Tag Archives: Askwar Hilonga

Superstar engineers and fantastic fiction writers podcast series

The ‘Inventive Podcast’ features the superstar engineers and fantastic fiction writers of the headline. The University of Salford (UK) launched the series on Wednesday, June 23, 2021or International Women in Engineering Day. Here’s more about the series from a June 21, 2021 University of Salford press release (Note: I liked the title so much I ‘borrowed’ it),

Superstar engineers and fantastic fiction writers collaborate on the brand-new Inventive Podcast

The University of Salford has announced the launch of the brand-new Inventive Podcast featuring the incredible stories of engineers whose innovative work is transforming the world we live in.

Professor Trevor Cox, Inventive Host and an Acoustical Engineer from the University of Salford said: “Engineering is so central to our lives, and yet as a subject it’s strangely hidden in plain sight. I came up with idea of Inventive to explore new ways of telling the story of engineering by mixing fact and fiction.”  He went on to comment, “Given the vast number of podcasts out there, it’s surprising how few shows focus on engineering (beyond tech).”

The project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences [Research] Council (EPSRC) and brings together two Schools at the University: Science, Engineering and Environment & Arts, Media and Creative Technology.  The series will debut on Wednesday 23 June [2021], International Women in Engineering Day, with a further with 6 new episodes dropping across the summer.

Over the course of the eleven-episode series, Professor Cox meets incredible Inventive engineers. In the first episode he interviews: electronics engineer, Shrouk el Attar, a refugee and campaigner for LGBT rights, recently awarded the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) Prize for her work in femtech, smart tech that improves the lives of cis women and trans men, at the Institution of Engineering and Technology Young Woman Engineer of the Year Awards 2021; structural engineer Roma Agrawal designed the foundation and spire of London’s The Shard; and chemical engineer Askwar Hilonga who didn’t have access to clean water growing up in his village in Tanzania, but has gone on to win the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation for his water purification nano filter.

This podcast is not just for engineers and techies! Engineering is typically represented in the media by historical narratives or ‘boy’s toys’ approach – biggest, longest, tallest. We know that has limited appeal, so we set ourselves a challenge to reach a wider audience. Engineering needs to tell better stories with people at the centre. So, we’ve interwoven factual interviews with stories commissioned from fantastic writers: C M Taylor’s piece The Night Builder, is inspired by structural engineer Roma Agrawal and includes a Banksy-like figure who works with concrete. Science Fiction writer Emma Newman’s Healing the Fractured is inspired by engineer Greg Bowie who makes trauma plates to treat broke bones and is set in a dystopian future, reminiscent of Handmaid’s Tale, with the engineer as an unexpected hero.

For more information and to sign-up for the latest episodes go to: www.inventivepodcast.com

I listened to Trevor Cox’s interview for the first and, so far, only Inventive episode, with engineer, Shrouk El-Attar, which includes award-winning writer and poet, Tania Hershman, performing her piece ‘Human Being As Circuit Board, Human Being as Dictionary‘ combining fiction, poetry and non-fiction based on El-Attar’s story. (Check out Shrouk El-Attar’s eponymous website here.)

I recognized one of the upcoming interview subjects, Askwar Hilonga, as his work with water filters in Tanzania has been featured here twice, notably in this June 16, 2015 posting.

Finally Tania Hershman (Twitter: @taniahershman) has an eponymous website here. (Note: In September 2021 she will be leading a 4-week online Science-Flavoured Writing course for the London Lit Lab. A science background isn’t necessary and, if you’re short on cash, there are some options.)

STEM for refugees and disaster relief

Just hours prior to the terrorist bombings in Paris (Friday, Nov. 13, 2015), Tash Reith-Banks published a Nov. 13, 2015 essay (one of a series) in the Guardian about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as those specialties apply to humanitarian aid with a special emphasis on Syrian refugee crisis.

This first essay focuses on how engineering and mathematics are essential when dealing with crises (from Reith-Banks’s Nov. 13, 2015 essay), Note: Links have been removed,

Engineering is a clear starting point: sanitation, shelter and supply lines are all essential in any crisis. As Martin McCann, CEO at RedR, which trains humanitarian NGO workers says: “There is the obvious work in providing water and sanitation and shelter. By shelter, we mean not only shelter or housing for disaster-affected people or refugees, but also structures to store both food and non-food items. Access is always critical, so once again engineers are needed to build roads or in some cases temporary landing strips.”

Emergency structures need to be light and fast to transport and erect, but tend not to be durable. One recent development comes from engineers Peter Brewin and Will Crawford of Concrete Canvas., The pair have developed a rapid-setting concrete-impregnated fabric that requires only air and water to harden into a water-proof, fire-resistant construction. This has been used to create rapidly deployable concrete shelters that can be carried in a bag and set up in an hour.

Here’s what one of the concrete shelters looks like,

A Concrete Canvas shelter. Once erected the structure takes 24 hours to harden, and then can be further insulated with earth or snow if necessary. Photograph: Gareth Phillips/Gareth Phillips for the Guardian

A Concrete Canvas shelter. Once erected the structure takes 24 hours to harden, and then can be further insulated with earth or snow if necessary. Photograph: Gareth Phillips/Gareth Phillips for the Guardian

There are many kinds of crises which can lead to a loss of shelter, access to water and food, and diminished safety and health as Reith-Banks also notes in a passage featuring mathematics (Note: A link has been removed),

Maths might seem a far cry from the sort of practical innovation described above, but of course it’s the root of great logistics. Alistair Clark from the University of the West of England is using advanced mathematical modelling to improve humanitarian supply chains to ensure aid is sent exactly where it is needed. Part of the Newton Mobility scheme, Clark’s project will partner with Brazilian disaster relief agencies and develop ways of modelling everything from landslides to torrential downpours in order to create sophisticated humanitarian supply chains that can rapidly adapt to a range of possible disaster scenarios and changing circumstances.

In a similar vein, Professor Amr Elnashai, founder and co-editor of the Journal of Earthquake Engineering, works in earthquake-hit areas to plan humanitarian relief for future earthquakes. He recently headed a large research and development effort funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the USA (FEMA), to develop a computer model of the impact of earthquakes on the central eight states in the USA. This included social impact, temporary housing allocation, disaster relief, medical and educational care, as well as engineering damage and its economic impact.

Reith-Banks also references nanotechnology (Note: A link has been removed),

… Up to 115 people die every hour in Africa from diseases linked to contaminated drinking water and poor sanitation, particularly in the wake of conflicts and environmental disasters. Dr Askwar Hilonga recently won the Royal Academy of Engineering Africa Prize, which is dedicated to African inventions with the potential to bring major social and economic benefits to the continent. Hilonga has invented a low cost, sand-based water filter. The filter combines nanotechnology with traditional sand-filtering methods to provide safe drinking water without expensive treatment facilities.  …

Dr. Hilonga who is based in Tanzania was featured here in a June 16, 2015 posting about the Royal Academy of Engineering Prize, his research, and his entrepreneurial efforts.

Reith-Banks’s* essay provides a valuable and unexpected perspective on the humanitarian crises which afflict this planet *and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series*.

*’Reith-Banks’s’ replaced ‘This’ and ‘and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series’ was added Nov. 17, 2015 at 1620 hours PST.

Tanzanian research into nanotechnology-enabled water filters

Inexpensive 99.9999…% filtration of metals, bacteria, and viruses from water is an accomplishment worthy of a prize as the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering noted by awarding its first ever International Innovation Prize of £25,000 ($38,348 [USD?]) to Askwar Hilonga, a Tanzanian academic and entrepreneur. A June 11, 2015 article by Sibusiso Tshabalala for Quartz.com describes the water situation in Tanzania and Hilonga’s accomplishment (Note: Links have been removed),

Despite Tanzania’s proximity to three major lakes almost half of it’s population cannot access potable water.

Groundwater is often the alternative, but the supply is not always clean. Mining waste (pdf, pg 410) and toxic drainage systems easily leak into fresh groundwater, leaving the water contaminated.

Enter Askwar Hilonga: a 38-year old chemical engineer PhD and entrepreneur. With 33 academic journal articles on nanotechnology to his name, Hilonga aims to solve Tanzania’s water contamination problems by using nanotechnology to customize water filters.

There are other filters available (according to Tshabalala’s article) but Hilonga’s has a unique characteristic in addition to being highly efficient and inexpensive,

Purifying water using nanotechnology is hardly a new thing. In 2010, researchers at the Yi Cui Lab at Stanford University developed a synthetic “nanoscanvenger” made out of two silver layers that enable nanoparticles to disinfect water from contaminating bacteria.

What makes Hilonga’s water filter different from the Stanford-developed “nanoscavenger”, or the popular LifeStraw developed by the Swiss-based health innovation company Vestergaard 10 years ago?

“It is customized. The filter can be tailored for specific individual, household and communal use,” says Hilonga.

A June 2, 2015 news item about the award on BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) online describes how the filter works,

The sand-based water filter that cleans contaminated drinking water using nanotechnology has already been trademarked.

“I put water through sand to trap debris and bacteria,” Mr Hilonga told the BBC’s Newsday programme about the filter.

“But sand cannot remove contaminants like fluoride and other heavy metals so I put them through nano materials to remove chemical contaminants.”

Hilonga describes the filter in a little more detail in his May 30, 2014 video submitted for for the UK Royal Academy of Engineering’s prize (Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation)

Finalists for the prize (there were four) received a six month mentorship which included help to develop the technology further and with business plans. Hilonga has already enabled 23 entrepreneurs to develop nanofilter businesses, according to the Tshabalala article,

Through the Gongali Model Company, a university spin-off company which he co-founded, Hilonga has already enabled 23 entrepreneurs in Karatu to set up their businesses with the filters, and local schools to provide their learners with clean drinking water.

With this prize money, Hilonga will be able to lower the price of his filter ($130 [USD?) according to the BBC news item.

Congratulations to Dr. Hilonga and his team! For anyone curious about the Gongali Model Company, you can go here.