The HEED Project is committed to producing knowledge with practical applicability that is underpinned by academic excellence which can affect local change. This means HEED is investing in workshops and programmes that encourage humanitarian engineers and social scientists to think differently about the problem of energy poverty and the potential solutions that can be brought to bear.
In collaboration with the Faculty of Engineering, Environment & Computing at Coventry University, we are delighted to announce three new internships as part of the HEED project. These roles enable interns to take an active part in designing, developing and delivering energy system monitoring. This will assist in understanding and meeting the energy needs of refugees and internally displaced people.
Drawing upon her degrees in Oil, Gas and Energy and Public Relations and Communications, Yevheniia Zhoholieva will be producing leaflets on the aims of the project to be used at training workshops. This allows her to broaden her skill set and develop ways to deliver information that speak to both engineering and social science audiences.
Tomasz Prabucki, a final year Computer Science undergraduate, along with Akshay Pillai, an Electronic Engineering student, will be gaining industrial experience by building monitoring systems with networking capabilities for solar lanterns that will be used in refugee camps. This sees them being responsible for the algorithms, code and all the inner-work of the devices, from early design stage to production.
“What really excites me about the project is the opportunity to use my technical skills for a humanitarian cause, for the first time in my life. It feels incredible to see how your work comes to life and gets applied in the corners of the world that so desperately need it. There is nothing that inspires you more than the feeling of making the world a slightly better place.”
Tomasz Prabucki, 3rd year student at Coventry University.
The interns will have also an opportunity to present prototypes of these devices to an audience of local policy makers and practitioners at the “The Design for Displacement” workshops taking place in Rwanda and Nepal [link to info about the workshops]
The HEED project team, look forward to working with Akshay, Yevheniia and Tomasz as they become the next generation of humanitarian engineers finding sustainable, robust and efficient responses to addressing energy poverty for refugees and internally displaced people.