance to government social welfare programs. Venegas not only found a way to influence public policy through the job, he opened the door to fellow GPP students to do the same. Two other members of the Mission Analytics team are GPP alums. He said the firm chose to hire the GPP students because of their unique skills and education.

“I think it’s the ability of looking at a problem from different standpoints,” he said. “GPP students have a way of mixing everything they have learned. They are able to care about the methods but also the end goal we want to accomplish.”

In the future, Venegas intends to get a Master’s in Public Policy and return to Spain to help create a more participatory democracy and a stronger welfare state. He advises students still in the GPP minor to get involved in their communities and pursue their passions before and after graduation.

“Instead of wasting your time and just wanting to graduate, you should get involved,” Venegas said. “Being passionate prepares you to take on the world.”

By Tamara Straus

Some people have called it the personalization of higher education. Others see it as the natural evolution of pedagogy at a world-class public research university. Lina Nilsson doesn’t disagree with either of these interpretations, but she definitely sees on-campus, in-class social impact work as “the changing face of education.”

“Connecting academic learning to real-world issues and problem solving is something that students are demanding,” said Nilsson, director of innovation at Blum Center for Developing Economies. “And students can’t be expected to pull together all the pieces needed for their ideas to have impact. In addition to subject-matter expertise, they also need coaching and mentorship. They need to learn by example. And there’s no reason that can’t be made available to them at the university.”

These are among the reasons Nilsson launched a new Blum Center-sponsored course this fall called “Social Innovation OnRamp.” Created in part to provide a space to accelerate the projects of UC Berkeley students who have won the prestigious Big Ideas@Berkeley contest, the course provides an overview of a broad range of skills for the creation, evaluation, implementation, and growth of early-stage projects that serve the public good. The course also comes with an OnRamp website that provides resources for budding social innovators to find funding, startup and training programs, and recommended reading.

In its very first offering, the OnRamp course quickly oversubscribed. In October, UC Berkeley’s Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation awarded the course a teaching grant. Several of the students, such as Political Science Major Michael Alexander Clark, have unabashedly said, “It is the best class I’ve taken at Cal.” Part of the energy in the class comes from Nilsson herself, who while a post-doc in bioengineering at UC Berkeley, created a startup called Tekla Labs, which provides guidelines for medical professionals in developing countries to build lab equipment using locally available supplies. For this, Nilsson was named a MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35. But Nilsson herself admits that she and her Tekla Labs colleagues “could have done a lot of things better, if we had learned a few things earlier.” This need to learn from both successes and failures has shaped the theory and the practical drive of the OnRamp course.

The OnRamp’s high-energy atmosphere also comes from the students themselves. They are a mix of graduate and undergraduate students representing departments as diverse as business, political science, computer science, psychology, information management and systems, mechanical engineering, applied mathematics, anthropology, environmental economics, energy resource, and peace and conflict studies. Some projects focus on mental health; some on agriculture; others are pushing along ideas that might “innovate” or “disrupt,” to use the parlance of social innovation, student career support and homelessness. About half the student teams in the class are focused on U.S. social impact, and the other half on developing countries.

Along with Nilsson, Course Facilitators Kate Fenimore and James Roditi, and a dozen guest speakers serve as both cheerleaders and cautioners for student innovation. “What we try to say is: ‘Here’s a scaffold of skills and insights you need to master and evaluate if you want to have meaningful impact as a social entrepreneur,’” explained Fenimore. The course presents 12 such scaffolds, including: framing and pitching ideas; developing a theory of change; identifying, understanding, and communicating with stakeholders; understanding, maximizing, and measuring social impact; network, outreach, and communication; social impact concepts; product/service prototyping and design; execution and logistics; business models and legalities; and knowing when to pivot or quit. Every week, a practitioner engages the students in an hour-long discussion on these scaffolds, with the possibility of additional mentorship.

John Romankiewicz, a dual master’s degree student at the Energy & Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy, said he enrolled in OnRamp to move along his idea for The Food Bikery, which seeks to deploy a low capital, low footprint alternative to food trucks. He reasoned that food trucks, which are now a $1 billion industry in the U.S., may not be as green as many people think. They cost about $50,000 to outfit with a kitchen and generator, whereas food bikes cost around $5,000, and generate much lower emissions, take up less space, and serve as a more affordable pathway for budding chefs to showcase their talents. Eventually, Romankiewicz would like to see co-ops of food bikes in relatively flat, temperate cities like Berkeley and Austin that could share food storing and prepping facilities.

To put his idea into action, he and Jason Trager, a Cal mechanical engineering PhD student, built a prototype in 2013 made from recycled materials for a 150-pound, two-wheel trailer. They outfitted the trailer with a griddle and propane tank and rigged it to a standard street bike. Romankiewicz, who goes by the moniker “Sustainable John,” began to show up at parties and make Jian Bing, a Chinese egg crepe garnished with green onion and cilantro that he mastered while living in Beijing. He wrote a proposal for The Food Bikery, entered it in the Big Ideas contest, and won a $2,000 prize in May 2014. Two weeks later, he won another $2,000 prize from a food company called So Delicious, which was running a small sustainability grants competition on Twitter. “I have a minimum viable product,” he said. “I know it works. What I don’t know is if I can get around the regulatory issues.”

That’s where the OnRamp course comes in. Romankiewicz said the OnRamp has forced him to refine his pitch, research the regulatory hurdles for food bikes—which like food trucks would need to meet health and food sanitation requirements—and analyze the financials. He estimates that food bike owners could sell 30 to 40 meals per shift, taking in $200 to $400 in revenue, which, he said, “would come to about $25/hour, well above the minimum wage earned by kitchen workers.” Right now, the project’s greatest hurdle is refrigeration and sanitation. “Nobody wants to carry a refrigerator on their bike or drag a generator through the streets,” he said. So he needs to argue to city and county officials that food bikes should have a four-hour operation window, during which time a bike cook could load his trailer, arrive at his location, cook his meals, and call it quits before any food spoils.

The OnRamp class has served a similar prod for Tchiki Davis, a NIH-funded doctoral student in psychology. She has been working with her father, a software engineer, on a series of online games that train young people to focus on positive information. Davis is among a growing group of psychology researchers who believe that happiness, much like math or music, is a skill that can be learned—and that positive cognitive stimulation, such as looking repeatedly at a sea of smiling faces, can reduce stress. Her Lifenik games are based on peer-reviewed papers by psychology scholars like Derek M. Isaacowitz of Northeastern University and Mark W. Baldwin of McGill University, who have conducted repetitive visual training tests that have been shown to increase self-esteem and reduce stress.

“So much of our behavior is socially engineered in negative ways, but we can change our engineering,” said Davis. “Most people know that if we can retrain ourselves to regularly exercise, then we will improve our physical health. But it is also true that if we retrain ourselves to regularly think about the world in more effective ways, then we will improve our emotional health.”

Like Romankiewicz, Davis is a Big Ideas contest veteran seeking practical guidance. “I have the research training,” she explained, “but not the business training,” adding that what she has found in the OnRamp classes is quite different from for-profit business workshops. “My greatest hurdle is not necessarily understanding the market for the games,” she said. “It’s making sure the games are psychologically effective. It’s balancing the social impact and scalability aspects of the project.”

Davis is currently applying for a $450,000, two-year NIH grant to help build and test Lifenik games. Like her teacher Nilsson, she doesn’t intend to use her doctorate to pursue a tenure track academic career. “I want to turn research findings into actionable, user-centered products, tools, and interventions that improve people’s quality of life,” she said. “Right now, this project is my passion, and I intend to pursue it.”

An occasional series with Blum Center faculty, staff, students, visitors, and friends

Ananya Roy is Professor of City and Regional Planning, Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty & Practice, and Education Director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley. Among the most popular professors on campus, Roy has won multiple UC Berkeley teaching awards and was named California Professor of the Year by CASE/Carnegie Foundation in 2009. She has published extensively in the areas of international development, poverty and inequality, and global urbanism.

To provide greater access to Roy’s scholarship, the Blum Center asked her three questions about a recent article in the journal Cities entitled “‘The Anti-Poverty Hoax’: Development, pacification, and the making of community in the global 1960s,” which she co-authored with Stuart Schrader and Emma Shaw Crane. Professor Roy’s answers are below.

1. Why is the history of the word “community”—as used in poverty and development work—important?

Ananya Roy: The idea—and ideal—of community is central to poverty action, international development, and social justice organizing. In urban planning, I find that students see community development as a progressive space in and through which they can make social change. Similarly, in GPP [the Global Poverty & Practice minor at UC Berkeley], many of our students believe that acting at the scale of community and collaborating with community-based organizations is an ethical and responsible mode of poverty action. Yet, these young professionals and poverty activists are often frustrated once they are immersed in community action and community development. Our efforts to trace the history of U.S. community development are inspired by such aspirations and frustrations. In the Cities journal article, my colleagues and I wanted to show how the emergence of community development amidst the turmoil of the 1960s tells us something important about how and why community became the dominant concept for understanding and managing the urban geography of poverty (in the U.S. and elsewhere) and why it remains limited as an instrument of radical change. In other words, we hope that the history we narrate serves as an analytical framework for interrogating the consensus on community that seems to extend across various types of poverty action and development work.

Emma Shaw Crane (article co-author): The idea and ideal of community has been widely celebrated by everyone from social justice activists to philanthropic foundations to the police, who are now practicing not just policing but community policing. And yet, behind this celebrated idea, there is a very particular history of how the concept of community became important. In order to understand a popular idea almost always understood as benevolent and natural and empowering, we had to trace a messy history of fierce contestation about who gets to decide what constitutes a community, and who gets to represent this community once it has been created as a category! So in investigating where this idea comes from, we inevitably had to think critically about power and representation.  

2. You write, “the emergence of poverty as a domestic and international public policy issue in the 1960s was closely linked to anxieties about racialized violence in American cities and wars of insurgency in the global South.” How close do you think this link remains today?

Ananya Roy: In the late 1990s, poverty (re)emerged as an urgent human problem of global concern. Unlike the 1960s, this framing is much more concerned with poverty in the global South. In fact, I would argue that there is a stark divergence between how poverty is framed in the U.S. (e.g., as welfare dependency) and how poverty is framed in the context of the global South (e.g., as human development). But it is clear that the concern with poverty remains closely yoked to strategies of pacification. With 9-11, the global war on poverty merged with the global war on terror. As I have shown in my previous research on microfinance, anti-poverty policies were promoted to manage “hotspots” of terrorism. And in many ways, the concern with poverty, especially in institutions such as the World Bank, USAID, and IMF, appeared in direct response to powerful and vocal global social movements that rebelled against the structural adjustment policies of the 1980s. Activist Walden Bello, founder of Focus on the Global South, calls this the “people’s counter-offensive” and notes that it is this type of action that brought an end to the austerity agenda of the Bretton Woods institutions. In other words, as we demonstrate in the article, there is an interesting and complex relationship between poor people’s movements and bureaucracies of poverty. As a side note, I should add that quite a bit of the current academic and policy research on poverty and poverty action ignores poor people’s movements.

3. In light of your research on community development and pacification, how do you view what has been unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri since the police shooting of Michael Brown?

Our co-author Stuart Schrader is completing a dissertation (at NYU) on the history of the police in the U.S. and its entanglement with histories of American imperialism. We finished writing this article in the wake of the Trayvon Martin tragedy, and we now see it published as the Michael Brown tragedy unfolds. Our article argues that the history of U.S. community development is inevitably racialized. Once again, poverty studies and the proliferating modes of poverty action remain silent on this matter. That silence must be broken. We must recognize that marginalized communities in the U.S., often defined and redlined through a long history of racialized exclusion, continue to suffer from both economic oppression and police oppression. To act on poverty requires acting on both forms of oppression.

By Jenna Hahn

In 2006, Big Ideas @ Berkeley was launched to support multidisciplinary teams of UC Berkeley students interested in big challenges such as clean energy, safe drinking water, and poverty alleviation.

Nine years later, the yearlong student innovation contest has become a model for on-campus collaboration and action—and has expanded to 16 universities around the country and world, including the entire University of California system and the USAID Higher Education Solutions Network.

As Big Ideas moves toward its 10^th anniversary, it is facing big numbers. More than 4,000 students have submitted 1,248 proposals to the contest. During the last three years, participation from undergraduate students has increased dramatically—from 35 percent in 2010 to 70 percent in 2014.

According to an internal study from the Blum Center for Developing Economies, which manages Big Ideas, the contest’s 400-plus student teams and award winners have gone on to secure over $35 million in additional funding. Thirty percent of winners from 2006-2011 have won at least one additional award or business plan competition after participating in Big Ideas, and 50 percent have reported that their Big Ideas project is still running.

Among the projects that originated from Big Ideas are: Acopio, a data sharing software platform for agricultural producers, now managed by Fair Trade USA; Nextdrop, which uses mobile phone technology to transmit water supply and distribution information for Indian consumers; and Back to the Roots, a U.S. company that sells mushroom kits made from coffee grounds.

“From the beginning, Big Ideas was about developing an ecosystem of innovation to help bright young people get from idea to reality,” said Maryanne McCormick, executive director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies. “The contest is run and organized around the belief that there’s a value to giving young people more autonomy early in their career—and there’s a value to encouraging them to identify something that they’re passionate about. Over the last nine years, we have seen those values bear fruit.”

This year’s contest will offer up to $300,000 in funding for winning teams. It also will offer applicants a new contest category, Food System Innovations, sponsored by the UC Global Food Initiative and the Berkeley Food Institute. The UC Global Food Initiative, launched in July 2014 by UC President Janet Napolitano, brings together the university’s research, outreach, and campus operations in an effort to develop and export solutions throughout California, the United States, and the world for food security, health, and sustainability.

The contest launches on September 2, and spans the academic year, beginning with the submission of a five-page pre-proposal by November 13. If selected, finalist teams will be then prepare a full proposal by mid-March.

This year’s contest categories include:

• Clean & Sustainable Energy Alternatives
• Conflict & Development
• Creative Expression for Social Justice
• Food System Innovations
• Global Health
• Improving Student Life
• Information Technology for Society
• Mobiles for Reading
• Open Data for Development
• Scaling Up Big Ideas (for past winners only)

From September to March, when the final proposals are due, teams have the opportunity to attend information sessions, idea generation and networking events, writing workshops, editing blitz’s, and office hours with Big Ideas advisors in person and online. In addition, teams will be matched with mentors with expertise relevant to their project from a range of social enterprises, academia, nonprofits, and businesses.

Unlike many business competitions, Big Ideas is focused on supporting projects focused on social impact. The contest 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.

“The Big Ideas Contest helped us to think beyond what we had initially envisioned and push past our boundaries,” said Priya Iyer, a member of the Sahay team that won third place in the Information Technology for Society category in 2014.

For more information about rules, categories, resources, funding, and contact information, please visit the Big Ideas website at http://bigideascontest.org

This past May, two Blum Center affiliated lecturers, Dr. Sean Burns and Dr. Khalid Kadir, were each awarded Chancellor’s Awards for Public Service for their innovative, community-engaged teaching.

Burns, who serves as the Blum Center’s Director of Student Programs, received the Faculty Civic Engagement Award for his Bay Area social movement history course “Social Movements, Urban History, and the Politics of Memory” (IAS 158 AC / PACS 148 AC). The course partners students with a wide range of East Bay community organizations, to develop historical documentation of the organizations’ efforts to contribute to social and environmental justice movements, ranging from affordable housing to indigenous land struggles to advancing disability rights.

Kadir received the award for Service Learning Leadership for his course on engineering and social justice.

In “Engineering, The Environment, and Society” (E 157AC / IAS 157AC), students worked on projects with local and regional organizations to address drinking water contamination, air pollution, and urban environmental pollution. Each of these projects enabled students to apply their engineering education to problems that affect traditionally underserved communities.

Both award-winning courses were designed and supported within the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) program.

By Andrea Guzman and Rachel Voss

Kati Hinman, a recent graduate of the Blum Center for Developing Economies’ Global Poverty and Practice (GPP) Minor, is a 2014 recipient of the John Gardner Fellowship – a stipend given to graduating seniors pursuing careers in public service.

Hinman, who grew up in a small town in Connecticut where public service was the norm, spent her time at UC Berkeley exploring how to better understand and address the needs of underserved communities.

“I was raised with the mentality that being part of a community is donating your time. Both my parents volunteer regularly and love being active in our town,” explained Hinman. “However, I also come from a fairly isolated community with access to resources and power. At Berkeley, I have been able to explore the powers and privileges that are at play when one volunteers and how to use my time to better act for social justice.”

Hinman, who initially planned a career in medicine, spent her early undergraduate years shadowing and interning in healthcare facilities. She said what struck her most was the immensity of the social and environmental constraints to public health. The field’s purview, she found, goes well beyond treatment.

Hinman’s growing interest in the inequalities that contribute to structural and physical violence against people—as well as her passion for exploring different cultures and the often untold histories of those who are marginalized— led her to change her major to Peace and Conflict Studies and declare the GPP Minor. She said GPP faculty and Blum Center staff helped her explore the contradictions in development work, particularly the history and current approaches to humanitarian aid and intervention. For her GPP practice experience, she traveled to Cochabamba, Bolivia, where she worked with the Instituto Para el Desarollo Humano, an HIV/AIDS prevention program. Hinman said she found the experience unexpectedly challenging, and was frustrated by her inability to make a substantive difference.

“Upon returning, I questioned what my role was in the world of international development,” said Hinman. “My GPP 196 critical reflection course was instrumental in helping me work through some frustrations. I found that I am really inspired by organizations that are driven by local people and the issues that affect them directly, but I am still trying to figure out what my place can be in those spaces.”

At Cal, Hinman kept herself busy outside the classroom. She served as the community partnerships director and a trip leader for Alternative Breaks, director of public internships at Berkeley’s Public Service Center, and as a corps member in AmeriCorps’ Jumpstart literacy program. She also became involved with the women’s clinic of the Suitcase Clinic, a student organization dedicated to providing underserved and homeless people with free healthcare and social services. She worked to improve services for children in the women’s shelter, and went on to serve as a community resource advocate.

Hinman’s interests in public service have been wide ranging. The summer before her junior year, she began working with UC Berkeley alumna and anti-trafficking champion Minh Dang. Through their research, Hinman explored human trafficking and modern day slavery in the U.S. and joined the student abolitionist movement on campus. She later co-founded the Berkeley Anti-Trafficking Coalition, an IdeaLab supported by the Blum Center and Big Ideas that encourages interdisciplinary collaboration around the issue. Hinman worked with two peers from the IdeaLab to develop the East Bay Youth Trafficking project, which won an honorable mention in the 2013-14 Big Ideas@Berkeley contest.

More and more, Hinman’s perspective on social change has shifted in favor of bottom-up development. The Gardner Fellowship will allow her to explore challenges faced by communities in the Bay Area as well as sustainable solutions that come directly from the people affected. Hinman is considering working with a mental health and trauma recovery program for homeless youth, focusing on participants’ influence in shaping those programs.

Eventually, Hinman plans to pursue dual Master’s degrees in public health and social work to prepare her for a career in mental health programs for underserved youth. She hopes to build programs that combine recovery and therapy, creating opportunities for children to develop as leaders and agents of change. Meanwhile, her legacy will live on at Cal through the IdeaLab, her work with the Public Service Center, the Suitcase Clinic, and the many other programs she has touched.

By Abby Madan and Rachel Voss

This summer, 49 UC Berkeley undergraduates in the Global Poverty and Practice (GPP) Minor applied their classroom learning to real-world issues of poverty and global development across California and around the world. These “practice experiences,” the signature component of the GPP Minor, enable students to work with nonprofits, government agencies, social movements, and social enterprises. Through self-selected fieldwork, students come to understand how the issues they’ve studied take shape outside of the classroom. This allows students to transform abstract concepts into practical reflections rooted in the realities of poverty and inequality.

Many students’ practice experiences take them abroad, often to locations or causes that have UC Berkeley connections. Third-year student Estrella Sainburg is spending a second summer with Fundacion Cantaro Azul, an organization co-founded by another UC Berkeley student that works to address contaminated and unsafe water in underserved regions of Mexico.

“I feel that preparing to work and research with the organization through my Development Studies courses and Global Poverty and Practice courses allows me to understand the organization, the need, and my family’s home country a bit better,” said Sainburg of her return to the project.

The practice experience is a transformative part of students’ undergraduate education. GPP sophomore Stephanie Pardi will complete her fieldwork with Threads of Peru, a fair trade group which works with indigenous artisans in Cusco to sell their traditional woven textiles, helping them build a greater online presence. She is grateful that her practice experience will give her a chance to apply the theories she has studied and develop an understanding of her own abilities, limitations, and responsibilities for changing the world.

“Through the minor, I have realized that the hardest confrontation is with myself and where I fit in the greater scheme of the global order,” Pardi reflected.

Some GPP students, recognizing the dramatic effects of poverty and inequality in their own communities, choose to work locally. Emily Rehberger worked in Oakland with Food Shift, an organization that collects wasted food and redistributes it. “Despite the fact that we have romanticized the idea of volunteering abroad, the fact of the matter is that poverty exists right here in our own backyards,” said Rehberger. “I would rather get involved here in a community that I am dedicated to and familiar with, and I believe it is important confront these issues locally.”

Lucy Sundelson, a third-year student majoring in Urban Studies, joined the GPP Minor after founding a Kiva microfinance club at her high school. This summer, she will be interning with Kiva in the Bay Area.

“For me, working at Kiva for my practice experience feels a little bit like coming full circle: I have the chance to work with the organization that first made me feel excited about poverty action,” said Sundelson. “What feels most exciting, though, is that I have a better sense of the ethical issues surrounding microfinance. I’m excited to be able to approach my time at Kiva more thoughtfully and critically than I could a few years ago.”

After returning from their fieldwork this summer, students will enroll in a group seminar that encourages deep critical reflection about their experiences. This chance to explore the challenges and contradictions they encountered is invaluable to students.

“I am grateful for my peers who are each embarking on their unique journey to come face-to-face with different sectors of poverty,” Sundelson said. “Taking on global poverty is as daunting as it sounds, and the peers in my classes have provided moral support and guidance.”

To read students’ practices experience blogs, visit our Student Stories page.

By: Abby Madan, 2nd Year Political Economy Major

April 29, 2014 – Last month’s Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI-U) 2014 conference offered Berkeley student attendees enriching experiences that strengthened their passion, sharpened their analysis, and encouraged their hard work in pursuit of a better world.

The 3-day conference is an invitation-only event that brings together ambitious young leaders dedicated to solving pressing global challenges. This year, 1,300 students representing more than 300 universities and 80 countries participated. 28 of Berkeley’s own – the highest number of Berkeley students ever accepted – attended the gathering with support from the Blum Center for Developing Economies. The Blum Center, UC Berkeley’s lead representative within the CGI-U Network, supports students who travel to the event and offers year-long advising to help students accomplish their project goals.

Two UC Berkeley student teams, Kanga Kare and Energant, were named winners of the Resolution Project’s Social Venture Challenge, a pitch competition between aspiring student entrepreneurs with sustainable social ventures. The two groups, which are also finalists in this year’s BigIdeas@Berkeley contest, were awarded seed funding that they will use to advance their projects toward implementation.

Represented at CGI-U by UCB undergrads Asad Akbany (bioengineering), Gary Duan (economics) and Ian Shain (mechanical engineering), Kanga Kare won $7500 to further their mission to provide low-cost baby incubators to hospitals in developing countries in order to prevent neonatal deaths. The team plans to use the money to conduct pilot trials of their product, IncuPack, in collaboration with local clinics and the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

Energant, co-founded and represented at CGI-U by Jacqueline Nguyen (molecular toxicology), uses an energy-harvesting rocket stove called KleanCook that will allow individuals in developing countries to use the waste heat from their cooking fires to produce at least 10W of power, pasteurize water, and reduce smoky biomass emissions. Since receiving their $3,500 award, the Energant team has been hard at work optimizing their prototype. “It’s so exciting to see that what was once a flat idea on paper will become a tangible, life-changing device for the global communities that need it the most,” Nguyen said.

The CGI-U experience offers more than just an opportunity for funding; the gathering invited students to tread new ground and engage more deeply with the passion and creative energy that attendees collectively bring.

“CGI-U was an unparalleled learning, networking and growth opportunity personally and for my team,” shared Vrinda Agarwal, UC Berkeley student and member of 100 Strong. “I met more influential people in the span of three days than I have in a lifetime.”

The highlight of Agarwal’s weekend was her question to Hillary Clinton during the conference’s closing event. Agarwal eloquently spoke on the underrepresentation of women in politics and asked Secretary Clinton who would represent women in politics if not she. Agarwal’s passion for gender equality in America is what inspired her to create the project 100 Strong, which works to empower underprivileged high school women by providing them with mentors and leadership training.

CGI-U also provided students an opportunity for mentorship and guidance. The team members behind Kanga Kare, which has a partnership with Ashoka Thailand, exchanged business cards with Ashoka’s CEO, Bill Drayton. 100 Strong received advice on expanding their project from North Carolina School District Superintendent Austin Obasohan, among others.

“It was phenomenal to meet like-minded leaders from across the globe who have the same strong will to make a positive impact on the world,” reflected Nguyen. “We’re all very lucky to be happy and healthy, and we as global change-makers are in a prime position to make the world a more habitable place for everyone.”

By: Andrea Guzman, 3rd Year Media Studies and Political Science Major

April 18, 2014 – Renowned economist and New York University professor William Easterly addressed a packed audience at UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies to discuss his latest book, The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor.

Co-sponsored by the Blum Center and the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), the event drew more than 100 faculty and students. Easterly’s work and the issues he raises about foreign aid and global development are part of the introductory curriculum in the Blum Center’s Global Poverty and Practice Minor.

In his lecture, Easterly focused on the dangers of addressing global development with a solely technical approach and ignoring the role of politics and individual rights and freedoms.

Ted Miguel, Oxfam Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics at UC Berkeley and Faculty Director of CEGA, moderated the event. He began the event by introducing Easterly and some of his greatest works, noting Easterly’s unique ability to bridge the world of academia and public debate.

Easterly began the talk by criticizing technocratic approaches to development which seek to address poverty and development challenges through technical solutions. While development actors may have good intentions in doing so, Easterly argues that these efforts may have detrimental consequences as well.

“You get a long list of technical solutions, and you think that is development. That is the technocratic misconception,” Easterly said.

He gave the example of the World Bank, which has often provided economic aid without taking into consideration the government structures in place. This was exemplified in Uganda in 2010, when a World Bank loan aimed to convert a piece of land from fruit crop production to higher-value forestry. The project required the relocation of some villagers. However, because the villagers lacked political and economic rights and had no voice in the project, the relocation effort was ultimately botched, resulting in the villagers’ forceful removal, burning of their homes, and the death of a young boy.

“Clearly something has gone badly wrong here,” Easterly said. “What seemed like a straightforward technical solution was not a technical solution precisely because political and economic rights were not respected.”

Instead of pursuing strictly technical solutions, Easterly said we should consider the role of economic and political rights in development. Individual rights can create a problem-solving society that encourages development.

This transition will be difficult, however, because the technocratic methodology—which was a particularly convenient approach during the colonial era—has become entrenched. Easterly insisted that uprooting this approach is critical.

“Poverty is not about a shortage of experts, it is about a shortage of rights,” he pointed out.

Easterly does see an important role for continued research in public institutions like UC Berkeley, however. When asked by the audience about the role of engineering students in global poverty alleviation, he said that they can continue developing products that can later be used for achieving these types of rights.

“In a well-functioning political system that does gives political and economic rights, technology works marvels,” Easterly said. “You are part of the solution when you, as a free individual, are able to offer new choices to individuals in poor societies who didn’t have those technical choices before.”

Despite the many development challenges at hand, Easterly remains optimistic. Technologies can spread in spite of oppressive governments, most of which are becoming less oppressive with time.

“Freedom is spreading around the world, and so the future is bright with hope,” Easterly said.

Watch a recording of Bill Easterly’s lecture:

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9mN7fZ_GnY”]

By: Andrea Guzman, 3rd Year Media Studies & Political Science Major

April 17, 2014 – As a freshly-minted Cal grad starting her first job in rural Guatemala, Global Poverty & Practice (GPP) Minor alumna Nikki Brand stumbled into two old friends and realized that her UC Berkeley experiences had come full circle.

Originally from Washington, D.C., Nikki came to Berkeley hoping to explore her interests in international relations. In her first year, she attended a talk by President Bill Clinton on student engagement in global development that was sponsored by the Blum Center, inspiring Brand to take Ananya Roy’s GPP 115 class entitled Global Poverty: Challenges and Hopes in the New Millennium.

“I was an idealistic young freshman who was trying to figure out what an appropriate career path is in international relations, and I took Ananya’s class and was so inspired by it and decided to declare the minor,” Brand said.

Although she majored in Peace and Conflict Studies and also minored in Spanish, Brand describes the GPP Minor and Blum Center as a defining part of her experience at Berkeley. Brand served as a peer advisor and conducted research at the Center, and describes being very engaged in the community.

“It [the GPP Minor] is more than just classes. You become part of an amazing peer group and become engaged in a community where everyone is interested in the same things you are,” Brand said. “For me, the Blum Center became a home away from home.”

In the summer of 2012, Brand conducted her practice experience—a mandatory fieldwork component of the Minor—with the organization Thirteen Threads in Panajachel, Guatemala. The organization supports cooperatives of indigenous Mayan weavers, empowering them to sustain themselves and their families. This experience was fundamental in cementing Brand’s desire to work in Latin America.

During her practice experience, she conducted field research in Panajachel and the surrounding communities. One of the most memorable experiences during her formative time in Guatemala was five days she spent with two of her Guatemalan co-workers, indigenous young women near her age. She was able to connect with them on a personal level despite their different cultures and backgrounds. Instead of just being co-workers, they became close friends.

After graduating, Brand returned to Panajachel to work as a Field Consultant for Community Enterprise Solutions, a non-profit social entrepreneurship organization that trains local “microentrepreneurs” to market and distribute products with social and environmental utility, such as eyewear, water filters, solar lamps and chargers, and improved wood burning stoves. The organization provides the training and products to the microentrepreneurs free of charge, eliminating the usual need to take on a large financial risk to start a micro-business.

Brand says that it was her previous work with Thirteen Threads and the skills she learned in the GPP Minor that helped her find the job. Moving to Guatemala just four days after graduation, Brand found the transition to be less difficult because of her background in critical poverty studies. She was the only member of the Community Enterprise Solutions team with a direct academic background in development, so she brought a unique contextual understanding and critical perspective to the work. Despite being new to the job and having to lead student interns just one or two years younger than herself, Brand felt comfortable thanks to her strong academic knowledge and previous experiences working in community development.

“That allowed me to hit the ground running when I arrived here and contextualize the work that I am doing,” Brand said.

In her first week back in Guatemala, Brand had an unexpected but joyful reunion with the two young women she befriended during her practice experience and is now training them to work with Community Enterprise Solutions as microentrepreneurs, an experience she describes as her journey coming “full circle.”

Brand advises students in the Minor or those who are interested in declaring to take advantage of all the opportunities and mentorship that the Blum Center offers.

“The most important thing that you get out of the Minor outside of the classes is the network,” Brand said. “Being part of the GPP and Blum Center community, there are so many amazing speaker events, opportunities to network with current GPP students and alumni, professors and practitioners, and for me, that was the best part.”

By: Abby Madan, 2nd Year Political Economy Major

April 1, 2014 – On March 10th, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies, and the Berkeley Water Group hosted a screening of Water Everlasting?, a documentary produced by the IDB that details issues of poor water administration in Haiti. The screening was followed by a panel discussion led by IDB representatives from Haiti and water experts from the Blum Center, and gave rise to important dialogue regarding ways to address water issues in Haiti.

As the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, Haiti’s water and sanitation has been marred by chronic underfunding, leaving millions without access to a clean and reliable water source. The IDB, in collaboration with the Spanish government, has provided an $86 million dollar grant that aims to enable Haitians to build and maintain a sustainable water administration system that reaches its entire population. The Haitian government agency DINEPA (Direction Nationale de l’Eau Potable et de l’Assainissement) is using this grant to build necessary infrastructure to create water sector reform through institutional capacity building.

The IDB’s effort to strengthen DINEPA’s initiatives is a step in the right direction, as it aims to strengthen existing state agencies instead of privatizing the supply of water. According to Water Everlasting, approximately 70% of Port-au-Prince’s population of 3 million now gets their water from DINEPA kiosks located throughout the city.

In a discussion moderated by Fermin Reygadas, Executive Director of Fundacion Cantaro Azul and UC Berkeley PhD candidate, a panel of experts considered aspects of water issues that took the audience beyond the documentary. The panel included Thierry Delaunay, Water and Sanitation Specialist for IDB’s Haiti Country Office; Jose Irigoyen, IDB’s Haiti Country Coordinator; Imran Ali, Global Poverty and Practice Postdoctoral Scholar; and Rebecca Peters, Founder and Director of the Pachamama Project. Each of the panelists brought their respective insights on water issues in developing countries.

The dialogue included a discussion on important indicators for project success, as well as ways in which a human rights framework for water can be applied to economic cost recovery. When applying a human rights framework, the panelists engaged in a debate about the practicality in charging Haitians for water, a universally recognized public good. Peters, a 2012-2013 Big Ideas@Berkeley winner, shared the importance of gender equity in the water sector, emphasizing that women are disproportionally impacted.

The IDB’s Water Everlasting? viewings at universities around the country are helping to democratize development issues in Haiti by making them legible to the public. The events have created a public sphere conducive to valuable discussion and student involvement in this partnership. The screening at UC Berkeley was part of a West Coast series of screenings, with the final screening at the UCLA Blum Center on Poverty and Health in Latin America.

Since 2013, the Blum Center has supported a formal and robust partnership with the IDB. The Blum Center and the IDB co-host Demand Solutions, an annual gathering that brings together innovators to discuss and share solutions for addressing development issues in Latin American and the Caribbean. The partnership is also highlighted by the Berkeley-IDB Impact Evaluation Collaborative (BIC), which brings IDB representatives to UC Berkeley for executive training programs on the role of impact evaluation in policy-making. The IDB’s partnership with UC Berkeley marks the Bank’s first partnership with an American university.

By: Abby Madan, 2nd Year Political Economy Major

March 20, 2014 – UC Berkeley’s Development Impact Lab (DIL) is forging a new, interdisciplinary field of academic and applied research – Development Engineering (DevEng) – housed at the Blum Center.

Development Engineering seeks to train a new cadre of experts to tightly integrate social and economic insights in the development of technology and services to address the problems of poverty. DevEng’s inaugural “Research in Action” speaker series explores current scientific and technological efforts to address global development issues, bringing experts together in an interdisciplinary space.

“Too often, a great idea is tested and approved before its effectiveness on a larger scale can be evaluated,” explains Alice Agogino, UC Berkeley Professor of Mechanical Engineering. “It takes many aspects and disciplines that involve technology, impact analysis and economics. We want to engage the academic community to test and refine our approaches to development.”

The seminar series features weekly talks from academics and professionals who contribute to the intellectual sphere that constitutes DevEng. Speakers come from a wide variety of disciplines, including computer science, economics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, bioengineering, civil and environmental engineering, information management, public health, and business. All of the expertise is required to solve the big challenges facing society.

DIL partner Gaetano Borriello, Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at University of Washington and creator of Open Data Kit (ODK), addressed a packed audience on the functions and processes of his technology at the inaugural seminar. ODK is an open-source toolkit that has simplified the ability for users to build forms, analyze, transfer and share data on various platforms. ODK is being used by thousands of people in a wide variety of ways. In Tanzania, ODK works with the Jane Goodall Institute to map unsafe areas for chimpanzees using data submitted over mobile phones; in the Congo, a visual version of the software enables illiterate Pygmies to track poachers’ locations; and in dozens of other countries, the tool is used to conduct public health and socioeconomic surveys.

The “Research in Action” events create a forum where faculty and practitioners with extensive applied expertise can engage with intellectually curious students who bring their own innovative ideas.

“We’re all coming together to this with different perspectives, different backgrounds, different biases,” said UC Berkeley bioengineering professor Dan Fletcher during a “Research in Action” seminar on CellScope, a smartphone-enabled microscope technology used for remote diagnosis in developing countries. CellScope, a student innovation, uses consumer technology to extend access to health care; it is being used to detect corneal diseases in Thailand, tuberculosis in Vietnam, oral cancer in India, and to image worms in Cameroon. The CellScope case study particularly resonated with the audience. According to Dr. Fletcher, its materialization was heavily dependent on the collaboration of technologies, ideas, and disciplines.

The speaker series is helping build momentum toward the launch of a formal designated emphasis (DE) graduate program, which would be available to UC Berkeley doctoral students who have an interest in DevEng. The program is co-directed by UC Berkeley faculty Alice Agogino, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Clair Brown, Professor of Economics. The intention for this DE rests on the belief that the most powerful advances in development can be propelled through interdisciplinary collaboration and analysis of development solutions.

“Specifically,” explained Brown, “the goal of a Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering is to facilitate and formalize an intellectual community to use advanced science, economics and technology for potential solutions to complex global issues.”

The DE will require one main course, one research seminar, and a series of electives relevant to students’ research interests. It will focus on human-centered design along with participant feedback, impact evaluation, econometrics, automated data collection, and sustainability of new technologies. The program will be offered to doctoral students from the natural sciences, engineering, mathematics, computer science, information management, quantitative social sciences, and business programs.

Weekly DevEng “Research In Action” seminars are held on Wednesdays at 4pm in B100 Blum Hall and will run through April 23, 2014. All students and faculty who wish to learn more about the program are welcome.

Students and faculty at UC Berkeley are also encouraged to submit feedback and get involved in the creation of the DE. For more information, visit http://dil.berkeley.edu/students/designated-emphasis/ and subscribe to the DevEng listserv.

By: Andrea Guzman, 3rd Year Media Studies & Political Science Major

February 4, 2014 — Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright addressed a packed audience last Thursday, sharing her perspective on the issues facing the nation and world today.

Sponsored by the Blum Center for Developing Economies, founder Richard Blum began the evening by introducing Albright as one of his three favorite women in politics today and described how he enjoyed working with her in The National Democratic Institute.

In a discussion moderated by former Governor of Michigan Jennifer Granholm, Albright focused on two emerging megatrends: the rise of globalization and interdependence, and the evolution of technology and its role in politics.

Albright discussed the importance of nations’ involvement with others in the global community, stating that growing interconnectivity binds countries’ political and economic fates. In the U.S., she said, foreign aid advocates struggle to win Congressional support, but it is both possible and prudent for Americans to support economic development domestically and abroad.

When addressing the evolution of technology, Albright emphasized its power in fostering both political engagement and development. She noted, however, that channeling public opinion through social media can also lead to the disaggregation of social movements.

“Tahrir Square came together with social media, but how do you get that to government?” she asked.

In addition to the megatrends, Albright stressed the need for more representation in government, including that of women.

“I do believe the world would be better if there were more women in leading positions,” she said. When Albright was appointed the 64th Secretary of State by President Clinton in 1997, Albright became the highest ranking woman in the history of US government.

Albright later took questions from the audience, ranging from her views on the Syrian conflict to her thoughts on basketball diplomacy’s usefulness in North Korea.

“I appreciated her honesty about the balancing act diplomats must engage in,” said Veena Subramanian, a student in the Global Poverty & Practice Minor who attended the event. “They have to manage a genuine respect for human lives against the political games of DC.”

To close the evening, Blum presented Albright with a Campaign for Berkeley bear pin, jokingly promising her an even more honorable award during her next visit with the assistance of Chancellor Dirks.

When asked what she would like to be remembered for, Albright said she would like it to be for something other than just being the first female Secretary of State. Quoting her granddaughter, she said, “What’s the big deal? Only girls are Secretary of State.”

Instead, she said she would like to be remembered for her initiative to take U.S. action in Kosovo in 1999, making her a popular figure in the area.

“There’s a whole generation of little girls in Kosovo with the name Madeleine,” she said.

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Watch “Megatrends in Foreign Policy”

Blum Center Hosts FINCA International President & CEO Rupert Scofield for Talk on Building A Global Microfinance Network

By: Abby Madan

February 21, 2014 – Last week, Rupert Scofield, President and CEO of FINCA International, visited UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies to share his personal journey and the remarkable story of the FINCA microfinance network, which has provided much-needed financial services to low-income entrepreneurs around the world since 1984.

Frequently referred to as the ‘World Bank for the Poor,’ FINCA is credited as being one of the pioneers of modern day microfinance. Under Scofield’s leadership, the organization has grown to serve over 1 million low-income entrepreneurs in 21 countries. Key to the organization’s success was a willingness to take chances and a commitment to building solid partnerships.

Scofield’s involvement with FINCA dates back several decades. After graduating from college, Scofield took a chance and deferred his military draft to Vietnam to work in Guatemala with the Peace Corps. It was while working on an agricultural project in rural Guatemala that Scofield witnessed how small-scale loans could transform lives and contribute to social good.

It was an experience that would define the rest of his life.

Memory of the successful lending initiative in Guatemala stayed with Scofield through several subsequent jobs, eventually inspiring him to co-found FINCA, which began as a small NGO serving communities in Latin America. After years of pitching their vision to investors and development agencies, FINCA secured their first major backer. USAID awarded FINCA $10 million to implement their innovative village-banking model, which relies on a system of social pressure and support and requires clients to build credit by saving 20% of their profits.

The village-banking model has since been replicated by many organizations, as it is seen to help transform how the poor find a foothold in local, national and global economies.

During his talk, Scofield described the resistance that often challenges the pursuit of innovation. Although FINCA’s efforts were successful in Latin America, any attempt to expand their initiatives to other developing regions was met with skepticism. Uncollateralized lending was thought too risky and region-specific to be successfully implemented elsewhere. But Scofield followed the advice of his long-time friend Muhammad Yunus: stick to what you know has worked.

Scofield partnered with socially responsible investors and pushed ahead to test the model in new regions, resulting in FINCA’s successful expansion to communities in Africa and Eurasia in the 1990s, and to the Middle East and South Asia in the 2000s.

FINCA is now launching FINCA+, an initiative to identify scalable and sustainable human and social development interventions. In Uganda, for example, FINCA has introduced a low-cost solar lighting device that can also charge cell phones.

FINCA’s story is an uplifting one, particularly at a time when the microfinance industry has struggled with allegations of loan sharking and reaping profits from poverty. “Not everyone who calls themselves a microfinance organization is like FINCA,” Scofield acknowledged. Many of the major microfinance groups, including FINCA, are now banding together to establish rules that protect clients.

Scofield also cautioned against treating microfinance efforts as an end-goal in global development and poverty reduction.

“This is not a solution to poverty for everyone,” he said. “This is a solution for survival.”

For more about FINCA International, visit FINCA.org or follow @FINCA and @rupertscofield on Twitter.

Dr. Laura Stachel (MD, MPH), a researcher with the UC Berkeley Blum Center for Developing Economies, has been named one of CNN’s Top 10 Heroes of 2013 for her work to bring life-saving “solar suitcases” to hospitals and clinics in developing countries.

While on a graduate student research trip to rural Nigeria, Stachel, a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist, was shocked to observe obstetric care in a Nigerian hospital with unreliable electricity. She watched as nurses struggled to deliver babies by kerosene lantern, surgeons worked in near darkness, and critically ill mothers were turned away at night. These conditions put mothers’ and babies’ lives at risk, contributing to the 300,000 maternal deaths estimated each year globally—99% of which occur in the developing world.

Stachel saw a challenge and an opportunity to help. With funding from Big Ideas@Berkeley and the Blum Center, she and her husband, Hal Aronson, developed solar electric systems for the Nigerian hospital. With stable lighting, mobile communication, and a blood bank refrigerator, the maternal deaths at the hospital decreased. Stachel and Aronson next developed a “solar suitcase”—a portable, compact version of the hospital solar electric system—that could scale to rural hospitals and clinics. Together, they founded We Care Solar with the goal of providing simple, reliable light and power sources to healthcare facilities in developing countries.

Since 2009, more than 400 “solar suitcases” have served mothers and babies in over 20 countries. The Blum Center and its USAID-funded Development Impact Lab (DIL) are supporting on-going efforts to scale the initiative. The user-friendly, mobile and nearly maintenance-free suitcases, which cost around $1,500 and take only an hour to install, have proved an important innovation in the fight against maternal mortality worldwide. Stachel’s goal is to light up 10,000 clinics in the next five years, serving 2 million mothers and babies.

“We are thrilled that Laura has received this recognition and believe she deserves to be CNN’s Hero of the Year,” said Shankar Sastry, Blum Center Faculty Director and Dean of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering. “Her work has saved the lives of many women and newborns and shows the power of engineering for development, which is the hallmark of our new initiative with USAID, DIL.”

Stachel is one of CNN’s Top 10 Heroes of 2013, which recognizes everyday people who are changing the world. Each of the Top 10 CNN Heroes will receive a $50,000 grant, and one of the honorees, as voted by fans around the globe, will be named the CNN Hero of the Year, receiving an additional $250,000 grant to further aid their cause. Online voting for the “CNN Hero of the Year” ran from October 10 to November 17.

 

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About the Blum Center for Developing Economies: The Blum Center for Developing Economies links world-class research, education, and innovation to create sustainable solutions to global poverty. Its mission is to improve the well-being of the world’s poor by designing and developing sustainable solutions to the toughest development challenges and educating a new generation of innovators, activists, and scholars to engage global poverty and inequality in imaginative and effective ways. The Center brings a rigorous multi-disciplinary approach and real-world applications to the classroom, lab, and into the field. Combining an unrivaled disciplinary depth and breadth, cutting-edge thinking, and the University of California’s unique culture of global engagement, the Center translates and applies innovative research to address the world’s most pressing problems. For more information, visit http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu

About Big Ideas@Berkeley: Big Ideas@Berkeley is an annual innovation contest aimed at providing funding, support, and encouragement to interdisciplinary teams of UC undergraduate and graduate students who have “big ideas.” Since its founding in 2005, Big Ideas@Berkeley has inspired innovative and high-impact student projects aimed at solving the world’s most pressing problems. Winners have leveraged more than $25 million in additional funding as they’ve used the initial results generated with Big Ideas support to mobilize other resources. For more information, visit http://bigideascontest.org

About the Development Impact Lab: The Blum Center for Developing Economies leads the USAID-funded Development Impact Lab headquartered at Berkeley, with other academic, industry and non-profit partners, to source, evaluate and scale technologies for development. The Lab is supporting an pipeline of innovative projects, building an evaluation platform for data collection to speed rapid prototyping, and training the next generation of development engineers. Learn more at http://dil.berkeley.edu.

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Press contact:

Rachel Voss (510) 643-5316 rvoss[at]berkeley[dot]edu

What we’ve found at Berkeley about how to get people to work together is that you define some kind of very big problem that needs to be solved, and attack it from a range of viewpoints.

— Richard Newton

IdeaLabs, a component of the Big Ideas@Berkeley program, are student-led hubs for discussion and idea-sharing around issues that are important to students—anything from climate change and health to safe water, nanotechnology, or household energy. The groups are multi-disciplinary gatherings of undergraduate and graduate students designed to bring out a range of viewpoints, ideas, and strategies.

Each IdeaLab is unique, reflecting the goals and passions of the students behind it. The groups host regular discussions and events where students can gain new perspectives, share ideas, and work together with peers they might never meet in a classroom—engineers, aspiring entrepreneurs, and science buffs talk over a common interest with anthropologists, health experts, and public policy majors.

Estrella Sainburg, student Director of the Berkeley Water Group IdeaLab, said the most rewarding part of leading the IdeaLab was hearing a new member’s excitement at finding a place on campus where other students shared her passion for water issues.

IdeaLabs are more than just discussion groups, however—they are geared toward connecting students who can together explore real solutions to critical challenges. The Visualizing Urban Data IdeaLab recently hosted a hackathon to make sense of data related to the impending BART strike, including BART employees’ salaries, traffic, and ridership. “It was a challenge to work on an event transpiring in real time,” said VUD IdeaLab Director Lewis Lehe. The resulting projects have spurred online discussions and attracted attention from students across disciplines. “Coders want to see our visualizations. Planners and civil engineers want to experience urban spaces in a fresh way,” Lehe shared.

“We’re excited to see the ideas and projects that these IdeaLabs continue to produce,” said Phillip Denny, Manager of the Big Ideas@Berkeley program at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. “You can find real innovation at the intersection of so many different perspectives. The interdisciplinary Big Ideas@Berkeley projects we see every year are a testament to that.”

IdeaLabs have shown the benefits of bringing together diverse groups of students. Zoe Chafe, the student Director of the Climate Change and Health IdeaLab, described a visiting researcher’s recent presentation on the health “co-benefits” of climate change mitigation strategies in China. At the end of her presentation, a public health student asked about her health methodologies. Participants from the China Energy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab asked about her collaborations with institutions in China. Other students wanted to know more about the economic valuation she used when presenting trade-offs. “This is exactly the type of intellectual exchange we are hoping to support: an open forum where there are no stupid questions and everyone is encouraged to share their knowledge,” said Chafe.

IdeaLabs operate under the umbrella of the Big Ideas program. All IdeaLabs invite new undergraduate and graduate student members from across campus.

Visit bigideascontest.org/idealabs to join an active group or learn how to start your own!

August 21, 2013 – Dr. Lina Nilsson, Innovation Director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies, has been named one of this year’s Innovators Under 35 by the MIT Technology Review. For more than a decade, the global media company has recognized a list of exceptionally talented technologists whose work has great potential to transform the world.

“We’re proud of our selections and the variety of achievements they celebrate, and we’re proud to add Lina to this prestigious list,” says MIT Technology Review’s editor in chief and publisher Jason Pontin. “Over the years, we’ve had success in choosing women and men whose innovations and companies have been profoundly influential on the direction of human affairs. Previous winners include Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the cofounders of Google; Mark Zuckerberg, the cofounder of Facebook; Jonathan Ive, the chief designer of Apple; and David Karp, the creator of Tumblr.”

Dr. Nilsson is being recognized for her work at the Blum Center as well as Tekla Labs, which works to enable scientists in the developing world to construct their own high- quality lab equipment using readily available, off-the-shelf items. Her selection highlights UC Berkeley’s strength in cultivating not only researchers and entrepreneurs, but also ambitious social innovators working across disciplines to meet global challenges head-on. One of 10 women on this year’s list, Dr. Nilsson also illustrates the growing influence of women in the fields of technology and innovation.

“Lina is an extraordinarily talented researcher. Her work combines the best of innovative technology and a commitment to the alleviation of poverty in a new construct of development engineering. She is a ground-breaking thinker who truly embodies the Blum Center’s spirit of innovation and social engagement,” said Shankar Sastry, Dean of the College of Engineering and Faculty Director of the Blum Center. “We are delighted that she has been recognized for her pioneering achievements.”

A biomedical engineer by training, Dr. Nilsson believes that global challenges in health, environment, and development require grassroots contributions from the entire global scientific community. While completing her MSc at the University of Washington, Dr. Nilsson received a Bonderman Fellowship to travel throughout resource-scarce areas in Asia and South America. She visited labs and met with scientists whose research was significantly hindered by a lack of standard lab equipment. Subsequently, she founded Tekla Labs as a platform for “thinking creatively about ways to sustainably improve access to equipment and other physical infrastructure” so that “more researchers around the globe will have access to the tools they need to act on their insights and transformative ideas.”

Dr. Nilsson and this year’s other honorees are featured online at TechnologyReview.com and in the September/October print magazine, which hits newsstands worldwide on September 3. They will appear in person at the upcoming EmTech MIT conference from October 9–11 in Cambridge, MA.

About the Blum Center for Developing Economies

Established in 2006, the Blum Center for Developing Economies educates the next generation of global citizens to be agents of change in the struggle against global poverty. Its mission is to improve the well-being of three billion people in the world who live on less than two dollars a day by designing and developing sustainable solutions to tackle the toughest poverty challenges. The Center brings a rigorous multi-disciplinary approach and real-world applications to the classroom, lab and into the field. With its combination of unrivaled disciplinary depth and breadth, cutting-edge thinking, and the University of California’s unique culture of global engagement, the Center translates and applies innovative research to solving the world’s most pressing problems.

About MIT Technology Review

MIT Technology Review leads the global conversation about technologies that matter. An independent media company owned by MIT, it produces publications read by millions of business leaders, innovators, and thought leaders around the globe, in six languages and on a variety of platforms. The company publishes MIT Technology Review magazine, the most respected technology magazine; daily news features, analysis, and opinion; and Business Reports, which explain how technologies are transforming industries. It produces live events such as the annual EmTech MIT, international EmTech conferences, Summits, and Salons. The company’s entrepreneurial community organization, MIT Enterprise Forum, hosts 400+ events a year around the world.

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For MIT Technology Review:

David W.M. Sweeney
617-475-8018
press[at]technologyreview[dot]com

For Blum Center:

Fred Muir 310-278-9321 Office 310-600-8954 Cell fred[at]fredmuir[dot]com

Christie Ly 917-617-2437 christiely3[at]gmail[dot]com

Distinguished scientist, Cabinet secretary and Nobel Prize winner brings national, global policy perspectives to next generation of global citizens

Berkeley, Calif. (August 1, 2013) — The Blum Center for Developing Economies, a leading center for global poverty studies and innovative global development solutions, today announced that Dr. Steven Chu, former U.S. Energy Secretary and co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, is returning as a member of its Board of Trustees. The distinguished scientist will provide important perspective and guidance on the future of the Center and its role in shaping future changemakers to address challenges faced by the world’s poor.

“We are very pleased to have Dr. Chu rejoin our board,” said Richard C. Blum, Founder of the Blum Center. “To have someone of his stature and his level of scientific achievement will be a tremendous asset as we develop and offer world-class programs and innovative courses to this generation, who feel compelled to confront issues of global inequality.”

Dr. Chu served as Trustee for the Blum Center from 2008 to 2009. He is currently Professor of Physics and Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. Prior to his appointment, he served as the U.S. Secretary of Energy from January 21, 2009, to April 22, 2013, during which time he was charged with helping implement President Barack Obama’s agenda to invest in clean energy, reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil, address the global climate crisis and create millions of new jobs.

“Dr. Chu brings a wealth of experience working on sustainable energy solutions and novel technologies,” said Shankar Sastry, Dean of the University of California Berkeley College of Engineering and Faculty Director of the Blum Center. “His knowledge will greatly enhance the Blum Center’s work in leveraging the talent of faculty and students—particularly those in the STEM fields—toward global development, and will help us build up the innovative field of development engineering at UC Berkeley.”

Prior to his Cabinet post, Dr. Chu was the Director of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, where he led the pursuit of alternative and renewable energy technologies. He also taught at UC Berkeley as a Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology. Previously, he held positions at Stanford University and AT&T Bell Laboratories. The award-winning scientist is the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics (1997) for his research for the cooling and trapping of atoms in laser light.

The Blum Center’s Board features many dignitaries, including former U.S. presidents, Cabinet members and senators; former government officials from foreign nations; and global business leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs. In addition to Dr. Chu and Mr. Blum, the list includes Board Chair Laura Tyson, Professor in the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and Former Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors; Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich; Former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz; Caio Koch-Weser, Vice Chairman, Deutsche Bank Group and Former Deputy Finance Minister of Germany; Former U.S. Senator Thomas A. Daschle of DLA Piper, LLP; and Vinod Khosla, President of Khosla Ventures, among others.

About The Blum Center for Developing Economies

Established in 2006, the Blum Center for Developing Economies cultivates and educates the next generation of global citizens to be agents of change in the struggle against global poverty. Its mission is to improve the well-being of three billion people in the world who live on less than two dollars a day by designing and developing sustainable solutions to tackle the toughest poverty challenges. The Center brings a rigorous multi-disciplinary approach and real-world applications to the classroom, lab and into the field. With its combination of unrivaled disciplinary depth and breadth, cutting-edge thinking, and the University of California’s unique culture of global engagement, the Center translates and applies innovative research to solving the world’s most pressing problems. More information at http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/

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Media Contacts:

Fred Muir, For Blum Center 310-278-9321 Office 310-600-8954 Cell fred[at]fredmuir[dot]com

Christie Ly 917-617-2437 Cell christiely3[at]gmail[dot]com

 

Luis Flores, a Blum Center student writer and soon-to-be first generation university graduate, has recently been awarded the prestigious Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize for the 2013-14 school year. Below, Flores shares how his family history has inspired his pursuit of global economic and social justice. The Stronach Prize, celebrating the life and work of art historian, activist, and poetry teacher Judith Lee Stronach, offers generous grants of up to $25,000 for UC Berkeley undergraduates looking to heighten awareness of issues of social consciousness and the public good.

I am happily surprised to have been awarded a Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize for the 2013-14 school year, which I will spend along the southern border with Mexico. My intended project straddles the line between community engagement and academic inquiry—or rather, proposes that they can (and must) be one and the same. Using different modes of community engagement, I hope to reveal the fundamentally transnational dynamics that made California’s southern border region particularly vulnerable to the Great Recession (the region now ranks the highest in national unemployment and embodies a series of other painful superlatives).

I was raised in a small desert town along the southern border convinced that my upbringing occurred in a bubble, disconnected from the cosmopolitan modern world. The education I received at UC Berkeley revealed the opposite. My native region, like all localities, is deeply interconnected with the “outer world” through a web of economic and social linkages. In fact, the tensions built into these relationships are particularly visible in border regions—where the irony of American economic power is a visible part of everyday life. It is these historical interconnections that my project seeks to uncover. A result of faulty immigration policy, World Bank-influenced economic policies, increases in free trade production, among other dynamics, residents on both sides of the border entered lives of credit dependency as early as the 1980s. It will be the effect of these economic histories that my project of community engagement will take on. The result will hopefully be the “denaturalization” of credit dependency and the opening of credit relationships as a new arena for political and social contestation.

While this project’s direction owes much to personal observation and experience, it is visibly imprinted by my time at UC Berkeley, where I’ve had the fortune of being a part of multiple communities. Enrolled in degree programs in History and in Political Economy, I benefited from the kindness and generosity of professors in geography, history, and global poverty and practice. Particularly, Khalid Kadir and professors Gillian Hart, Catherine Cole, and Ananya Roy have been formative mentors—constantly reminding me of the political stakes of academic research. I learned a great deal from the team of writers at the Berkeley Political Review, and have been perhaps most profoundly changed by my time living in the Berkeley Student Cooperative.

It is ironic that while I did not minor in Global Poverty and Practice, the Blum Center has become a sort of educational home. After two years of working as a staff writer, I’ve had the opportunity to meet dozens of GPP students, been exposed to the Big Ideas@Berkeley contest, and became involved with the center’s growing Global Poverty and Inequality Scholarship, like the Territories of Poverty conference and book. The administrative and educational staff members at the Blum Center are kind and supportive friends. The center attracts people passionately devoted to development—though from different perspectives. I’ve learned a great deal from these encounters and experiments within development practice.

While I am thankful to my mentors, family, and friends, I am aware that studying at UC Berkeley was the result of a series of incidental generational events and actions. This makes it problematic to congratulate myself. But whom or what should I thank? Should I go as far back as to thank the turbulent disagreements that compelled my grandmother and then-toddler dad to move from central Mexico to a town along on the Mexican side of the Arizona border—later facilitating my dad’s move to Baja California? Should I thank the low-paying municipal programs that made the prospect of illegal work in the U.S. more lucrative to my parents that their legal government jobs in Mexico? Surely I can thank the coincidental passing of an amnesty law in the 1980s, for granting my parents legal resident status and allowing for my privileged birth in a U.S. hospital. My point is that, particularly in moments of celebration, one can lose sight of how much an individual’s accomplishments are the result of the efforts of communities and generations, as well as of the random procession of history. There seems no difference in capability between many of my cousins in Mexico and me, who due to a different chance history are restricted from the opportunities that allowed me to apply for the Judith Lee Stronach Prize.

It is this sense of undue relative privilege that fuels what must be a life of social engagement. I encourage students interested in poverty research or social and economic justice to foster friendships with mentors and to seek out campus resources, but to never lose sight of the perspective and voices of the marginalized.

Flores is eager to assist students interested in applying to the prize or in projects of economic justice. He can be contacted at jr.luisf AT gmail DOT com.