 Hello, good morning, good afternoon or good evening depending on where you're joining us from today. Welcome to engineering for change or you for see for short word please to bring you our and this month's installment of the first seven are series, which is spearheaded by a SMAs engineering for global development research committee with the purpose to intellectually develop the field of engineering for global development. We host a new research institution monthly to learn about their work and advancing the United Nations sustainable development goals and sustainable development for property. Today's seminar is presented by Dr. Amy Belton, who is the director of the Center for Global Engineering at the University of Toronto and will be moderated by the research committee co chair Jesse Austin from as well as myself. The seminar will be archived on the E4C website as well as our YouTube channel. 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All right, welcome, everyone. Welcome. So excited to have you all with us with this. I'm going to go ahead and introduce today's presenter. Dr. Amy built in is and I'm sorry. I just made my window quite large. I'm just going to do this. Dr. Me building assistant professor at the mechanical engineering department at the University of Toronto and the director of the cross-disciplinary center for global engineering. Her research group for the water energy research lab or world focuses on developing innovative water and energy technologies, which are geared towards global development. She has worked with industry and NGOs around the world, most notably in India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Mexico, and she completed her PhD and master's in aeronautics and astronautics at MIT and her bachelor's in engineering science, focusing on aerospace at the University of Toronto. Prior to her time at U of T, Amy has also worked as a systems engineer in Pratt, Whitney Canada and Honeywell Aerospace with that Amy. I'm going to pass over the slides to you. Let me just see. I'm not going to introduce Jesse because he always needs no introduction is really what the word is, but he also doesn't want me to focus too much on on his bio, which you can read on every single description of every seminar we have. So I will leave it to him to do that. So with that, Amy, the slides are yours. Welcome. We're keen to hear your insight. Yeah, great. Thanks, I'm really, I'm really happy to be here today. So when I, when I signed up for this slot, it was back and probably back in January. So it was before, before this whole COVID situation kind of came into this world picture. So I'm going to talk a little bit today about some things we've been thinking about in our research group and some things we've been developing in our research group. And really, you know, how we're thinking about how we can make some technologies in this space, which can make an impact. But at the end of this, I'm also going to take a little snapshot and thinking about, you know, given the fact that things have changed a little bit, some things that we might need to think about and we should think about collectively in this, in this space, in the context of COVID, which is, which is, which is, you know, super important for many of us. So just to kick things off, I just need to click here in the right spot. You know, what I'm going to talk today about is really developing technology for the basis of pyramid. When we're, when we're thinking about that we do in our group, a lot of the projects that we take on and we think about, we're thinking about technologies that can make an impact for the very poor, the people who are making. A few dollars per day, but part of the challenge when you're thinking about design in this context design for this particular vulnerable population is the fact that people doing the design and a lot of the work and all the things that are being designed as a lot of it is being done really for this part of the income pyramid here, which is and see if I can actually get this to work. Maybe I can't. That's okay. This, this top part of the pyramid. So 90% really of the design that work that's being done is really being done for these high income income bracket. And unfortunately, the target market that that we're that we're thinking about the very poor, they pay the highest prices really for their product for what what they're trying to get relative to their income. And a lot of times they're getting things which are not very well suited for, for their needs. And what, you know, why is that, you know, we sit down and we think about things related to, you know, we're, we're designers. And when we're actually doing our work, you know, we use the process and I'm not going to go through all the details in this process because we only have only about half hour today to chat with you and if But we work through design process where we think about, you know, identifying problems defining requirements and going through going through this iterative kind of design loop. But because of the way this design is a lot of times is done. There's a lot of, there's a lot of issues. Sometimes there's, there's technologies which has been developed and designed for that developing work world market, which is that which are then pitch and hold into serving, serving this developing world market. And a lot of times because of the way that they were developed and designed, there's things which make them really inappropriate and make them things that actually don't satisfy the needs of the end market. Even sometimes when designers are actually developing technologies with, with the particular context in mind, they often miss some key requirements in these initial stages of the design process that makes them inappropriate. And that's what I'm going to talk to about today is really thinking about, you know, how can we understand, you know, if technologies are inappropriately designed and how can we actually rethink this initial phase of this design process so we can, we can. How we can come up with innovative solutions, which can, which can potentially serve this market, which has very unique design constraints. I'm not going to get a chance to talk to you today, but this is something that you foresee really focuses on is, you know, after technologies have been also developed, how do we get them out to market and have me make sure that they can make an impact. And, you know, you foresee it has a great technology solutions market online portal and other other things to be able to do that. So I'm not going to be able to focus on that today, but a lot of times as well. There's there's there's there's many technologies great technologies that just don't make that transition as well. So. Thinking about this, you know, there's a lot of things my technology is developed. It comes up short because of the way this this design, this design processes is is really implemented. You know, I'm going to talk about I'm going to talk a lot about water and sanitation today. So, examples, I'm going to show here on the left. We've got, you know, sanitation. There is a huge, huge issue for many in the developing world, nearly 2 billion people lack even just basic sanitation systems. And above that, there's there's a billion more, more than a billion more that actually don't have. You know, sorry, that even for those people, that population, even if they have some sanitation solution, such as the poor flesh toilet, which you're seeing on the left, the actual waste from the system is not or not. It's not properly treated. So, despite the fact that there's many of these many technologies on the market, which might fill this need, there's still these conditions that are happening. So, it's we, you know, can we boil it down and can we think about that? There's many other failures we can also think about. Classic, classic one. And then we see many times in our, in my work is when we're traveling, we'll see, we'll see broken water pumps all over the place. And this is just one statistic. As approximately 60,000 hand pumps are installed in sub-Saharan Africa each year, but 66% of them fall into disrepair and are non-functional. So, with, you know, what is, what is the main, what's going on here and what's causing this? Another quick case study we're just going to quickly bring up here. Something where, where technology has really come up short and is a case study of the play pump. So, people may have heard of this technology. I'm just going to give it a quick, give a quick overview of what's going on here is the technology, which is actually introduced at an agricultural fair back in 1989. And the concept is demonstrated on the left here. You know, here, you'll have some borehole. Well, you'll have the idea is, okay, you have children in these communities. They need some place to play. Can we harness some of that energy to do something useful? The idea behind the play pump was you could have a merry go round. The children could play. They could pump the water that's needed for, for the local household uses. It can be pumped up into the top of this water tower. And then, and then when, when people need it, they could come and they could take some, take some water from the water tower, take it back home. So this garnered a lot of attention back in the early 2000s. It won multiple awards, including some awards from the World Bank generated huge amounts of funding, over $60 million in funding. But it was seen as a major, major failure. And there's many reasons why this, this came to play and why it's a major failure. Part of it is actually just thinking about the problem and thinking about the requirements. And when you actually think about this problem, when you're thinking about, you know, children playing, how many hours a day will children play on a merry go round? You know, probably minutes, right? When you actually look at the system and you actually go through and look at it from an engineering standpoint, it actually would take almost 24 hours a day of the children playing to be able to get the amount of water which, which was needed for the particular communities where this, where the system was deployed. There are other things which also made this a scene as a failure. And when this technology was rolled out, another thing that happened was these actual, these pumps were installed in, in areas where there was existing pumps, sometimes working pumps, they installed them in place of those working pumps. And so if the children are able to pump enough to be able to get enough water for the community, what happens? It ends up that, you know, the people who are collecting the water would have to pump and imagine, imagine, you know, imagine being a woman in this community going to collect water. And then instead of you arrive at the water, at the water, water tank, no water. You have to basically turn a merry, a degrading merry go round to be able to get the water which you need to be able to supply for your family. And then other issues apart on top of this reliability. This is, this is, this is many, many issues in terms of development of technology when you're thinking about this case. So there's been many cases where technology has come up short. And as a result, there's many people in the developing world who don't have lack access to water and sanitation. And I'm going to come back to this a little bit later on towards the end of my talk. But this has been, this is actually coming to a head and it actually is making huge impacts in the, in the current climate. This is an image from a water collection point in Mumbai. And in Mumbai's biggest slum, about 80% of the people don't have local, local running water. So people will have to go and collect water from an, from a local access point. This basically makes it impossible to do what a lot of us are doing, you know, do this social distancing. They have to go and they have to stand in queues for hours to be able to get to get water. And then also when they get back to their home, you know, they have to think about, you know, when they're using this water, are they going to be using it for things like washing their hands. And there's been studies that have shown, you know, the water usage is actually going more towards the priorities of, you know, drinking, agriculture, other things as well. So there's a lot of issues here and I'll come back to this and we can do a little think about this towards the end of the talk today. So I'm going to talk a little bit about things that we're thinking about in my research group and to try to address some of these gaps when you're thinking about this type of, this type of engineering design to try to develop technologies which, which can be appropriate and have an impact. You know, throughout this work and throughout the work that we do, you know, you need to make sure you have strong partnerships and, and consultation with. With end users and use a human centered approach. I'm not going to talk about that in detail throughout the presentation today. But I'm going to focus in on some of the work that we're doing in the lab to try to think about really this first stage in this design process where we're thinking about, you know, how can we take a problem. How can we boil it down to fundamentals and think about the particular problem at hand, not just necessarily adapting something which is existing and works in a different context. If it's not the right solution. And really, if that is a solution which is in place and it's not actually satisfying the needs trying to understand what could be barriers which are currently in place to making that something which might work. So in my group, we work in a wide range of areas. I'm going to focus in on some of our, some of our newer projects today. So we work on different aspects related to water treatment, desalination, hydro projects. What I'm going to focus in, I'm going to focus in on, on 3, 3, 3 projects that we've been working on. That kind of talk a bit about these, these, these places where we're trying to fill this gap and really think about technology in this context appropriately. So I'm going to talk a little bit about sanitation, case for sanitation, some of the work we've been doing in aquaculture and then also agriculture as well. First step when we're thinking about design and things that we've been thinking about is really, you need to understand what's going on and, and what potential potential gaps may exist. So I'm going to talk about a case here that we've been thinking about in terms of sanitation. In the sanitation space, there's been a lot of technologies that have been developed and there's more that are currently being developed through some outstanding programs through the Gates Foundation. Many technologies have been developed, which are, which, which can handle both, you know, safe, safe separation of a human excreta from, from, and also make it so it's appropriately treated. Dry toilets and other types of toilets as well, but this is still something which has not been pervasive in the developing world context. A lot of households, if they do have access to sanitation, will have something that looks more like what you have on the right. It's a, which is a, which is a poor flush toilet. The idea is it's basically what, you know, the basic function is what I have in my, in my, in my bathroom upstairs, but these households don't have access to running water. So what they do is they will to flush the toilet, they will pour water into the toilet itself. So, you know, we're thinking of when we're looking at this problem, we're trying to understand, okay, so why is it that these technologies, even though, you know, there are NGOs who will take and put these technologies and work with end users and put them into the field. Why are they not necessarily being adopted? And why is this that most many of the sanitation solutions, what you see in the developing world look like, look like the one that's on the right. So looking at that, you know, we can, we can try to understand what's going on with some of those gaps, what those some of those gaps are. When we're actually looking at sanitation, sanitation is an example, but we could be looking at drinking water or other types of things where, where different improved technologies are being implemented. You know, there's, there's information out there and NGOs have data, there's census data. You can go through and you can actually do surveys and other things, but they're often incomplete and outdated. So what you actually, what we actually need to understand what's going on and why technologies are not being adopted or taken up as you need to, you need, you need, you need more. And you need, you need both things you might get through surveys and you need some quantitative data. When you're thinking about sanitation, part of the challenge is that, you know, when, when NGOs do interventions or even when, even when they're, even when surveys are done with end users. You know, there's, there's things where errors in the data and biases that coming into the data. Part of the other challenge here also is, you know, and a lot of things when you're doing this type of design, you can do observation, you can, you can sit there and you could, you know, see how a user interact with technology. But when you're talking about a toilet, that's not really something that you can do. So this is, in this context, the global development is thinking about design. One of the research strides is what we're thinking about it. Certainly is how can we gather this data? How can we think about this data? And there's a lot more and how we can do that with, with instrumentation. So this is a concurrent project which we have on the go. I'm not going to delve into details today, but with low cost technology, low cost sensors and, and, and, and data acquisition. We can think about now, can we actually gather that, gather that data from the use of the technology and, and then use that as to really understand what those core gaps are and then be able to build, build that together with the qualitative and quantitative data you get through surveys to be able to build technology from the ground up. So this is something that we knew that we're thinking about in this, in this particular context. So I'm going to jump into some of the projects which are more developed that we have on the, on the go. I'm going to talk about some of the projects we've been doing in aquaculture. And this is, this was a new field that I jumped into about, about it's been six years ago now. And it was not, it was not something I knew a whole lot about before I started, but it's the field that I got into and it's something where it's something which I see as being something that's hugely important. I didn't realize it before I actually got in the, in the area. It's the world's fastest growing food sector. And, you know, in the context of global development, it's hugely, hugely important. So in Southeast Asia, there's 18 million people that engage in aquaculture. You know, in our, we have partnerships working with people in, in Vietnam and Bangladesh and, and in both of those countries, aquaculture accounts for more than 5% of the, of the GDP. Most of the people who are conducting aquaculture look like, you know, look like this image in the top right there's a small household. Small holder fish farmers who will have, have ponds which are dug on their property. And they use it to raise, raise fish. However, these farmers lack a lot of resources and one of the big, big things which are limiting the production of, of, of fish for these farmers. It's actually the quality of the water, which, which, which is, which they're using. One of those big parameters for water quality is, is how much oxygen, oxygen need the fish need oxygen to grow it and develop. So that leads to low productivity for a lot of these farmers and industrial fish farms. You know, when we, when we were first, you know, when I first got introduced to the field, you know, we sat down and we, we studied what was going on. And industrial fish farms, you know, they'll, there's wide use of, of large aeration devices like you see on the bottom right. These are powder, paddle wheels, they, they will spin and, and, and introduce oxygen into the water. But it's, these are kind of you very much out of reach for these, these fish farmers partially because they don't have access to electrical infrastructure and, and their expenses. In my research group, one thing that we, when we, when we think about these problems, once we've defined the partners and, and talk, talk to, talk to partners and, and, and about the, about the problem. We really start by focusing in on the fundamentals and that's where we started on this, on this project is we, we looked at what was physically going on in these, in the system. So, this is what a typical fish pond might look like. You know, what happens in these fish ponds is you end up with, you end up with oxygen, which is generated naturally. So it comes in from the air. It has, there's algae in the water. The algae produces oxygen when the sun's shining. You end up, you end up with lots of oxygen at the top and not much at the bottom. So what aeration devices do is two things. But one of the main functions of aeration devices is they actually circulate water top to bottom. And they do other things as well in terms of increasing oxygen transfer from the, from the atmosphere and other things. But one of the biggest impacts really comes from the circulation. So, introducing this type of aeration has, has, you know, huge impacts in terms of enabling healthier fish and increasing the amount of fish you can grow in a particular pond and increasing yields. But they're really out of, it's really something which is out of, out of reach for a lot of these, a lot, a lot of fish farmers. So, with these fundamentals in mind, we thought, okay, so these, these aeration devices, they're, they're, they're big, they're power hungry, they're expensive. But really one of the things that can, which they do, which increases dissolved oxygen the most is actually just circulating the water top to bottom. So we actually start, started by boiling down to those fundamentals. And by understanding those fundamentals, we, we really went through this design process where we thought about, okay, what can happen if we do something which is a simpler type of intervention, maybe something which would be more appropriate for this particular market than some of the big power hungry and expensive aeration devices and implemented those. So we, we did some studies to understand first can something simpler work. And we did some modeling, where we actually looked at different segments of this pond and tried to understand what was happening with the dissolved oxygen. And what we found was, if we did some very, even some very simple circulation in the pond, we could have, we could have actually a great improvement in what was going on with, with the dissolved oxygen, which would great, which would directly impact farmers productions in yield. So it led us to towards developing a couple different, a couple different aeration concepts, which are, which we're currently working on. I'm not going to be able to delve into too much detail on these today, but we've been working on a few technologies. One is actually using using a wind turbine. So the idea here is a vertical axis wind turbine. It captures the wind energy and then it circulates water through an impeller under the water. And then the other another one that we've been working on and actually have been doing doing field trials with as well uses uses solar heat. The idea behind this is the sun will come and will heat. We will transfer heat from the sun down deep into the water. And then we get some convective circulation, some circulation that happens in the pond and circulating the water top to bottom. So we've been working on the development of these concepts over the past past few years. And just quick quick snapshot. This is the one on the left, the whirlwind, which is the wind powered aeration. This is a simple prototype, which we built together with some partners in Bangladesh. And this is that just a quick test over the course of three days where we actually had a 75% improvement and the dissolved oxygen in the in the pond with the whirlwind versus versus versus without. So this could have a great impact on farmers yields. And we've been working and we're actually working with some partners towards towards different ends to be able to further advance and move this on long to be able to make it. So it's something we can get out to the marketplace. So a few of my few of my former students have taken this technology. We've developed a a startup company called called and these are just a few pictures from this pack here. This image on the left is actually an image from the SME I show where where the whirlwind was was one of the one of the three winners of the SME I show last year. And then subsequently the team also participated in something called the aquaculture innovation challenge and we're able to raise some more funds to be able to to take the technology and advance the technology. The team that's been working with working towards some working towards building up some partnerships and doing some more design work. We've also been working towards a partnership with World Fish to be able to actually do a larger scale RCT of the of the technology with them in Bangladesh. Those plans are on pause just for the current moment because of some of the climate but this is an example of, you know, something where in the design process we started with this this problem really boiled it down to fundamentals and by starting with something which understanding the fundamentals we came up with something which is more appropriate for this particular market and then and then built it up from there. So I'm going to quickly overview one other example of this type of this type of work and this type of approach that we've been taking and this is something some work which is ongoing, which is actually thinking about sustainable irrigation for a stable irrigation. So in an agriculture. A lot of the irrigation which is done in the developing world and has been done uses a flood irrigation. You know, the idea is, you just will flood a portion of land, let the waters see fit. It's just hugely inefficient. You know, lots of waters lost in the process. There's been a lot of work and a lot of people and some of our NGO partners were working towards something that's more sustainable they've been working towards working together with farmers local farmers to be able to develop and supply locally sourced irrigation irrigation kits which use drip irrigation. So in some of our discussion with our partners when we were actually doing our doing our work. What we found was there was a there was a challenge for a lot of these farmers there. You know, this is that they found was even though they had access to this drip irrigation system, there was still a lot of things they were unsure of. They were unsure in terms of if they were watering enough. Were they watering too much. And this is part of their concerns partially because for the farmers to be able to extract the water from the ground. It's, you know, it's, it's hugely costly and intensive. So they, there was a need from the farmers to understand. How can we make sure that we're irrigating our land appropriately and you know, are we doing, are we irrigating enough. So with this in mind, you know, we sat down and again what we did in our group is we started and we, we boiled it down to really the fundamentals of what goes on, you know, what goes on in the actual soil when, when, when it's water. What happens there. So we started with really this fundamental, you know, when you're looking at soil. What happens, you know, a plant has roots in the soil, and it actually has to draw the water out of the soil. And it has to do this against, against, against, you know, a what's called the soil water potential, which is basically it's this negative pressure that is exerted in the planting to draw the water, draw the water out of the soil. So the fact of the matter is that this, the fact that you have this water in the soil creates this, this a negative pressure the plants need to pull against. We thought about, could we actually take this property and again be able to exploit this to be able to create some sort of sustainable and appropriate irrigation technology. That's why we kind of broke it down into thinking about, you know, for these, for this particular end market and through consultation with our partners. Yeah, they didn't want something which would rely on electricity. I didn't need very many tools and be something which would be appropriate for the experience of the farmers. I'm going to end up developing. I can't go into all the, all the details on the design today. But the idea behind this is, is actually the porous ceramic tip, which is inserted down into the soil, and then similar to similar to plants. If the, as the soil dries, it actually will look, if we have water in this water column, it'll exert a negative pressure. And then what we can do is actually we can use that negative pressure to open and close a valve and regulate and then regulate the amount of water, which is put into the, to the field and do it in a completely passive completely passive way. So, with, we ended up, you know, developing and I can't go into all the details developing this, this concept. And throughout the process, part of our, our, our goal is again was to make it something which would be accessible for the population. And I, unfortunately, just because of the time constraints and, and some of the technical constraints. You know, as part of the work that we did in, in, in, as we went through, we, we, we ran, we ran a number of work sessions with the, with our, with our, with our partners. Where we actually went out and through some simple, you know, five minute sessions kind of showed them how they could actually put this together. You know, you know, using using some, some very simple kit of parts and they were able to do so in just a few minutes. I can't show the video right now. This is a quite a promising, promising concept, promising technology. We've been able to do some operation and, you know, again, this is something where we're, we're planning to towards some larger scale, larger scale tests. You know, right now we're doing some smaller scale tests here in Toronto and it looks like this summer because of because of some of the constraints that are in place. We'll continue to do these types of smaller scale tests. This is just a quick, simple kind of plot showing from the operation of the, of the valve. You can see the pressure in the soil go down. The valve will open up, so we'll go into the field of soil. What's, and it closes itself back up again and basically being able to regulate, regulate the water, water content in the soil. So we're currently working through some, some tests in Toronto and hopefully, and we've done some estimation in terms of what, what this would be over what some standard, what this might save over some standard practices, which farmers, farmers currently use for irrigation in this context. One of the, one of the things that the farmers when we surveyed, you know, how they were using these types of refrigeration systems, they usually use some standard, you know, time to irrigation. So it plans to actually go through and do some implementations with some of our partners here in Toronto, just to do some of these testing in the short term on, on, on a little bit on a larger plot of land. And what we found is, you know, with, with the controller versus what this kind of standard might be, there's a potential for actually great savings, you know, saving 75% water usage or maybe more, you know, over, over what would be the standard kind of practices. This of course is variable depending on your, you know, depending on. Just a few examples of how we're trying to rethink some of these problems and, and, and really in thinking about water in this particular context. Really, when in my group, a lot of things that we're thinking about is, you know, when we're actually identifying the problem and thinking about the problem. There are a lot of things which are missed and things which, which really understanding how current technologies work. There's a lot of gaps there. And if we miss those things, we're setting, setting things up for failure. So again, you know, we're looking at how can we, how can we actually gather information and implement implement. Sensing approaches to be able to understand that. And then the other thing that we're really looking to do is really, when we're actually going through this initial stages in this, in this design process, you know, after we've defined those requirements with our partners is can we actually boil it down. And really focus in based on the fundamentals and see based on those fundamentals, can we think about something which would be more appropriate in this context than just adapting something which has been used for the health market and be able to take that kind of different approach based on those. So just a few kind of things, you know, that's a lot of what we've been thinking about in my research group. Just a few things that I've been thinking about more recently and hearing a lot about. And, you know, something that maybe there would be some questions about or people, people might have, you know, some thoughts on I'd be interested to hear. You know, lack of lack of clean water sanitation, it's been a huge issue in the fighting fighting COVID-19. As I mentioned before, this is a problem when you're thinking about basic sanitation, basic hygiene, even, you know, those vulnerable populations just because of the fact that they don't have access to water. You know, it puts them at additional risk because they're not able to social distance the way that we currently are. And this impacts are being seen everywhere. Unfortunately, I don't have data on a lot of the places where these challenges are currently being seen, but I was actually just listening to MPR yesterday, up first on MPR. And even within North America, these challenges are there. In an instance, I was just thinking about in Southwestern United States, the Navajo Nation, 30% of the Navajo Nation does not have running water. In the Navajo Nation, there is a higher incidence rate of coronavirus there, higher than any of the other states in the U.S. And they actually have instituted a lockdown there. For those people that don't have pipes water, what happens to them right now, they're basically just drying water, trying to make decisions based on the water they have in their water tank or they're violating the lockdown orders to go collect water. So this is a huge issue and impacts are being seen, not only internationally, but locally as well. So what does this mean? And this is a lot of things that I've been reading about and thinking about what people can do and what's being done by some of the aid agencies thinking about COVID-19. You know, they're really working in this water space, trying to understand and can they do rapid deployment of infrastructure for hand washing. What else can we do, you know, when I've been thinking about this, you know, there's really a need and this really kind of comes back to some of the things that I've been thinking more about more broadly is there's really a need in a lot of these communities to think about distributed water supply infrastructure. So something which can enable, enable affordable distribution of water in these communities and some of the NGOs that we've been talking to have been thinking about thinking about different ways that can be done with water harvesting and other things as well. And outside, even just people who have, some people who have had water access, you know, COVID-19 is also influencing them. You know, there's many in the world that live on an intermittent water supply. So we're not able to actually wash their hands continuously, you know, and maybe when they want to as well. So another thing which can potentially limit the spread of COVID-19 would be some different things to be able to move towards some more continuous water supply for some of those. Some of those areas. And some of the things that this is maybe the other things I've just been thinking about and I flip-flop back and forth between thinking yes and no towards this. You know, and I'm interested if anyone else has any thoughts, you know, when all this is settled, settled 10 and done, do you think that maybe we'll move this move us closer towards being able to provide clean water and sanitation for all? You know, the optimistic side of me says, you know, maybe, you know, maybe some of the things which are being done for COVID may be able to do that, but it's my, you know, pessimistic side of me also thinks that, you know, some of these will be just piecemeal efforts, which will not be something which is going to be sustainable in the long term. So that's the last kind of big piece of the presentation. A few things I just want to plug as well before we kind of go into questions. So something I do outside of my research group and other things that, you know, as a professor is that I'm one of the editors of development engineering and for people who are working in this space of doing engineering for global development. So this is an excellent place where you can actually think about disseminating some of your work. It's a place where we value, value papers, which take that picture of real on the ground kind of experience and how people have made technologies, you know, really, really work on other things that you might other other topics which which might not fit in other types of journals. So if you're working in this area and you're thinking about where might be a great place for me to disseminate my work. I urge you to think about development engineering. It would be a, it's that we're always looking for good contributions and Jesse has been has been has contributed some work development engineering in the past. The last thing I just want to say, say thanks to, you know, all the people and sponsors to enable some of the work that we do. I just came off maternity leave recently so I realized last night when I was finalizing my slide I don't have. I don't have the most up to date picture of my group. So this is a small subset of my group. Really, what I do, I don't do the heavy lifting it's the students that do all the heavy lifting and it wouldn't be the work that we do wouldn't happen without without without my team and without the support of the for the research funding. So with that, I will pass it, I will pass it off to Jesse and he may have some comments or questions. I've written down a lot of questions. No, no, I have so many questions. Amy, this is great stuff. You know, I'm going to echo what a bunch of people have said in the chat already, which is it's really inspiring to see the type of application of engineering. I think the reason we're all here is we're interested in contributing and having an impact on society and your focus on, you know, using understanding those physics and context fundamentals to then drive solutions which we think will potentially have an impact. You know, it's really inspiring and I think is, you know, one obviously one of the reasons we asked you to speak today, but I think, you know, really highlighted the potential for engineering to make positive change. Which I think is, you know, engineering for chase. That's the name of what we're, what we're doing today. Right. So it's great to see that in practice. I did have some questions. I'm going to try and sort of synthesize what some of the people have been saying in the chat. You know, do you have anything you want to say before I get into that. No, just please continue adding your question. All right, great. So one of the things that I would like to ask and has been asked and sort of some of the chats and a lot locally also a lot of questions on this. Is this tension between sort of systemic or structural gap. And some of the individual user human centered problems that you've discussed, right. So, you know, you're talking about okay aquaculture we have a culture we want to understand why, why does it do the current solution. These farmers, you know, these these aquacolor fish farmers in Thailand or Vietnam, wherever. But there's some tension and that you've been bringing up between other uses for water, maybe large business is using it for other reasons and large agriculture. Or there's these systemic issues where technology may not be an issue may not, may not be an impactful solution. Right. So I think the question that many of them brought up is, how do you balance and identify projects where technology might be a solution or how do you incorporate in your design. You know, a lot of larger systemic issues right with sanitation with water and all the projects you mentioned. Yeah, yes, it's a great it's a great, it's a great question for sure I think it's something that we think about when I'm defining projects for for my students and working with you to define projects. I think there's a lot of very important work that is being done thinking about, you know, some of these more systemic and structural, you know, gaps and thinking about policy, you know, around addressing some of these systemic and structural gaps. In my group, you know, the work that we do, and we actually directly, you know, when we're thinking about choosing our projects. We don't, we don't have, we don't, we have some people we know who think about those types of problems, but it's not something that's really the focus of, you know, what, what we do and in our group. So what we try to do is we actually start a lot of times with the, you know, with the end user kind of approach and thinking about most smaller scale kind of interventions that could potentially be scaled to make larger impacts. And, and so that, you know, we have those barriers which may exist because of the systemic and structural kind of the structural gaps or something which are going to impede some of the things that we're, we're doing. So I think, you know, how we try to approach it is, you know, we start, we start with something kind of small scale user centered where we understand at least for some working with those partners that this is a problem where we can make some implement, we can make some, we can make some impact. But at the same time, when we're selecting those problems with those partners, we think about, is it something that can potentially be scaled and applied more broadly than, than, than with those particular partners. So, I think we start with that user centered approach. But I agree with you that there's a lot of, there's a lot of things related to sustainable development where it's, you know, there's a lot of systemic things which, which, which limit it. We're trying to be in our own work, we try to be strategic starting with that user centered approach to be able to pick out things where we think, you know, we have the expertise and with some of our partners we can, we can look at and try to address. Yeah, thank you. So allow me to follow up and then try and combine a couple of the other questions which we're talking about the trajectory of these projects and you're touching on it now and sort of describing like we start here then here then we move here depending on the results that we're getting. Yeah. I think a lot of people are asking about, you know, how do you see mentioned, you know, we have these partnerships developing that partnership. But also, you know, people are asking guide me I want to work on these types of issues. Right, I'm in this location, I'm in the university, I'm in a company. What is this model that you were using and it seems pretty similar across the projects right sort of you have a style of how you envision a project developing from like initial contact with a partner or whatever defining the problem. Moving through to initial project scaling with however it goes. What do you see is those steps if you were going to talk to them and let's say me, I'm trying to be you right and and you're saying with these projects right. So, so I think, yeah, the first the first step is really, you know, as I mentioned, it's really kind of trying to find that problem and be able to really understand the full context of that problem and really we're not able to do that. First, to be able to do that is we need to have partners who are working in that area as essential kind of aspects for us to even think about, is this a problem we're going to, we're going to tackle or we're going to think about tackling. So, really that first essential step is, you know, finding those partners building up that those partnerships. That's something which is it's really painstaking slow and, you know, process, which, which, which it's a, you need to, you need to have some, some infrastructure behind you to help help kind of support. I'm really fortunate, you know, at the University of Toronto, so I'm the director of this process of plenary center called the Center for Global Engineering. And every, you know, every few, every few years, you know, we will come forward with a group of faculty who are, you know, have found some particular challenge. And we're able to usually leverage that to be able to secure some funding, at least strategic funding through through the faculty. There's, there's an initial kind of seed fund and I think, and that enables us usually to get to get a few to get a research associate to work with us and, and, and then we start, you know, who couldn't really focus on the partnership development for this particular challenge. So really, we start with, you know, we have, we have particular, we bring some faculty together. We're able to, we're able to get some initial kind of seed funding, but from, from the university to help support, you know, this is, we think this is an important area where we should be contributing. We get the, we get the university to kind of back us and then we kind of get some, we get, we get a research associate to work with us and he helps to kind of orchestrate and put together a lot of those partnerships. So I think, you know, this is a long winded way to say, like the first step is really developing those partnerships and then understanding the problem. And then, and then, and then we build a snowball without, without, without, without those partnerships, we wouldn't get anywhere. Yeah, sorry. Sure. Um, let me ask a, there's a, so there's two other questions, but we're almost out of time. So I'm just going to ask one last one, which is, there was a lot of technical questions around like, okay, like how much wind should you have in order to really produce the aeration. One of the things that I'm going to ask you, maybe it's more of a comment. It seems like you're really focused on developing the sort of engineering knowledge and maybe market knowledge around the problem itself, like the, when you talk about the fundamentals, where you say, hey, you know, people understand aeration of fish farms, but no one's looked at fish farms maybe at this scale, or looked at this physics fundamental because they have these other solutions available that are, you know, with the capital that you have. So, you know, I think, you know, you, you showed a lot of graphs and a lot of sort of quantification and data gathering and really building that understanding of what really goes on in sanitation. Right. Like we can't observe you these reports. There's not a lot of data here for these markets. Right. So, if you could talk about in terms of your contribution as an academic researcher within water and sanitation, right, like you're in engineering, you're producing these papers. What is it that you're really, where do you see we need new information like if you wanted somebody else to work on this problem. Right. Do you develop new technologies or are there things that you're saying hey we need new engineering tools or method like what is what is lacking to really take this to the next level like like, are we just not doing engineering. One of the questions was, do we have incentives do we just need to change the incentives for companies to work in these areas and then it'll solve the problems, or is it that, you know, even if companies wanted to work in these areas. We may not be able to follow what's sort of your experience when working on this. Is there a distinction. Okay, so I guess the question is, you know, how do we how do we make how do we get how do we get some of like kind of some scalability of people thinking about problems in this kind of in these kind of application domains like more and more people kind of working in these kind of application domains. Yeah, I think. So I think this is this is a lot of the things that. And I think, I think there are some organizations out there that kind of that kind of get it and try to understand some of the core challenges there is that, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of issues and there's a lot of issues in this in this application domain for a lot of people. And this is why business hasn't moved into this area is that the people don't have a whole lot of money. And they don't have the capital to kind of put up kept behind put behind, you know, buying, you know, buying products right so. This is the unique kind of challenge as a designer in this space is that, you know, given these constraints, you have to think about, okay, can we develop some technology that people are going to be able to. You know, there's going to be some sustainable kind of business proposition behind the people who might in the end be buying this technology and the challenges for a lot of these things in this application domain is that. To be able to because it is this really hard design space this engineering design space. You know, there are a lot of times there is there is a lot of work that goes behind, you know, finding a technology which can actually satisfy satisfy this gap. And, and, and make some impact. And there are some organizations that kind of have have understand that and kind of gotten that so Gates is one of them that, you know, understand like those initial phases and research. It's really, you know, you may you may get something which works there's there's risk associated with it. And it's going to take a lot of work and but then maybe maybe we can actually get something which which is going to be able to meet that price point which that business will take up and and be able to be able to then be able to then. There would be some profitability there and given the fact that there is this huge market that that can contribute the small amount that we can we can actually make it move the needle. But I think there's this activation energy this like initial kind of investment that all the time needs to be put in to be able to make it to this point that, you know, where there's where the business can kind of jump in and take that take that stage. And that's my own perspective is, you know, because these problems are so are quite, you know, to get something which is going to work for this highly constrained. It's hard problems. And, and, and, you know, you need that initial investment put in there so we can understand what's what's going on behind these hard problems. And then once that initial investment you've got the ideas and you've got the technology kind of going, then then we can go and think about how to build it into this. Well, thank you very much, Amy. I hope I articulated. Obviously, lots of questions that I wasn't able to simply or maybe I didn't articulate the way that you were thinking about when you were putting them in. We do have this recorded so you can go back and watch another some questions about looking at the slides or whatever. So that's going to be posted. But yeah, I think that, you know, people can find you and contact you. That's your your your contact information is public, but also we have these E4C structures for for connecting with people and I think, you know, one of the things we can think about this was our first step at trying to connect more people in the space and create spaces where people can collaborate. A lot of people Amy were so inspired. They were like, I want to collaborate with Amy. How do we do that? Like, how to do that? So, so you may you may get some more of those partnerships out of this, but I think in general we want to we want to find out like how do we connect the people that are in these organizations with with the practitioners or researchers if it's a particularly research specific problem that's needed. And so we'll be looking at those. So if you have ideas, please email me or Anna. Anybody that's out there that has like, hey, like it would be great if there was a directory that did this we already have some directories of people working in the space. Research report. You can read that for North America and Australia, New Zealand, working on other ones, but I'm going to let Yana take it away to sort of describe other resources that exist. Um, but again, I just want to thank you Amy, obviously, this seminar series, which is my way to get to hear you talk so I'm excited that it happened. Um, and, and really inspiring for me personally, but, uh, and I think for everybody else that's here. So thanks everyone for participating for joining. Yana, please take it away. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much, Jesse. And thank you again, Amy. I think I'm just going to build really quickly on the last question and to say that ultimately these issues are our systemic issues that require an ecosystem perspective. So we can't think about engineering and engineering interventions and isolation of investment strategies of government roles in developing sustainable solutions. So our focus with engineering for change is to unpack the system view and really try to help engineers understand where they enter the system. How they influence and develop solutions and give them agency to do that from wherever they are, whether they're students and the private sector in the public sector or retired. It's, you know, all of us have a role to play. I know we're at times so I won't take much longer than that. I know there's a lot of questions and big address for those of you who are really interested in case studies and insights regarding some of the examples that I shared and beyond. Those are documented engineering for change and please do reach out to us. I also want to give a shout out to our upcoming presenter for the seminar in June, James Rajanayasam, who will be representing IIT Madras and talking about social entrepreneurship and sustainable development research in India for next month. So please join us for that. With that, if we didn't address your questions, if, you know, you want some more information, please reach out to us. Thank you again, Amy. Thank you, Jesse. It's been a really insightful seminar and we're so thrilled to have you all be joining us. Enjoy the rest of your day. Stay safe. Watch those hands. Thank you. Bye-bye, everyone. Bye. Thanks, Jesse. Thank you. Thanks, Amy. Ciao. Ciao, everybody. Ciao.