Date
Friday, 03 Jun 2016 11:30 AM
Part of Innovate New Albany‘s TIGER Talks Series:
Approximately 660 million people around the world do not have access to safe drinking water. One of the best, most-proven options to provide water for these communities is the installation of a hand pump. However, the majority of the hand pumps currently available on the market were designed to lift water only 50 meters or less and water is often much deeper. In search of an innovative solution, Columbus based Design Outreach (DO), a volunteer Christian humanitarian engineering nonprofit organization established a strategic team of academic, industry, donor, and nonprofit partners. The result of DO’s efforts is the LifePump™, created after four years of research and designed to be a more reliable and deeper reaching hand pump that works from depths of 100 meters. A pilot program began with World Vision in November 2013 when a DO team traveled to Malawi for the first two permanent installations of the LifePump. This talk will be an overview of the project, with a focus on the progress to date and the LifePump social enterprise model for sustainability.
Greg Bixler, PhD, PE is a senior lecturer in the Department of Engineering Education at The Ohio State University, and a co-founder and CEO of Design Outreach (DO). DO is comprised of nearly 75 volunteers and 12 partner organizations that are eager to create sustainable solutions to problems facing people in developing countries. Dr. Bixler discovered this life calling after a missions trip to Central Asia in 2006 where is witnessed extreme poverty for the first time and knew he could help people through creative problem solving. His humanitarian engineering endeavors have lead him to Honduras, El Salvador, Malawi, Zambia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Haiti, and the Central African Republic – while serving as CEO of DO, resident director for the OSU service learning program, and advisor for the OSU student chapter of Engineers Without Borders. Dr. Bixler was previously employed at Battelle Memorial Institute.
Schedule:
11:30a – Networking
12:00p – Speaker
1:00p – Group Meeting Concludes & Networking Resumes
Cost:Â
Free! (Lunch included)
