My name is Anna Smith and I am a Global Social Impact Fellow working on the project Assessing Socioeconomic Factors Underlying Ebola Infection. I enrolled in this course because I’m very interested in sustainable development and the intersection between Engineering, Health, and Policy. I also want to gain real-world experience by applying skills learned in the classroom to a pressing world problem while stepping outside of my comfort zone. I don’t have prior research experience so I’m very excited to engage with faculty mentors who are very knowledgeable about the field and hope to also learn about new areas of Engineering that I possibly hadn’t considered studying. In addition, I love to travel and learn about different cultures and people. I volunteered about three years ago during the refugee crisis in Greece and travelled there to sort food and clothing to provide for incoming refugees. It was an eye opening experience and seeing people risk everything to provide better lives for their families touched me greatly. Since then, I’ve been passionate about service and public policy and I want to pursue a career in which I can give back to local and global communities. I saw the GSIF program as an opportunity to expand my skill set and learn more about myself while working to make a positive difference.

I see myself becoming a better Materials Science Engineer through the program because although my project doesn’t directly relate to Materials Science, the coding, design, and implementation of the app we’re creating will make me a better coder, critical thinker, and communicator. In any field, being able to create a product or solution and fluently present it is invaluable. I think this course specifically will make me a more well rounded Engineer with the ability to look at Engineering problems through a social or policy lens to create more effective solutions. The workshops and presentations will not only help me learn about the importance and struggles of social impact, but also grow my professional skills. I think in addition to making me a better Engineer, it will also make me a better person. I think that often times I can get caught up in my own bubble and I think it would be beneficial to be more cognisant of the world around me and to think deeply about important issues past what is shown in the media or news.

The lack of eyeglasses for people in developing nations like Kenya is caused in part by the lack of optometrists to diagnose patients as well as the inability to obtain the glasses themselves. The first step in solving the problem for those who don’t even know they need glasses is to improve access to optometry in developing nations. Having mobile clinics that can check on patients in many towns would be a way that groups of several optometrists can visit multiple towns, even in one day. However, once a patient starts to wear glasses their vision usually can worsen so training more optometrists could help as well. The next step would be to improve access to the eyeglasses themselves. A storage box similar to the design of Little Free Library, a concept where books are kept in a wooden container with shelves on the sidewalk of streets. You take and return books like a normal library. A communal “eyeglass library” could foster a sense of community and trust while increasing access to eyeglasses for residents of a town. In addition, manufactured eyeglasses with recycled plastics for frames as a novelty item could be sold online or in US retailers with one pair of glasses donated with every purchase to incentivise purchasing the glasses through the novelty of them being plastic as well as the appeal of donating. Alleviating the need for eyeglasses in developing nations by providing them to one billion people is a large challenge with many potential solutions and will likely take many different approaches to solve.