cc  >> Good evening and thank you  all for joining us during our  sixth season of the Gilson  lectures and networking events.  I'm Stephanie Whitehorse.  I'm manager of IP operations for  the Wisconsin Alumni Research  Foundation.  Our focus this season is on  highlighting businesses,  ventures, and initiatives with a  key goal of benefiting society  and solving problems that affect  daily living around the world.  The Gilson Series was launched  in 2004 with a gift from the  late Dr. Warren Gilson.  Dr. Gilson was a UW medical  school graduate, faculty member,  and prolific inventor of medical  electronics and instruments.  He also was an entrepreneur and  founder of Gilson Inc, a leading  manufacturer of analytical  instruments headquartered in  Middleton.  In 2002 Dr. Gilson left WARF a  significant gift to promote the  exchange of ideas between the  university and Wisconsin  businesses.  He often recollected that as a  young entrepreneur he valued the  informal conversations he had  with colleagues in the cafeteria  of the university's hospital.  It is in the spirit of creating  connections and dialogue among  UW faculty, staff, and students,  business leaders and community  members that we host these  sessions. 

 To encourage entrepreneurship,  innovation and interdisciplinary  collaborations.  Now, it is my pleasure to  introduce our moderator  Dr. Giri Venkataramanan.  Giri is an award-winning  professor in the Department of  Electrical and Computer  Engineering at UW Madison.  Giri is a coadviser for the UW  Madison chapter of Engineers  Without Borders, and he's also  the associate director of the  Wisconsin Electric Machines and  Power Electronics Consortium.  Giri directs research in the  field of power conversion and  energy systems for wind power,  utility electrical systems, and  electric vehicle applications.  He regularly teaches courses in  power electronics and leads  student teams in  project-oriented,  multi-disciplinary courses such  as international development  engineering, small wind turbine  design, and climate change  action perspectives.  He recently lead a faculty team  that established the  undergraduate certificate  program on engineering for  energy sustainability at the  College of Engineering.  Giri studied electrical  engineering at Government  College of Technology in India,  the California Institute of  Technology, and the University  of Wisconsin Madison.  Welcome, Giri.  (applause)  >> Thank you, Stephanie. 

 Good evening.  It is my pleasure, actually, to  be participating in this event  tonight and to introduce our  speakers, three passionate and  socially conscious engineers  who contributed firsthand to the  development of construction  methods and materials to  revolutionize housing and also  to build sustainable  infrastructure in developing  communities.  Please join me in welcoming  Eyleen Chou, Paul Fossum, UW  Madison Engineers Without  Borders chapter members, and  Bhavna Sharma, doctoral  candidate from the University of  Pittsburgh in civil and  environmental engineering  program.  And Eyleen, Paul, and Bhavna  will share their stories and  experiences of engineering  practices to improve living  conditions in third world  countries and promoting  efficient use of resources  around the planet.  First I'll share a little bit of  background information to frame  the information resources  sustainability and how we can  all have an impact personally,  globally, and institutionally,  and then I will introduce the  speakers more formally.  At UW Madison our heritage we  all inherit is the Wisconsin  Idea that we all discuss and  talk about.  In one frame it is described as  the idealistic and human concern  that knowledge could and should  have practical impact on the  needs and problems and  aspirations of people.  This is a statement that was  framed about a hundred years ago  and it has served us well.  And the little picture on the  right is a sketch that was  developed by Mr. Charles  McCarthy who was a graduate of  UW Madison and a resident of  Wisconsin developing the  outreach ideas and how, as a  university community, how we  impact people who live in the  state and also beyond the state.  And when we think about how we  all address this Wisconsin Idea  of knowledge being useful for  the society, one thing we do is  educate students on campus. 

 And this is also a statement  from Charles McCarthy in his  book.  He says, "A wandering student  seeking knowledge came knocking  at the gates of the great  University of Wisconsin, took me  in, filled me with inspiration,  and when I left its doors the  kindly people of the state  stretched out welcoming hands  and gave me a man's work to do."  And this is one way that we  all participate in the Wisconsin  Idea within the state and also  beyond.  And that is what happens in the  classroom.  But beyond the classroom, as  faculty that we teach here with  the students, undergraduate  students, graduate students, our  colleagues, professionals within  the campus and outside the  campus.  We conduct research on the  frontiers of engineering.  We develop publications.  We disseminate information  through presentations like this.  And, most importantly, we also  at UW Madison, we have a  tradition of transferring this  technology through developing  intellectual property, and that  comes through patents,  commercialization and also, not  least, entrepreneurship which is  promoted within our campus  through WARF.  And in this slide you see a  picture of professor Harry  Steenbock who is among the  pioneers of innovative  intellectual development within  campus but going beyond just  teaching on campus and writing  papers and publications,  developing an entrepreneurship  model that has served us over  the century, elected the  founding of the WARF and one of  the reasons why we're here  today.  And when we examine what WARF is  doing and what we're doing as a  community in the turn of the  century, there are some concerns  that are sort of part of the  pervasive discussion and the  discourse across the world  today. 

 Has to do with the resource  sustainability.  Climate change.  Knowledge equity or people.  What we're developing is  reaching the people of the world  in an equitable manner.  And are there knowledge elements  available out there.  Are we bringing them to our  practice within the community at  the university and also beyond.  And of course, there's a  question of resource equity.  As resources become scarce, who  gets it?  And what are the consequences of  inequity and things like that?  And globally the United Nations  has developed these millennia  development goals that have sort  of provided a basis for people  across the world to sort of  rally around and develop  activities.  So there has been a pervasive  concern, and there are a lot of  spontaneous reactions.  Faculties, students,  institutions, all of them are  responding. 

 And out of this we have this    Global Impact Panel as part of  the Gilson Series that we're  here today for.  And today's panel, the  particular interest is looking  into increasing awareness and  interest in socially responsible  technology.  In all technology, we're working  towards being good citizens and  developing social  responsibility.  So that's beyond question as  sort of self-evident for all of  us.  But we're asking ourselves, what  are the effective tools of  outreach to benefit local and  global communities beyond what  we do now?  And particularly, multiplying  the benefits of innovation to  reach larger populations.  And how to scale up development  efforts.  We are working on development as  a community, how can we scale it  up?  And how to make technology  accessible to low income and low  resource and high resource  countries, not only natural  resources, but also knowledge  resources and human resources.  How do we expand beyond what  we're doing now?  And also how to transfer  technology.  Are intellectual properties and  patenting the only way to do it?  How can we expand our focus on  this or zoom out?  So we want to develop a  discourse what we can do on a  personal level, on an  institution level, of course  we're not going to answer the  questions today.  We'll have a continued discourse  that goes beyond what we're  going to hear about today. 

 We're lucky to have three  student engineering leaders to  sort of kick off our discussion  today.  They'll share their stories  about what they've done.  And I'll introduce the three  speakers, and then we'll have a  round of applause for each of  them after I introduce each of  them.  And then I'll invite them to  give a presentation of each of  them, and then after that we'll  open the floor for questions.  The first presenter is going to  Paul Fossum.  He's a junior in biomedical  engineering.  He's also pursuing biology and  international engineering  certificates.  Paul is from West Bend,  Wisconsin.  He has traveled to Engineers  Without Borders in -- in January  2009 to work on installation of  wastewater pipelines and  research for a microbial study  that he has been working on.  So he'll share his story. 

 I'd like to welcome Paul.  (applause)  And then after Paul  we'll hear from Eyleen Chou.  She's a senior graduating in  bachelor of science and  mechanical engineering in May.  She's also pursuing certificates  in mathematics, technical  communication and international  engineering.  I think if the time was right  she would have gotten the  certificate in engineering for  energy sustainability as well.  It just wasn't set up in time  for her to jump on it.  She's originally from Madison,  Wisconsin.  She's has been a part of  Engineers Without Borders for  two years now.  She has traveled three times to  the community of Bayonnais in  Haiti on Engineers Without  Borders trips, and she'll share  some stories about her visit  there.  Welcome Eyleen. 

 (applause)  And then we have  Bhavna Sharma who is a PhD  candidate in the Department of  Civil and Environmental  Engineering at the University of  Pittsburgh.  She's a National Science  Foundation IGERT fellow in the  Mascaro Center for Sustainable  Innovation at the Swanson School  of Engineering.  In 2009 she spent nine months  pursuing her research at -- in  Brazil.  And she has also conducted field  research in India in 2008 and  2010 and planning to travel  there again in 2011.  And her research interests  include the use of bamboo as a  sustainable structure material  in areas of high seismic risk,  especially in developing  countries.  And it's particularly  interesting for us today because  of an earthquake in Haiti and  Chile just a couple of months  ago within our recent memory.  And she's a member of an  international team formed  between the university of  Pittsburgh and the Indian  Institute of Technology in  Kharagpur in India.  They won a silver medal in the  2009 Mondialogo Engineering  Award.  And she's interested in  sustainable local development  and standardization of  marginally and non-engineered  method of construction of  buildings.  And she's earned a masters  degree in civil engineering from  the University of Hawaii and an  MA in architecture history and a  bachelor of architecture degree  from SUNY, State University of  New York, in Buffalo. 

 So first we'll begin with Paul  and Eyleen, followed by Bhavna.  After the presentations we'll  have time for questions and  interaction, both formally here  on the floor and formally in the  lobby.  And so I would like you to hold  your questions until we become  ready for that after the  presentations are over.  So we'll begin with Paul.  >> (inaudible)  >> Thank you, yeah.  (applause)  So I'd like to invite Paul now.  >> Thanks, Giri.  So like Giri said,  my name is Paul Fossum.  I'm a biomedical engineering  student.  Is this on still?  And I am vice president this  year of Engineers Without  Borders, the UW Madison chapter. 

 So for those of you who don't  know much about Engineers  Without Borders it's a global  organization that uses a lot of  students and professionals to  work in third world countries on  stable engineering practices.  We kind of have an idea or goal  to improving the community we  work in just by single projects  and improving the world by one  community at a time.  So our chapter at UW started in  2003 by the late Peter Bosscher  with a program in Rwanda, and  now it's grown to five programs.  We have four international ones  and one in Wisconsin.  We have over 80 active student  members, and we've recently  started a professional chapter  that helps us in our work on  campus.  Last winter break 32 students  and six advisers traveled to all  of our projects that we worked  on.  Okay, so these are the projects  that we have going on right now.  As you can see, they are all  over the world.  One is in El Salvador.  Then we have two different  Wisconsin ones now. 

 One here in Madison and one up  with the Red Cliff tribe in  northern Wisconsin.  Then one in Muramba, Rwanda,  we've continued.  And then a couple of ones that  our chapter has recently taken  up in Bayonnais, Haiti, and  Orongo, Kenya.  So I'm going to give you a brief  overview of each our projects,  then Eyleen is going to talk a  little bit more about her  experience specifically on the  Haiti project.  So for the Rwanda project, like  I said it's our oldest project.  We started off doing a lot of  water catching type systems, as  you see in the lower picture.  And then now it's begun to focus  more on agriculture and agro  forestry education, as well as  helping them with some pipeline  repairing and improving on their  health clinic there in Muramba.  Our domestic project, we in the  past year have installed a drain  tile system to reduce flooding  with the cemetery that was built  on sacred grounds on the  reservation for the Red Cliff  tribe.  So that project was completed,  and we still are going to be  going back up to kind of  continue doing  post-implementation ideas.  And then we'll be working with  that community up there to see  what kind of other projects we  can do with them. 

 In addition to that, here in  Madison we've started a project  working with the Lake Wingra  with -- decontamination filters  that will help to reduce the  amount of decontamination that  is in Lake Wingra and hopefully  make it a safer and healthier  lake for recreational swimming  and activities.  So our Kenya project, like I  said it's in Orongo, Kenya, and  the main goals for this project  so far have been more of  assessment type things, but we  have done some biosand filters,  other types of water filtration,  as well as different types of  education in terms of sanitation  and water safety, and we're  looking also into installing an  irrigation system in the near  future.  Like I said, the Kenya project  is one of our newest projects.  So we've done mostly assessment  trips so far.  And to explain a little further  about Engineers Without Borders.  Each of our projects that we're  working in has students working  throughout the school year here  on campus on designs and testing  things.  Then we have students actually  travel over the winter and  summer or spring breaks to those  places to implement these things  that I'm discussing.  And the pictures on the right  were just of making those  biosand filters in Kenya.  The El Salvador project is  probably the most large scale  project that we have.  It's a project I personally,  like Giri said, have traveled  down to and worked on. 

 We have, over the last couple of  years, put in a wastewater  removal pipeline.  The community that we work in  had lots of problems with gray  water running through their dirt  streets and came to a missionary  who came to us asking for help  to get rid of this gray water.  And so our design is to use a  gravity system in this country.  And two smaller communities.  And in addition to the pipeline  that we've been putting in,  we've also done health and  construction safety, education  workshops, microbial studies.  I've personally worked on as  well as trying to do some more  health education and kind of get  an idea about what's causing  sickness down there and if it's  all the gray water or other  things as well.  So for this project there are  two communities like I said.  And there's a big ravine between  the two communities, and in  order to get that pipeline  across we, last winter break,  built the main parts of the  bridge that would be carrying  not only the pipeline but also  would be a pedestrian bridge  between the two communities.  So that was the most recent  implementation project that was  done.  And the Haiti project, I'll just  briefly mention because Eyleen's  is going to talk a little more  about it, but in the past  they've worked on repairing a  pipe crossing, reforestation  projects, and in the future they  plan on doing some micro-hydro  electric work and hopefully help  the San Francisco professional  chapter with a health clinic. 

 And they also do a lot of  education workshops, as well.  So, like I said before, we  aren't always in those  countries.  We only get to go to those  countries over winter and summer  break, and only a few students  get to do that.  So a lot of work we do is on  campus.  On the left you can see a group  this semester for the Haiti  project working on different  types of materials that can be  used in construction for roofing  for the houses in Bayonnais,  Haiti.  On the right you can see a type  of stove that we're working on  for Rwanda, and Kenya is working  on a similar type of stove.  And similar projects are being  done also on the El Salvador and  Kenya projects with biosand  filters.  Like I said, El Salvador we have  microbial studies where we're  doing the labs on campus.  So it's really a year-round  thing even though we only get to  go to those countries once or  twice a year.  Just a quick plug in case you're  interested in hearing more about  all the work we do, we have our  banquet coming up April 18, and  if you want to hear more about  it you can talk to me or Eyleen  afterward and we can tell you  more about it. 

 Now I'd like to reintroduce, I  guess, Eyleen to talk more about  the Haiti project.  (applause)  >> Again, my name is  Eyleen Chou, and I'll be  graduating in May with a degree  in mechanical engineering.  So I just want to back up a  little bit and talk more about  Engineers Without Borders on a  whole.  What's really exciting about our  organization is that we get to  bring together students who are  learning new things about  engineering, just starting out  freshman, sophomore students,  and then we partner them with  professional mentors who have  some experience with, say, water  sanitation or building bridges  and things like that and then  bringing them together to really  design some really neat  solutions for the communities we  serve.  So, basically, the impact that  we're looking to make is  addressing the basic human needs  of the people in our  communities.  So if that's water, sanitation,  healthcare, power, anything,  whatever they deem their primary  need we will strive to work to  achieve a solution for them.  So I'll just give some  information about my experience  with Bayonnais, Haiti, and more  specifically the most recent  trip we had in January 2010.  So Bayonnais is located about 70  miles north of Port au Prince.  It's noted by the larger blue  star.  And it's a very rural community. 

 It's approximately 80,000  people.  It's fairly densely populated  for how rural it is.  And the people we serve is  probably around 10,000 people.  It's very mountainous.  It's remote.  And like all over Engineers  Without Borders projects, we  partner with the NGO and for us  it's the --.  So like Paul said, our students  are studying during the school  year.  And what the partnering  organization does is they are  the people on the ground, and  they're the ones doing, say,  community work while we're  communicating with them via  email or phone or however we can  connect with them during the  school year, and at the same  time we're designing the project  until we can implement it in the  summer or winter breaks.  Some more about Bayonnais.  It's primarily subsistence  farming community. 

 They're very lucky to have this  wonderful natural spring source.  And it irrigates a lot of the  farms using a system of canals  and cisterns.  And I'm hoping that these photos  show you a little more of Haiti  than what you've seen within the  last several weeks.  So Bayonnais is just a  beautiful, beautiful area.  So this is some children that  were following us around one  day, but most importantly about  this picture is the house in the  center top of the photo.  So the people who live in  Bayonnais typically build their  homes with mud brick.  There's not a lot of wood  available for structural  support.  So housing is certainly  something that we'd like to  address in the future.  In the past, this project  actually has moved from chapter  to chapter but with Colorado and  San Francisco, the Bayonnais,  Haiti, program has had several  successful projects.  So one is the solar PV system. 

 So the church and school there  now have electricity.  There was a vehicular bridge  completed in 2006.  And then in 2009 myself and  another student from UW Madison  we taught topographic surveying  to a group of high schoolers  there so that they could  contribute to the project as  well.  So we were hoping that with them  learning the skill they could  come back to us with their data,  and then we could integrate  their data into the projects of  the future.  So two projects, as Paul  mentioned, we're working on.  The health clinic, partnering  with San Francisco, and then  also hopefully hydroelectric  power in the future as well.  And what's really exciting about  this is that we do have funding  available.  I actually met Bhavna at the  Mondialogo Engineering Award  symposium in Stuttgart, Germany,  this past November.  And this award is created by UN  and Daimler, and it's a  fantastic convergence of  students from all over the world  looking to improve the quality  of life using engineering.  So their only requirement is  that the student team had to be  strictly international and that  there had to be at least one  student from a developing  country and one from a developed  country. 

 So for our project there's a  civil engineer from our  community -- and we were very  lucky and received the gold  award at this symposium.  (applause)  And so now I'll talk briefly  about the January 2010 trip.  As you can see by those dates,  the earthquake fell perfectly  between them.  You can see Randi Schieber and  our mentor Alysen surveying  there.  Again, planning is a huge part  of what we do.  So having the correct data for  any kind of structures or  anything like that, we need to  make sure we're planning it  correctly.  So in this photo you can see  there's a woman holding a jug  and filling up her jug of water  by that broken pipe.  Basically, this is what has kind  of impeded our progress on the  other projects of the health  clinic and the hydroelectric.  So working in such a dynamic  where you're working  internationally, certainly  things come up and change your  direction of your projects more  often than if you were working  strictly in the US.  So what happened here is there  was severe flooding last year  and a boulder came through and  ripped through this water main  that serves the entire community  with fresh water. 

 So all of last semester we were  working on, basically, coming up  with a design to fix this water  crossing, pipe crossing, so that  the people there could still get  fresh, clean drinking water and  not have to worry about boulders  or anything, flood damage  destroying that pipe again.  However, when we arrived in  January, we noticed that there  was something already built.  Which was really exciting,  actually.  So these Haitian subcontractors  had already built a solution.  So in the field of international  development work, if the  community, themselves, have  already designed and implemented  a solution, you're no longer  needed and that's much better  than anything you could offer.  If they can help themselves then  that's their own solution, and  that's something that they can  sustain themselves.  But, unfortunately, because of  the earthquake, and perhaps the  PVC steel joint, there was a  break.  The morning following the  earthquake we saw this.  So the day following, we worked  together with the Haitian  subcontractors, us students and  some students as well.  We just worked side by side and  fixed the water main with a  couple of parts laying around,  and it was a very exciting day. 

 And we were able to fix it.  And by the time we left we had  water running through again.  So that was a brief, brief  insight into what our projects  are like.  If you have any questions,  that's our contact information.  (applause)  >> Hello.  Again, I'm Bhavna Sharma.  I'm a PhD candidate and NSF  IGERT fellow at the University  of Pittsburgh.  And I'm here to talk to you  today about sustainable  development and bamboo as a  structural material.  So sustainable development can  be generally defined as meeting  the needs of the present without  compromising the ability of  future generations to meet their  needs.  It's typically based on the  pillars of economic, social, and  environmental, as well as  cultural development. 

 There's increasing focus on fast  developing countries or the Brit  countries, Brazil, Russia,  India, and China.  There's also increased  investment due to the UN  millennium development goals to  focus on topics such as  improvement of health, universal    primary education, and  environmental sustainability in  developing countries.  The motivation for this work can  be found in the Rand document  from 2006, which discusses the  increase in sociotechnical  economic gap developing between  advanced, proficient and lagging  countries.  In scientifically proficient  countries such as India and  China, great growth is expected,  as well as an increasing gap  between rural and urban  communities.  There's also new technologies  that are expected to proliferate  by 2020.  And examples of inexpensive  autonomous housing, as well as  green manufacturing.  The primary barrier to adoption  of such technology is the lack  of stable infrastructure.    There's increased emphasis by  advanced countries such as the  US and western Europe on  sustainable practices.  But these practices are largely  unattainable for developing in  lagging regions.  Some of these topics have  already been discussed, but a  critical aspect of sustainable  infrastructure is its ability to  perform under service and  extreme events such as  earthquakes. 

 These two statements from the UN  emphasize that everyone has the  right to adequate standard of  living and adequate housing.  And it's our belief that safety  in the built environment is a  fundamental right.  Some examples of recent great  natural catastrophes, such as  the recent Haiti earthquake,  have emphasized the high  casualty tolls in less developed  regions.  The list at the top here lists  in the last ten years  significant earthquakes that  have occurred and the  significant casualties.  The list at the bottom indicates  earthquakes that have happened  in the US, as well as the recent  Chile earthquake of 2010.  And there's a significant  disparity between the developed  and less developed regions.  More importantly, the injured  are many times the number and  the displaced are often an order  of magnitude greater than the  actual casualties.  Which inhibits a rescue as well  as reconstruction efforts.  The focus of my work is  international collaboration.  And it was initiated in 2008  when an interdisciplinary team  from the University of  Pittsburgh traveled to the  northeast India region to  develop a collaboration focused  on sustainable engineering and  technology transfer. 

 Our trip helped us to establish  a collaboration with sustainable  hill environment and design, or  SHED, which is an Indian NGO.  And our primary goal was to  explore the issues of  sustainability and hazardous  mitigation in the hill region.  Since 2008 we've been able to  form additional collaborations  with Pontificia Universidade  Catolica do Rio de Janeiro, or  PUC-Rio, as well as Indian  Institute of Technology at  Kanpur.  Now you might ask why bamboo?  Bamboo is growing in popularity  worldwide as a green material  for various applications that  range from flooring for housing  to cutting boards in your  kitchen as well as to clothing.  It's a renewable material that  may be grown in any temperate  climate zone and harvested every  three to five years with no need  for replanting.  For construction, bamboo is  often stronger and tougher than  readily available saw timber,  which is important in countries  like India where timber  construction has been banned due  to deforestation.  Other benefits include carbon  sequestration, oxygen  production, and the promotion of  sustainable development in  ecological sensitive areas.  My research focuses on  marginally and non-engineered  structures, which represent a  large portion of the global  building inventory.  These structures are important  because they've evolved for  generations, adapting to the  surrounding environment and to  the surrounding hazards.  But to codify these types of  traditional construction  methods, you need to demonstrate  the structural performance in  terms of engineering parameters. 

 Some examples of existing  standards on bamboo construction  include the ISO standard which  provides guidelines for the  determination of physical and  mechanical properties.  As well as a section in the  national building code of India  that elaborates on bamboo  construction.  While these standards provide  guidelines, there's still need  for development of additional  test methods to bring bamboo  construction into engineering  practice.  Two methods that we're currently  exploring at Pitt include the  split pin fracture test and the  edge bearing test.  So I'll briefly discuss these  two test methods.  The split pin facture test looks  at the splitting failure of  bamboo, which is the dominate  limiting state of bamboo  construction.  Very little previous work has  been done to address this  failure.  And these two tests look to fill  in that gap of research.  The split pin fracture test  utilizes a -- load applied to a  full bamboo comb to determine  the splitting strength of the  bamboo comb.  In comparison, the edge bearing  test looks at the potential of a  full comb edge bearing test as a  surrogate to obtain transverse  material properties. 

 The test applies a compressive  load perpendicular to the fiber  direction to obtain the modulus  of rupture.  The two test results are being  compared and correlated in an  effort to develop a simple,  reliable, and technologically  appropriate test method for the  field.  The region that we're working in  is northeast India.  And it's located in a seismic  hazard zone four and five.  The map on your top left  indicates the peak ground  acceleration in India.  The darker colors representing  larger accelerations.  The map on the top right  indicates the area that we're  working in.  It's a detail area and we work  in between Darjeeling, Gangtok,  Kalimpong, and Mungpoo, which is  very small but it's a very small  community.  The chart on the lower right  shows historically significant  earthquakes in the region as  recent as this 5.7 magnitude  earthquake in Sikkim in 2006.  There are various different  types of construction methods in  the hill region of India. 

 And these are some pictures from  the 2006 Sikkim earthquake.  They illustrate the types of  construction, including  reinforced concrete with brick  infill and stone masonry.  They also have a traditional  type of construction that  utilizes bamboo which is called  ikra.  And that type of housing was  undamaged in the 2006  earthquake.  So my primary research is to  look at the evaluation of the  structural performance of bamboo  frame construction subject to  seismic loads.  The St. Joseph school  in Mungpoo, the small town  that I mentioned earlier,  serves as the basis for  an analytical model as well as  experimental work.  The school is here pictured on  the right.  The importance of this school is  that it's a residential base  school, and so hazard mitigation  is a significant issue.  The main goal for my  dissertation is to use  performance based engineering to  provide a foundation to  recognize and formalize  marginally and non-engineered  structures within a building  code context.  This is some of the work that  I've conducted at PUC-Rio in  Brazil. 

 The picture on the top right  shows a bamboo portal frame.  That is a scaled version of the  Mungpoo school that you saw  earlier.  The pictures, as they go from  top to bottom, indicate  increasing lateral load that's  applied at the top of the  column.  The graph shows the applied load  and the lateral drift at the top  of the column.  And what we've learned from this  test is that the bamboo portal  frame was able to withstand  significant lateral drift with  minimal damage to the base and  column roof connection.  And so based on the results that  we found here, we've developed  additional test methods to look  specifically at those  connections so we can learn more  about the behavior of this type  of construction during an  earthquake.  As was mentioned earlier, I was  able to participate in the  Mondialogo Engineering Award,  and Eyleen described some of the  details about the competition.  So I'll skip over that.  I formed a team with IIT Kanpur,  and our team was formed because  we both had common interests in  the sustainable construction in  the northeast hill region of  India, as well as we were both  collaborating with SHED at the  time.  Our project was awarded a silver  metal, and the Mascaro Center of  Sustainable Innovation at the  University of Pittsburgh  provided us matching funds for  our project implementation. 

 Our project proposal was titled  Promotion of Bamboo as a  Cost-Effective and Sustainable  Structural Material and was to  be implemented in India.  And again the proposal was  co-written by three students,  Kapil Mathur, Manali Singh, and  Vaibhav Singhal, from the Indian  Institute of Technology at  Kanpur.  The primary goal of this  proposal was to promote  widespread application of bamboo  as a sustainable construction  material in India.  We explored bamboo frame  construction, which I showed you  earlier, as well as the  effectiveness of bamboo as  internal reinforcement for  masonry construction.  Our primary focus was to  collaborate with SHED and local  community members to promote  these two types of construction  methods.  And we wanted to do this through  conducting demonstration  projects and workshops that  would implement the research  that we developed in the  laboratory and would allow us to  transfer the technology to the  local communities in the form of  a guideline.  A long-term goal that we had was  to assist in the establishment  of a technology center in the  hill region for material testing  and research.  These are some results from IIT  Kanpur, and they indicate the  scale masonry wall test that  they conducted there.  The darker line that is labeled  a control specimen is an  unreinforced brick masonry wall.  And the purple line that says  horizontal only has horizontal  bamboo reinforcements. 

 So bamboo split and then used as  horizontal reinforcement.  The full is bamboo horizontal  and vertical reinforcement.  And the results from this test  indicated that the wall  performed significantly better  with the bamboo reinforcement.  Which we're hoping is an  alternative to typically steel  reinforcement which is too  expensive in this area.  And if we can improve the  performance of a reinforced  brick masonry wall and  demonstrate to the local  community that it is better than  an un-reinforced masonry wall,  we think this will improve the  behavior in general.  I mentioned the technology  center earlier, and initial  development of SETC, or the  Sustainable Engineering  Technology Center, is occurring  in the Darjeeling region of  northeast India and will occur  again in May of 2010.  The center will provide basic  material testing in the region,  and this is important due to the  fact that the nearest testing  facility is a three-hour drive.  And the coast for testing  materials is very expensive.  And so it's often not done  during construction.  SETC will also serve as a field  station and a base for annual  service learning projects for  the university. 

 Additionally, we're looking at a  bamboo processing plant.  There's an existing century old  quinine processing factory  that's entirely operated by  water and industrial revolution  era power distribution.  And what we're trying to do is  turn over 500 acres of the land  that was previously used to  cultivate cinchona to make  quinine and instead cultivate  marketable species of bamboo,  and then use the quinine  processing factory to generate  value-added bamboo products for  the local community.  Now, I just want to make sure  that you know that it isn't all  work.  International collaboration and  research is a lot of fun and a  cultural experience.  These are some of the images  from over the last two years.  And they include my adviser  participating in a ceremony  honoring an Indian Nobel  Laureate.  An opportunity to host our SHED  collaborator -- in Pittsburgh  and take her to visit Frank  Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.  Additionally, an undergraduate,  Derek Mitch, and a PhD  candidate, Maria Jaime, were  riding ox in the snow in May in  Tsomgo Lake in east Sikkim.  As well as the 2009 Pitt and  PUC-Rio ongoing research  workshop, which allowed  students, undergraduate and  graduate students, to present on  their sustainable engineering  research in Rio de Janeiro and  to learn exactly about what  types of research are going on  at the individual universities  and any opportunities there were  to collaborate. 

 And lastly, I just want to  mention the Mascaro Center for  Sustainable Innovation and the  mission of the center is to  become the premier organization  in engineering of sustainable  communities.  Their three areas of focus are  infrastructure, built  environment, and materials.  And one of the examples of the  programs they have is an NSF  research experience for  undergraduates or RU programs,  which is a 12-week summer  internship that allows students  to work on research projects  related to sustainability.  And they get to also participate  in group meetings and learn  about different research areas.  There are positions open for the  summer of 2010, as well as  opportunities in 2011.  And this is the website.  If you have any questions, feel  free to ask me.  And I thank you for your  attention.  (applause)