Looking for Student Design Groups

Our sister company, The Appropriate Technology Collaborative is looking for student design teams that can take on appropriate technology design challenges for the developing world.  We are looking for design and engineering students that want a real world challenge.  We also need Business students who want to help us define business opportunities for our products.  ATC provides the design challenge, periodic review of student team progress and in some cases we will be prototyping designs in either Guatemala or Nicaragua.

Note:  All ATC projects will be “Open Source” designs.  We license our designs through Creative Commons so that any non-profit, NGO or individual can build the technology for free.  Our goal is to get feedback from other NGOs such that we can refine our designs over time.

The challenge is this:  Appropriate Technologies need to be durable, affordable and easily repairable in the countries where they are to be used.  Imagine designing a light fixture that looks cool but can only cost $2.00, or a solar freezer that costs less than $400.00.

Based on our observations in the developing world we have a list of design challenges that could be the basis of very interesting and rewarding projects.  Please check out the write up of our recent spring prototype work in Guatemala HERE

Contact us through the contact form on this site or the Appropriate Technology Collaborative site.

Thank you for considering this request.

John Barrie