University Letter

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BIG Challenge for April: Delivering basic needs to the developing world

The BIG Challenge is a monthly student competition to generate novel ideas and innovative ways of solving important problems.  The BIG Challenge is hosted by the College of Engineering and Mines, but is open to all UND students.  Students will work in teams of 2 to 4 and are strongly encouraged to collaborate across multiple disciplines.

Up to two winning teams will be selected at the end of each month and awarded scholarships totaling $2000.

This month’s challenge is sponsored by UND’s Research and Economic Development Division focuses on providing basic needs to the developing world.  More details can be found here: http://engineering.und.edu/big/challenges/2017/04/developing-world.cfm.

The BIG Challenge – April 2017: Delivering Basic Needs to the Developing World

The developing world is faced with different problems than the developed world. Basic needs that we take for granted, such as

  • Electrical power;
  • Clean drinking water;
  • High quality nutrition;
  • Access to high quality health care;

are unreliable in many parts of the developing world.

The reasons for this difference are too numerous to inventory here. However, it is clear that the cost of delivery is a major impediment, i.e., methods the developed world uses to deliver these basic needs are simply not affordable in the developing world. For example, in the developed world, electrical power is typically generated in a central location and distributed to users through a large, extensive and expensive network. This ‘point of generation’ method (which is duplicated for many of our basic needs) requires investments in distribution infrastructure that are much larger than the costs of the raw material like coal or gas that are used to generate the electricity in the first place.
 
Your B.I.G. challenge is to choose one of the basic needs listed above – or define your own – , investigate how it is delivered today in the developed world and in the developing world and, recognizing the financial constraints of developing countries, devise a new way of delivering this basic need – in other words, how can we deliver this need at an affordable cost?  Your solution can be focused on delivery at the household level, small village/community, or larger city/district.

  • March 30: April challenge issued.
  • Apr. 7: Deadline to register teams (limit of 8 teams of up to four students) in 323 Harrington Hall. Teams will be assigned space in the Big Ideas Gym.
  • April 21:  Deadline to submit a short (3 min.) video presentation of their ideas.  These will be used to select the finalists.
  • April 28: At 3;30 p.m. in the Hamilton Atrium of the Collaborative Energy Complex, each of the finalists will deliver a 3 minute pitch presentation to judges and fellow students, who will score the team and select the winning idea.