WNC engineering students contribute to Puerto Rico hurricane relief effort
Submitted by Jim Gustafson on Sun, 12/17/2017 - 11:15pm
Students in an engineering design class at Western Nevada College in Carson City decided to use the knowledge and skills they’ve honed by creating and designing water purification and filtration system prototypes that could be deployed to Puerto Rico as it recovers following Hurricane Maria
“It felt good to be able to use my education to create something that can hopefully help those in need," said Elizabeth Kaminsky, a student of the class. "I learned a lot from this project, not just about engineering, but also about humanitarian efforts."
The students are all part of a fundamental engineering class that is taught by Lior Singer.
"One of the values I try to instill in future engineers is to use the knowledge they have to help communities in need" Lior Singer said. "I suggested the idea of making their final project to be about helping the people of Puerto Rico, and the students took it to the next level."
The students did research, identified all the different problems in Puerto Rico after the hurricane disaster, designed different solutions and even built a prototype. According to Singer, many of the solutions were related to providing safe drinking water, energy to hospitals and communication, sharing survival skills and more.
Kaminsky came up with the base concept and first design for the project.
“My teammates, Victoria (Defilippi) and Willem (Chase), and I all built and tested subsequent designs until we found the one that worked the best,” she said. “The main goal for my team was to create a water filter inexpensive and durable enough to be air dropped to people in need immediately after a disaster or to those who are still mostly cut off from supplies.”
Victoria Defilippi played the role of treasure, engineer and builder.
“My partners Willem, Beth and I immediately thought of their clean water issue,” she said. “I learned through this project that you don't need an elaborate solution to fix some complicated problems in other countries. I enjoyed working on this project, and I believe that something like this can quickly become reality.”
Another teammate, Willem Chase, aided in the assembly and experimentation (testing) of the water filtration system, and helped to create an informational presentation.
"I really like the concept and execution of our design as it utilizes inexpensive materials and is fairly simplistic, conceptually. I think by making it easy to understand and inexpensive, mass distribution of this product or something like it is a very tangible possibility,” he said.
Professor Singer will continue the project next year.
“Hopefully we can find some funding in order to take their designs to the next step of implementing the solutions for the recovery of Puerto Rico," he said. "But for sure, we have met one big goal — inspiring a new generation of engineers to have a passion for humanitarian work.”
Professor Singer is an Israeli engineer and before moving to Nevada he was working as a water engineer in a refugee camp run by the United Nations Refugee Agency in Kenya.
