DreamOval Limited and Sci-Fi Web Technologies, businesses started by Ashesi alumni, are helping sponsor a team from the university to work on the development of IT-based systems to monitor and manage water usage and waste generation on the Ashesi campus. The projects are being conducted in collaboration with a team of students from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) under the iSTEP summer internship program organized by the TechBridgeWorld research group at CMU.
The Ashesi research team members are Sonia Adda ’12, Diana Dayaka Osei ’12, Nii Adjetey Sowah ’12, Selase Attah Kwamuar ’13, Juliana Esi T. Botsio ’12, Maame Abena Owusua Owusu-Acheaw ’12 and Kanba Daniel Tapang ’11. The CMU research team is made up of Scott Andes, Corinne Clinch, Julie Mallis, Ronnell Perry and Sandeep Reddy Munnangi.
As Ashesi expands its infrastructure and enrolls more students, there is a need to better manage resources like water and to monitor the university’s generation and disposal of waste that could harm our environment. The CMU-Ashesi team will be conducting thorough background research and needs assessment during the first few weeks of the project and their findings will be used to develop solutions to suit the campus’ needs.
In addition, the team will provide suggestions on how these solutions can be incorporated into future phases of campus construction. The technology solutions that come out of this project will be open sourced for the benefit of the global community. The team keeps a very lively online journal of their experiences working on the project on their blog: http://istep2012.techbridgeworld.org.
The Ashesi alumni organisations decided to sponsor the project because they believe that it will serve “to build capacity in the students and encourage initiatives that go to improve lives of community members and improve the general living conditions on campus”.
A big “thank you” to our alumni at DreamOval and Sci-Fi Web Technologies!
