H2O-2B team at MIT's D-Lab showcase 2018
Susan Murcott, Lecturer, D-Lab, N51-332a
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Susan Murcott is a water and wastewater engineer, entrepreneur, innovator and lecturer at MIT where she has both studied and worked for the past three decades. At MIT, has had research and lecturer appointments in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and now at MIT D-Lab, a international center “designing for a more equitable world.” She has led international public health engineering projects and mentored student teams in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and environmental health for the past two decades on five continents. She has a strong record of mentoring students in designing simple, low-cost solutions for low-income communities and in humanitarian disaster settings. In 2018, she was recognized with a Committed to Caring (C2C) award, where graduate students from across MIT nominate faculty who have contributed to their overall well-being through outstanding advising and mentorship, emphasizing the “whole student,” supporting academic success, emotional health, and personal and professional development.
Her MIT courses: D-Lab: Water, Sanitation, Hygiene (EC.715/11.474J), and D-Lab: Water, Climate Change and Health (EC.719/EC.789) are taught through D-Lab. Her classes are a great example of transdisciplinary education, where undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate fellows from multiple disciplines, nationalities, ethnicities, genders and religions, mix and co-create.
From 2005 to the present, she co-founded, with Ghanaian partners, the non-profit organization, Pure Home Water, which produces the ceramic pot “AfriClay” filter at a factory in Tamale, Ghana. She was the principal investigator of a team, in collaboration with the Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO) in Kathmandu, Nepal that invented and has widely disseminated the prize-winning KanchanTM Arsenic Filter. Since the April 25, 2015 Nepal earthquake, she has been part of a MIT-Nepal emergency relief drinking water testing program that has providing water test kits. After Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017, Murcott and four D-Lab colleagues made multiple trips to Puerto Rico to train leaders in water testing, water treatment and do-it-yourself design.
Currently, she is a co-PI of the Safe Water for 2 Billion People (H2O-2B) effort to manufacture and market low-cost water kit test products in Nepal and to disseminate these products widely throughout Asia.
Murcott is the author of over 50 professional papers as well as the book Arsenic in the World: an International Sourcebook (IWA, 2012) http://www.iwapublishing.com/books/9781780400389/arsenic-contamination-world. For videos of her work, see: http://globalwater.mit.edu/videos
Jeff Ravel, Professor and Head of History Department, E51-255
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jeff Ravel is the Head of the MIT History Faculty. He is a historian of France during the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Since April 2015, he has been the Faculty Lead for the MIT-Nepal Initiative, which has developed projects related to earthquake resistant housing, energy assessments, and education. He is co-PI of the J-WAFS grant that is funding H2O 2B.
Ciara Mulcahy, Undergraduate Student
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ciara is an undergraduate student at MIT studying Materials Science and Engineering. She is currently working to synthesize a chemical that could be used for low-cost E. coli detection.
Swochchhanda Shrestha, Undergraduate Student
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Swochchhanda is an undergraduate student in the Mechanical Engineering department at MIT. He is currently working on testing existing water quality testing products, and planning to have a role on the marketing subteam in Nepal over IAP. Outside of the classroom, he is very involved in his fraternity, Beta Theta Pi, and enjoys running, playing basketball, and hanging out with friends.
Kala Tamang, Research Associate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Kala is a research associate at a Bio-Chemical Engineering Lab at MIT. Her research includes Bio processes optimization using high throughput robotic platforms. She is pursuing her career in Bio-Chemical engineering. She is assisting H2O-2B team on Reg-Synthesis (a major chemical component of the EC-KIT) during the fall and will be working with Research and Development Team during January.She believes in giving back and is happy to have had this opportunity to make changes in her home country. Born and raised in Nepal, Kala has witnessed the challenges that developing communities are facing in regards to the water and sanitation. She is very assertive that this project is going to help improve countless lives in developing communities. She plays Soccer and and loves being around children in her free time.
Ike Urquhart, Undergraduate Student
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ike is an undergraduate materials science student at MIT. He is currently working to synthesize a chemical that could be used for low-cost E. coli detection. He will be traveling to Nepal this January with the goal of teaching this procedure at Kathmandu University. Outside of the classroom, Ike is active in his fraternity, zeta psi, and is president of the MIT rugby club.
Amber VanHemel, Undergraduate Student
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Amber is an undergraduate student at MIT in the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) department. She has an interest in international projects and the application of CEE at a global scale. Thus far she has had the opportunity to spend summers in Madrid, Spain doing hydrological research and Townsville, Australia working on the Great Barrier Reef. She will be traveling over January to Nepal to lead the research and development of the E. coli water quality testing kit and methodologies. Outside of CEE, she is a member of the MIT varsity softball team, a counselor for Camp Kesem, and a student in the Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership (GEL) Program. She enjoys hiking, scuba diving, and adventuring around Boston.
Fiorella Vargas, Component Engineer
Lincoln Laboratory
Fiorella is a component engineer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and a recent graduate of Harvard University where she received her Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. She developed the H2O-2B website and is working on the development of a container or vessel for water samples that are easy to use and provide quantitative range data of E. coli colony count using the Most Probable Number (MPN) method. She is also interested in the development of regionally and culturally appropriate user instructions for the EC-Kit v2.0.
Sophia Wu, Graduate Student
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sophia is a Master's student at MIT in the Technology and Policy Program and has a passion for product design, development and deployment for developing countries. She is leading the marketing and manufacturing effort for H20-2B. She has a Bachelor's from MIT in Mechanical Engineering and previously worked in defense and aerospace consulting. Sophia hikes, runs, skis and is training for her first Ironman.