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About the Project | Our Team | In the Media |
Our Team
Our trio of high capacity and driven individuals brings together diverse talents and experiences to ensure we achieve excellence.
On the project, David is responsible for articulating
and advocating for the functional requirements, for system integration,
and for refining the questions we try and ask with the device.
Additionally, he serves as the electronics to mechanical liaison between
Natasha and Marcelo, deferring to each of their expertise, but able to
see their components fitting together. Finally, David leverages his
experience in the development industry to identify which questions are
most important got the device's data to be able to inform. |
On the project, Natasha is
responsible for the product form design. She has designed and prototyped the current filter spouts and sensor housings, conducted preliminary testing, and in general is our resident form factor and product guru. |
Marcelo is a maker at heart. His passions include motion control systems, CNC machining, musical instruments design and manufacturing, and kinetic art. On the project, Marcelo is responsible for the device's functionality and the user experience. He has researched and designed the electronics, programmed the firmware and created an Android App that can establish a two ways short range wireless communication with the device. He has championed the creation of a compact ultra low power device that is designed for production-scale from the ground up. His vast experience made possible a seamless transition from an idea on paper to an electronic product out of the door. |
Contact:
[email protected]
(c) CleanData CleanWater
Our
context specialist is David Taylor. Before coming to MIT, he spent
11 months living in a rural village outside of Tamale (the same city as our
client Pure Home Water) working as a consultant for USAID and Engineers
without Borders Canada. One of his hobby was studying how his host family
perceived and valued water. In one attempt to learn more bought one of PWH’s
filters to observe how and when his host family used filtered water. He
dabbles in conversational Dagbani, the local language in the communities PHW
serves. He is passionate about seeing clean water come more consistently and
reliably to families and communities like the one he lived in in Ghana, and
is thrilled with this project’s potential to make a significant difference
in northern Ghana--- and beyond! He is currently a full-time PhD student in
Mechanical Engineering at MIT and is a Senior Tata Fellow developing a new
water valve to decrease contamination in New Delhi’s water system. 
Our
product design specialist is Natasha Wright. She is a graduate
student working in the Global Engineering and Research Lab at MIT. She has
spent the last 24 months working on village scale water purification and
desalination systems for rural areas of India. Through many field visits to
India, she has connected with 20+ NGOs working on the provision of water,
sanitation, and hygiene for Indian communities, as well as with
manufacturers of point-of-use and village systems. She has seen the struggle
that these organizations have documenting the success or failure of new
product lines, and the resulting difficulty in acquiring additional funding. 
Our
electronics specialist and software specialist is Marcelo DeCastro.