Targeted public outreach is a crucial branch of our project. Besides AlmaU, we were able to network with Haileybury School. In addition to participating in our quasi-experimental study, they expressed their interest in cooperating on other parts of our project. Therefore, we had another meeting to speak to and recruit students from grades 10 to 13. Haileybury faculty members helped us match students’ interests with the different aspects of our project. There were quite a few students who were interested in aerospace, electrical, and mechanical engineering and those students signed up for our monitor and filter testing. Moreover, there were business and marketing students who signed up for the public outreach aspect of our project. 

Nabi, an eager student from Haileybury, built and patented a portable carbon dioxide air monitor. With 3 sensors, this monitor can detect 7 different types of air pollution, such as carbon monoxide, smoke, methane, butane, etc. The monitor can be charged by solar panel or through USB and the data is collected through wifi. Besides from the type of air pollution they measure, the difference between our monitor and Nabi’s monitor is the cost. The cost of our monitor is approximately $50, with the sensor itself being $36. The sensor for Nabi’s monitor is $1.50. Therefore, we expect that we can reduce the cost to under $5 if we collaborate on both designs, which is one of our summer plans. 

On the other hand, another eager student, Albina, assembled and launched a nanosatellite through her project HALSAT in a collaboration with Al-Farabi University. The goal of this project is to measure PM 2.5 and PM 10 in the Almaty region through sensors that are attached to it. We plan to compare the satellite-collected data to the data collected from the ground with our monitor in order to map the city.

To further network with local stakeholders, we organized an event at American Space Almaty. It was a one hour event with a presentation followed by a Q & A session. Both sessions were mainly carried out in Russian, so our AlmaU team, Moldir and Aidana, took the lead by presenting and answering questions.