Smart Communities | 1 - 12 February 2021 | Online
The tenth Royal Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering for Development symposium was conducted remotely on a bespoke virtual platform in February 2021 on the theme of 'Smart Communities'.
Smart communities Podcast
A special episode of the Smart Communities Podcast was recorded for the event, Episode 210: Smart initiatives bridging gaps in underserved communities with Lara Allen and Ashok Das. It's available below or via all major podcast platforms.
Listen to latest podcast episode
The symposium focussed on low-tech solutions and innovations, as well as bottom-up, context specific approaches that can be used to improve lives of the most underserved communities in developing countries. The theme also touched on the unintended consequences of some of those solutions in communities. Participants explored ideas such as enabling infrastructure, looking into energy and digital access; enhancing livelihoods, exploring ideas related to agriculture and monitoring and diagnostics, related to the Internet of Things and citizen science.
The symposium asked the following key questions:
- How can projects stay true to the principles of ‘appropriate technology’ while making the best use of digital and other advanced technologies in and for the benefit of low resource rural communities in developing and emerging economies?
- How can we bring together approaches to facilitate genuine co-creation between researchers, engineers and innovators on the one hand, and rural, marginalised, poor communities on the other?
Event Chairs
Dr Lara Allen, CEO, Centre for Global Equality
Lara is the CEO of the Centre for Global Equality, a Cambridge-based civil society organisation that enables the evolution of innovative solutions to global challenges through inclusive innovation. She is also an Affliated lecturer in Inclusive Innnovation at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge.
Dr Ashok Das, Founder, CEO, SunMoksha
Ashok is the Founder and CEO of SunMoksha, a clean technologies company working on the socioeconomic development of rural communities. He has over 25 years of experience in semiconductor equipment (Bay Area, USA) and clean technologies (Bangalore, India), with a decade in developing and implementing state-of-the-art solutions for microgrids and irrigation to develop smart villages.
Virtual Symposium Format
Delegates were brought together on a bespoke virtual platform, where they watched pre-recorded presentations, engaged in theme-related content, networked with other delegates and collaborated on seed funding ideas. This lead up to two days of live event session in the second week, where delegates participated in breakout rooms to workshop their ideas.
Following the symposium, groups of participants were awarded up to £20,000 in seed funding for an idea generated by new collaborations created during the event. Please visit the seed funding page for more information
Symposium Goal
The goal of the two day symposium is to introduce outstanding researchers and innovators working in the international development field (approximately 0-20 years post-doc, or equivalent experience in industry) to each other, and through this interaction, facilitate collaboration in engineering for development, the transfer of new techniques and approaches across disciplinary boundaries, and the establishment of contacts among the next generation of engineering leaders and beyond.