In 2009 the IDEAS Competition received 36 outstanding proposals from a range of graduate and undergraduate teams. At least 6 awards are made each year to teams that demonstrate innovative solutions to problems in local, national, and international communities. Each winning team has demonstrated to the judges that their project was innovative, sustainable, and feasible.
Having a good idea is an important first step, but it's just an idea. Each of the following projects is an idea brought to life through the team's energy and dedication.
We wish you good luck in conceiving and developing your own ideas this year, and please check out the Get Connected part of this site if you'd like to learn how we can help you along the way.
$
7500 Health Innovation Award
(Sponsored by Aleksander and Anna Anita Leyfell)
$ 5000 Combined IDEAS Graduate Student and Yunus Award
(Sponsored by the MIT Office of the Dean for Graduate Education and Muhammed Abdul Latif Jameel)
Braille Label Maker was awarded the $7,500 IDEAS award sponsored by Aleksander and Anna Anita Leyfell. This award supports teams that devise creative solutions to support elderly people or those living with disabilities. Adelaide Calbry-Muzyka, Josh Karges, Karina Pikhart, Maria Prus, Trevor Shannon, and Rachel Tatem developed an innovation that will help the nearly two million blind and visually impaired people in the U.S. identify objects. The Braille Labeler is a portable electromechanical Braille label maker that features the standard six-button Braille typing configuration, while resolving many of the issues that other labeling technologies have not addressed.
HeatSource Textiles HeatSource Project was awarded $7,500 IDEAS Award sponsored by Lemelson – MIT, which sponsors an annual IDEAS prize for an outstanding project that focuses on international technology. Celeste Chudyk, Scot Frank, Allen Lin, Mary Masterman, Catlin Powers, Amy Qian, Saad Shaikh, Bao Truong, and Sloan Kulper developed an innovation for the rural Himalayan populations that rely heavily on dung and wood to heat their homes. HeatSource is a system of modular thermal energy-storing textile units composed of local textiles and paraffin, a locally available phase change material. These textiles deliver heat directly to the user, are fully reusable, and rely on solar energy to charge. HeatSource textiles also provide a means of income generation for local craftspeople.
Lebone Lebone was awarded the $7,500 Yunus Challenge award. Alexander Fabry, Aviva Presser, and Hugo Van Zuuren developed a microbial fuel cell (MFC), which is essentially a dirt-powered battery that can be deployed to rural, off-grid communities by local entrepreneurs. The cells harness energy from microbial metabolism occurring naturally in soil, and can provide sufficient power to light a home, charge a cell phone or power radios. Lebone holds a patented design for its MFCs, which will cost $15-$20 when manufactured.
EggTech was awarded a combination $5,000 Yunus Challenge award and Graduate Students Award. The Office of the Dean for Graduate Education annually sponsors an IDEAS award for a team that has substantial graduate student representation as well as a highly innovative, feasible and effective project. Blandine Antoine, Emmanuel Cassimatis, Alla Jezmir, Rhonda Jordan, Benjamin Lambert, Jukka Valimaki, Jamie Yang, and Mark Yen developed a business model that taps power at its source – whether it is a grid, a solar station, or a distributed power generation plant – and packages it into small, light, rechargeable batteries. In their plan, Batteries are rented to clients on an annual basis, and customers can swap a used battery for a fresh battery. The annual rental fee is equal to two weeks’ income, and the charge fee is nominal.
BLISS (Business and Life Skills School) was awarded the $5,000 IDEAS award sponsored by The COOP. Saba Gul, Dr. Ishrat Hussain, Nadeem Mazen, Ghazala Mehmood, and Eleni Orphanides developed a hybrid educational and business model that will focus on eliminating child labor while promoting education among the carpet-weaving Afghan refugee community of Pakistan. Bliss is a two-part model: The first involves a customized curriculum that, because of its usefulness, gradually changes the community’s attitude towards education. The second part involves a hands-on, after-school activity that is financially lucrative enough to remove the opportunity cost barrier, while helping the community save money for higher education.
Global Citizen Water Initiative was awarded the $5,000 IDEAS award sponsored by the Baruch family, who sponsor an annual award for a team composed primarily of undergraduate students. Stephanie Bachar, Jake Bywater, Scot Frank, Catlin Powers, and Jenny VanCalcar developed an open-source geo-tagged database and education suite that enables communities to test the quality of their water resources using simple test kits. The project’s interactive database will help communities access the necessary resources, and assist people in identifying potential regions of water-related health concerns.
Vision Group Vision Group “Seeing Machine” was awarded the $2,500 IDEAS award sponsored by Aleksander and Anna Anita Leyfell. This award supports teams that devise creative solutions to support elderly people or those living with disabilities. Quinn Smithwick, Brandon Taylor, and Yi Fei Wu developed an inexpensive, portable, and easy to use device that uses standard video sources such as consumer digital cameras and computers to enhance vision for the visually challenged.
Aquaport was awarded the $2,500 IDEAS award sponsored by Carrie Galehouse Frey. Team members Oladapo Bakare, Ashley Baker, Mary Bergeron, Rob Hardy, Joonhaeng Lee, Ash Martin, Rebecca Smith, and Daniel Uriarte developed an easy-to-use water transportation device for women in rural Ghana that costs less than $40. The modular design allows it to be broken into smaller pieces for storage, transportation, and distribution. Transport of water is further eased by the device’s ability to be either pushed or pulled.
In addition to the award sponsors, the IDEAS Competition receives vital funding and support from Bose, the Silicon Spice Founders Fund, Medtronic, the MIT10 Alumni and many individual donors.
