Khanjan Mehta is a man with a mission -- solving the problems that make it so difficult to provide energy, clean drinking water, food security, and health care to some of the poorest nations on Earth. As the founding director of HESE -- Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship -- in the College of Engineering, Mehta leads a group of engaged undergraduates who are designing new technologies and, equally important, figuring out how to get those technologies into the hands of the people who need them.
"It's not all about the technology," says Mehta, who is an assistant professor of engineering design in the School of Engineering Design, Technology, and Professional Programs. "Designing the technology and saying 'Here it is' doesn't solve the problem. Well, windmills existed 300 years back, and all over Africa people have no power and no windmills either."
That's where the social entrepreneurship part of HESE's name comes in. Unlike many aid projects that provide donations of money or food, HESE uses a market-centric approach, turning technologies into local, self-sustaining business opportunities.
One example of HESE's market-based approach is the design of low-cost greenhouses for East Africa. The greenhouses allow farmers to grow crops year round, while improving yields and preserving scarce water resources. The technology was developed at Penn State, and then licensed to a company called Mavuuno Greenhouses in Kenya and The Greenhouse Center in Cameroon.
"We were in rural Kenya working on telemedicine systems and talking to all these people about their health, and all they kept talking about were greenhouses," Mehta recalls. If we had a greenhouse, they told him, we could make extra money and then we could afford to make the journey to visit a doctor.
There were greenhouses in the area, but they cost over $2,500, far more than what most farmers could afford. Mehta and his students did their research, talking to many farmers and a number of agribusiness firms. They then came back to Penn State and designed a greenhouse that they tested in parts of Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania under varying climates while at the same time determining the availability of local materials and studying the supply chain logistics.
"We have over 100 greenhouses out there in 10 countries," Mehta continues. "The materials to make them cost $350 and they sell for $600 to $1,000. A small farmer can have a return on investment in four to six months."
Materials join the mission
The greenhouse project was the impetus for a new collaboration between HESE and the Materials Research Institute (MRI). The glazing for the greenhouses had been coming from Israel, and the HESE team wanted to see if a cheaper, local material could replace the Israeli glazing, saving about $100 on each greenhouse and avoiding the complicated import issues. One local material that was in large supply was the sturdy plastic sacks that contained rice shipped from China. Once emptied and given a UV-resistant coating, the sacks would seem to be a cheap and almost endless resource.
One of Mehta's students approached Josh Stapleton, director of the Materials Characterization Lab (MCL) to see if MCL could evaluate the transparency of the material and how long the plastic would stand up to the harsh conditions in East Africa.
"Everything we do has to be 'ruggedized' to survive under harsh conditions," says Mehta. "MRI could play an important role in helping us understand if a product will stand up under temperature swings, harsh UV radiation, people dropping it."
"Khanjan's student, Shayne Bement, contacted me about doing optical transparency tests and accelerated aging analysis," Stapleton explains. "They [HESE engineers] don't want to be materials scientists; they want to link up with the people who already have the expertise. And I like working on this kind of stuff. It gives me a high level of satisfaction."