This program is now completed.
In the summer of 2020, Engineering World Health offered a new, free virtual design program that brought together groups of students from the United States and Lebanon. The course focused on low-resource design and engineering for healthcare in an international setting. Participants worked together in international teams.
The program is supported by the Stevens Initiative, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government, and is administered by the Aspen Institute. The Stevens Initiative is also supported by the Bezos Family Foundation and the governments of Morocco and the United Arab Emirates.
Students from Lebanon and the U.S. had the opportunity to work and learn together remotely throughout this course. Material was taught by Professor Deborah Walter of the Rose Hulman Institute of Technology. The course covered concepts for biomedical design, collaboration, ethics, and entrepreneurship as these topics relate to engineering for low-resource environments. Students worked independently through self-directed learning modules as well as collaborated virtually in groups to further develop design ideas and exchange knowledge. Teams were also assigned a program mentor from Lebanon or the U.S. with significant engineering background and experience in low-resource hospitals to help them throughout this process.
You can see each team's final presentation here.
The final program report is here.
Dates: The course ran on a five week timeline. Students had the option of joining the program during one of the following periods.
Section 1: June 22 - July 24
Section 2: June 29 - July 31
Section 3: July 6 - August 7
Section 4: July 13 - August 14
Students can expect to spend 2-4 hours per week on independent work and should plan to virtually meet with their groups twice per week throughout the five week program.
Criteria: Participants must be a student or recent graduate of a university in the United States, Middle East, or North Africa.
At the end of the course, students will receive a certificate of completion. On request, EWH will gladly provide summary materials to present to your home university in support of any independent study credit you may seek.
Sign-ups are now closed. Thank you everyone for your enthusiastic response to this program! Check out the design teams' final projects here.