Venezuela Trip

Industrial & Systems Engineering
Mallika Ramswamy, Sarah Ballard, Carlos Plaz, Jorge Daccarett, and Christopher Wood

"Over the past year, we traveled with two ISE professors, Drs. Andres Carrano and Brian Thorn, to Caracas, Venezuela.

We have worked on different projects as part of our new sustainability-focused workgroups: Engineers for a Sustainable World and P3: People, Prosperity and the Planet. The projects have included development and design of ecologically-friendly and cost-effective solar ovens and fabrication of ultraviolet tubes used to disinfect water. Portions of this work have been supported by the EPA.

In Venezuela, we visited an orphanage for severely handicapped children and installed a UV tube to provide the children with clean drinking water. We also met with Priests from churches in some of the poorest communities in Caracas where we discussed health issues and how UV tubes could be disseminated to improve public health. We have also met with students and faculty at the Universidad Catolica who have collaborated with us in the testing of the solar ovens and will assist in field testing and water analysis for the UV tubes.

The trips have been educational, rewarding, and a lot of fun. We learned
about important global issues and how we can use technology to address
them. We have also able to interact directly with those who will benefit from our work, which proved to be both educational and motivational. We feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel to Venezuela and see how we, as engineers, can work to address some of the critical challenges that face our fellow global citizens."

- Mallika Ramaswamy

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