Future Solar Autoclave Research – September 2009
August 31, 2009
Upcoming Work Stateside and Abroad
Now that Daniel and the ETHOS Field Team have had a good chance to work in Nicaragua with the solar autoclave design produced last year, the research will be continued in several different locations by different prospecting minds.
Firstly, Erin Sutton, a third-year Mechanical Engineering major at the University of Dayton and one of the summer 2009 Field Team members, will continue her work on her new-and-improved design of the solar autoclave. She will be spending a semester of work in Toledo during the Fall of 2009 but plans to spend free time on the project. Then, once back on campus for the Spring 2010 semester, she will pursue private project credit by working on the solar autoclave under the tutelage of long-time Salud del Sol sponsor and supporter, Dr. Margaret Pinnell.
Secondly, students at the National Engineering University in the capital city of Managua, Nicaragua will be working closely with their professors towards developing a working solar autoclave for their theses projects, for which Salud del Sol will act in the advisory capacity and also as a liason between University of Dayton and UNI when necessary. This is a very exciting prospect to have the project being worked on by engineers in-country because it will bridge a very important gap between research happening in the United States and the research in Nicaragua. Together, University of Dayton and UNI will be able to provide each other with immeasurable assistance and advice.
Thirdly, there is interest by other collaborators that the Salud del Sol founders are continuing to pursue communications with. Grupo Fenix – the volunteer organization in Nicaragua that hosts the UD ETHOS students – continues to seek outside volunteers to work on the solar autoclave project on-site in Sabana Grande, Totagalpa, Nicaragua. This means that they may at any time have a volunteer interested in working on the testing, thus, keeping the project alive in the community where it initiated.
In other avenues for collaboration, Director of Development, Anna Young, has been working closely with the Innovations in International Health program at MIT (IIH) to explore opportunities for expanding the solar autoclave research across Universities in the US and exploring other appropriate technologies in-line with the mission of Salud del Sol.
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