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GlobalResolve director, projects expand reach


March 02, 2011

People inside and outside of Arizona State University are so impressed with the work being done as part of the GlobalResolve initiative that its director is being asked to serve on international engineering initiatives, and musicians are holding a benefit concert to raise funds for water purification devices.

GlobalResolve, administered through the College of Technology and Innovation at the Polytechnic campus, works with a range of partners to develop sustainable technologies and programs in the areas of energy, clean water and local economic development for rural communities in the developing world.

The American Society for Mechanical Engineers (ASME), a professional organization for mechanical engineers, asked Mark Henderson, engineering professor and GlobalResolve’s director, to be on a steering committee that will formulate activities to benefit developing countries through ASME’s Engineering for Global Development program, which is part of its Engineering for Change initiative. 

Henderson is in good company, with fellow committee members coming from Penn State and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is honored that GlobalResolve and ASU are considered to be leaders in this field.

“We are excited to be a part of this process and look forward to working with ASME on the planning as well as on the execution of activities it decides to pursue.”

Two projects under way in Ghana through GlobalResolve, include a clean burning ethanol gel fuel, which is being produced currently in the village of Domeabra to replace traditional, high pollutant cooking fuels. The other project is Twig Light, a clean lighting system that makes use of waste energy to produce clean electric light inside homes that traditionally have not had access to electricity.

Students from ASU Polytechnic, Kwame N’Krumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and Kumasi Polytechnic have been working on retrofitting existing Ghanaian stoves to burn gel fuel. Newly designed prototypes are currently being tested at Mt. Olivet Academy, a K-8 school in Kumasi, Ghana.

And, the success of the Twig Light project led to the creation of a company called Daylight Solutions. The company recently completed a fully packaged product prototype that GlobalResolve will test this year.

“The prototypes will be tested in rural areas of Ghana and Cameroon, followed by broader introduction into the sub-Saharan African market,” says Brad Rogers, GlobalResolve’s director of research and development and associate professor in engineering technology.  “The goal is to have this product manufactured in Africa and on the market by 2012.”

GlobalResolve has worked mainly in Ghana, and more recently in Cameroon, but plans to expand into new territory, specifically Uganda and Kenya. And, a new relationship is being formed with the Monterrey Technological University’s Toluca campus in Mexico for future endeavors.

GlobalResolve is making a difference in the developing world, and it is also changing the lives of the students involved as well as others, according to Henderson. 

“I had an ASU music student contact me out of the blue who is holding a benefit concert to raise funds for water filters for the fishing village of Gomoa-Dago, Ghana, where we visited in 2009,” says Henderson. “He heard about GlobalResolve through word of mouth.”

The benefit concert is called Clean Water for Africa and will be held at 7 p.m., March 25, at Desert Cross Lutheran Church, 8600 S. McClintock Drive, Tempe. For details, visit http://www.desertcross.org/.

For information about GlobalResolve, visit http://globalresolve.asu.edu/.

Media Contact(s):
Christine Lambrakis, lambrakis@asu.edu
(480) 727-1173, (602)316-5616