FRESH box 1.0 Beta complete!

Hey Everyone,
This weekend, we made our first prototype ice box! We bought materials from Home Depot then got to work at the Hillel center, where we used Jasons awesome power tools to build our box. Below are the pictures of our progress.

We began by cutting the lexan panes so as to make an 8"x8"x8" cube inside that would hold the vaccines:



Then we tried to cut the polystyrene, but the wire cutter would not work, as the wire had an enamel coating on it...So we tried to burn off the coating:


Then we decided to use the circular saw to cut the insulation, and it worked really well. We then embedded the lexan panes into the polystyrene and secured it with liquid nails:


Next, we put the rest of the insulation around the inside lexan cube and made a top to fit the box:



Finally, Sahil and Jason finished the box off by putting the corrugated plastic pieces around the outside:


The building team made really good progress this weekend. By building the box, we found out how to use all the tools, what works, and what does not. Now we can use this box to simulate ice box experiments that will model our actual final prototype!

-Ravi

New semester!

Well, Team FRESH is now in their final year - seniors! The project largely needs to be wrapped up by the end of this fall semester, leaving a couple of months for writing and tying up any loose ends. The summer was marked by a couple of changes. I moved lab and family to San Diego, which was a chaotic experience. Fortunately, both Team FRESH and Gemstone staff were supportive of and flexible in dealing with this adventure. (Thanks!) I'll continue to mentor from afar, and Gunja will take over the in person mentoring every other week. After some minor technical difficulties the first two weeks (one which was my fault and one which I can blame on some poor SDG&E worker in Arizona, who blacked out San Diego, parts of Arizona, and parts of Mexico!), weekly meetings are also in full swing. The new syllabus reflects ambitious, but realistic goals to wrap up the project.

The blog should be updated more regularly now that the semester is going strong. I continue to have high hopes! Good luck!

PCM measurements scheduled for next week on the DSC! (apparently the chamber was contaminated so they were rescheduled from tomorrow)

Business Plan Competition? I think so.

Team FRESH is now considering entering in next year’s University of Maryland $75K Business Plan Competition. Needless to say the prize money would be well-appreciated and put in to good use. This gives the marketing team even more of a push to get a good marketing plan written out. So far we seem to have a lot of the background research and rough estimates on the costs associated with the cold chain in past drafts of our thesis and concept paper. What remains generally is a cost comparison of our own product to that of our competitors.

-Amanda

Marketing Plan Search

The marketing team is currently on the search for a new marketing plan template. We all agree that our current marking plan template is too broad and does not account for the unique features of each individual cold chain. Unfortunately we can’t use the template we learned about at the Unite for Sight Conference because they asked not to have it cited or copied. There are conferences out there dedicated solely to healthcare product marketing and business plan development (http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/execed/Programs/HEALTHPRO.aspx), but of course, they are a few $1,000’s out of our budget (feel free to donate!!). We are currently trying to adapt a standard business plan to our needs in order to market specifically to Unicef, and other organizations responsible for the maintenance of the cold chain.

Frozen, Yo.

Last Thursday, we had our last mentor meeting with Dr. Shah for the semester. I can't believe we're going to be seniors next year! It seems like yesterday since we were researching less developed countries and their problems...oh how fast time flies by.

We met at Yogiberry instead of the boring engineering building. Everyone sat around and enjoyed frozen yogurts. It was a good bonding time. We talked about Angry Birds, Words with Friends, and whatever else we had on our mind. All in all, it was a great ending to the semester.

Good luck to everyone during finals!

Keeping it Fresh since 2008,
Young

Minutes - Mentor Meeting 4/28

Hey guys,

Here's the minutes from our mentor meeting on 4/28/11.

Undergraduate Research Day:

Success! Thanks to all the team members who volunteered and made everything go smoothly.

The editing team for the first three chapters of our Thesis completed their revisions. There are currently 5 objectives listed in our thesis (1 - is the concept paper; 2 - Characterize PCM...5- Marketing Plan). All of the edits can be noticed on the google doc (Sorry for the lack of details here...Matt talks extremely fast and I couldn't keep up with him).

This is a very rough draft of our thesis and still needs editing from our other editing teams. Also, the next team should take the paper out of a google doc and put it into a word document.

The main update is that all of the supplies have been purchased and construction will commence at Andrew's apartment this week.

The team social was on 4/30 at Ledo's (already happened because I'm late on this post. But it was a really fun time).

Looking forward to next semester, we really need to focus on our thesis and our prototype. The full thesis is due by the end of next semester (150 pages!!) By that time, we hope to talk to all external experts and invite them to our thesis defense in Spring 2012.

As far as team feedback from Dr. Shah goes, he generally said we're pretty awesome.

-Andrew

Minutes - Non Mentor Meeting 4/26

Hey guys,

Here's the minutes from our non mentor meeting from Tuesday night.

UPDATES:

Editing team – Quint, Matt, Kelly and young have editing done by Thursday's meeting

All of the building materials have been purchased, and buildling will be occurring at Andrew’s place

Timeline for PCM testing : The lab for testing the PCM is extremely busy. Quint is going to see if he can conduct testing during the night.

For those who are going to be in or around campus during the summer, a meeting time needs to be decided upon.

Summer goals:

· Complete prototype building

· Concept paper – near final draft completed

· Complete PCM testing (early summer)

· Marketing plans - find a new template by exams

· First draft by May 26^th (marketing plan)

· Second draft by June 9^th (marketing plan)

· Submit to Dr. shah -draft by june 23 (marketing plan)

· Final draft – July 14^th (marketing plan)

Concept paper

· First draft of concept paper –June 1^st

· Dr. Shah for edits- June 15^th

· Final draft- August 15^th

As for our Thesis, it will be focused on during next semester.

-Andrew

Thesis Editing Party at Amina's

Hey Team Fresh

Quint, Young, Amina and myself, collectively known as the first round editing team,have spent the last 2 hours wrestling our thesis google doc into something readable. We made a lot of comments and found some holes, but most of it makes sense. It would be nice for the team to take a look at the google doc before the meeting tomorrow!

Thanks Amina for the M&M's!

-Matt

Undergraduate Research Day Extravaganza

Today was the Undergraduate Research Day!

I went to Undergraduate Research Day to support our fellow teammates presenting our project to the public. There were definitely some fascinating projects going on around campus, and I got to learn more about our fellow Gemstone colleagues and their progress. Team Green Justice was close to where we were stationed, so I went to say hi. To briefly explain their project, they are evaluating the impact of changing the trash pickup from twice a week to once a week in Hyattsville. It's an interesting topic and I'm sure they've put in a lot of work into their research. I came across another Gemstone project while wandering around. This research was to improve the effectiveness of the Maryland sex offender registry. I couldn't help but read more about the research because it was such a unique research idea. Last but not least, there was a psychology research about domestic violence. The researched wanted to determine if the domestic violence courses here at the university changed the students' opinons and attitudes.

Even though there lots of cool research today, I couldn't help but feel that our project is still the coolest and the freshest. Maybe I'm a little bit biased though.

If you didn't get a chance to check out today, there's always next year!

- Young

Follow our Twitter Account!

http://twitter.com/TeamFRESHumd

Trip to Home Depot

So this weekend, I rented a van from motorpool for a different club. I forced Foo to wake up and come with me to Home Depot. Somehow, we were able to fold down the seats and fit the 8 x 4 ft boards into the van at the expense of a seat for Foo. So with boards over my head and Foo crouched on the ground in the back, we made it to Courtyards and stored the boards and Liquidnails in his place. We are going to transfer all supplies to courtyards and start building next week!


-Sahil

It's that time of the semester!!!

Our semesterly social has finally arrived!!

The plan, you ask?

On Saturday, April 30th, 2011, we'll be dining at Ledo's Restaurant on Knox Road at 6:00pm, and at around 7:00pm, we'll be leaving for Memorial Chapel where we will go see the Faux Paz Spring Show! (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=191310897580915)

Get ready for a FRESH night...

14 hours until Undergraduate Research Day,
Amina and Divya

Using Google Maps to Visualize the Literature on Vaccine Freezing

As my final project for that same Digital Communication class I'm taking, I decided to make a Google Earth map of the studies we've looked at demonstrated vaccine freezing in transport and storage in the cold chain. I've been wrapped up with MCAT studying, so I keep forgetting to bring it up during our meetings, so thought I would link it here for our whole community to see!

What better way to get a grasp on what data is out there than map it out?

Concept: Since many of the reports are from developing countries, and are of variable quality, it is important to focus on peer-reviewed studies and technical reports from trusted organizations like USAID. Each marker on the map will be accompanied by a link to the study, an abstract if available, and important findings (percentage of freezing in transport/in storage, unit of analysis). I want to have a clean format so that the
information doesn’t overwhelm the audience. I think this project is very important to researchers, policy-makers, and even the public because it will demonstrate what parts of the world may be neglected. In addition, it will empower the audience to readily access the research in one window rather than navigating Pubmed or relying on media reports.

Here it is so far!


View Cold Chain Findings Around the World in a larger map






~Veena

WorldTalk Undergraduate Research Symposium

Hey everyone!  I want to get the word out on a conference coming up that may be of interest to you, our globally-minded followers.

On May 1st, the University of Maryland's Honors Humanities Program is holding its annual research symposium.  This year's theme is "Human Rights in the Global Age."   I just found out that my paper was accepted, so I'll be presenting myself!  The topic of my presentation?  BLOGGING and combining online communication tools to approach global health issues in the future.  I started exploring online tools in a Digital Communication class I'm taking right now on campus.  My midterm paper was basically a tutorial on building a student global health research blog in WordPress, and the blog it's posted on is a perfect example!  For this presentation, I want to cover a little bit more ground, drawing from my experiences trying to navigate the web for Team FRESH as well as other projects I have done in the past and am currently working towards.  I want to cover what worked, what didn't work, and what may emerge in the future.

Our involvement in online communities has led us to some amazing experts like Dr. Yarrow-- just imagine if this became a widespread resource that anyone with a bit of passion could turn to.    Just imagine how many projects people could collaborate on across borders!  More Team FRESH projects would certainly be good additions to the world! :)

 This conference is free and open to the public-- feel free to stop by Sunday, May 1st, from 9-4:30.  I will be presenting my paper during Session 4, which starts at 3pm.

~Veena

Clark School Sustainability Workshop

Hey Team FRESH and followers,

I meant to mention this today, but forgot. The Clark School is hosting a sustainability workshop tomorrow and I am presenting in my position as project leader for the University of Maryland's student chapter of Engineers without Borders' Burkina Faso IV: Health project. My talk incorporates some ideas of sustainability that I got from Amanda, Ravi and Kelly at the meeting on Tuesday from their experiences at the Unite for Sight Conference. The workshop info is available here: http://www.eng.umd.edu/events/sustainability-workshop2011

Talks run all day, but for some reason they volunteered Engineers without Borders to go first. The talk is in the Kim building so its easy if you're around those parts, but if you're just waking up its also webcast!

Just getting the word out...

Keep it fresh,
Matt

Meeting 4/21/11

3:45 review over conference call with our source in india, Justin Yarrow he gave us several important papers to look at. Additionally it was revealed that one of the biggest problems with the cold chain studies now and decisions made about the cold chain indicate that there is very little data out there. And the existing data may or may not be generalizable as we’d like. Furthermore is was discovered that the exact effect of freezing isn’t really known. He mentioned that no one does shake test. A study is currently being done with a temperature measurement of lots of vaccines within the system.

Recommended changes. Reusable materials. Look into leaving stuff out, as people don’t actually leave stuff out.

3:55 Discussion of what Dr. Gabino, She didn’t think immediate implementation is feasible. Need to look at our solution as more of a long term system. Suggested green insulation. She said that it would be really nice for us to talk about how sturdy our system is, just throwing boxes around. Her experience in the field indicates this is a highly relevant test. She may have offered her facilities to test stuff in her facilities. Can we ask her for more information about what she does?

4:00 Two guests at our meeting!! Dr. Wallace and Rebbeca Thomas from the gemstone main office. Updating them on our progress as a team. We informed them of our recent work with the new people we have met. Dr. Gabino and Dr. Yarrow from the conference and blogs respectively. How we talked with him and her about what they have done.

Our team right now is putting a lot of focus on the theoretical modeling. I.e. our goal will be to really nail this down while getting assistance with the prototype building occurring simultaneously. How we will take the prototype and use the PQS tests to make sure the system works.

We explained how our system will be using the theoretical model that is COMSOL with an added program for PCM b/c phase change isn’t supported.

We were asked how we feel about our progress as a whole towards our goal. We feel that we have a lot of feedback and are ready to keep going and improve how everything is working.

Discussion of our new plan for experimentation. (were a little behind our plan) Goal is to build a practice system before semester ends. After that is to design a system using the COMSOL model and construct the final over the summer. Break at 4:25

4:30 Talk about the points brought up by Rebecca Thomas and dr. Wallace. It may be key to discuss availability over the summer. Talk about how far we want to progress before we graduate.

4:35 Use of biodegradable materials, there are some out there.

Skype with Dr. Yarrow

Hey guys,
So yesterday we skyped with Dr. Yarrow, who has considerable experience with various cold chains in Africa. This was extremely helpful, as he definitely reassured us about our project's importance. Additionally, we had lots of ideas and inklings about how the cold chain actually worked, and his real-world experience verified most of our assumptions, and gave us a lot of details. Some important things he told us were to keep in mind that each vaccine is different, and not to generalize too much. He gave us a bunch of papers and reviews to reference, and ideas for actually implementing our prototype in the various cold chains around the world. I think he was much more reassuring than Dr. Gammino, but both of them gave us valuable, credible feedback. I'll post my notes from the conference call on our groupspaces.

Good job team, this means we are on the right direction and we have credible support!

Sahil

NEW PCM!

The new PCM from Acutemp finally came!

We received 5 panels of the VXS-1 PCM from Acutemp that has a freezing temperature around 2-5 degrees Celsius. And they were completely free!

We can now test the new PCM along with the PCM from Greenbox and find thermal characteristics of each PCM. Hopefully one of these PCMs will match the properties needed for our design.

Unite for Sight Weekend

This weekend we went to the unite for sight conference. I was surprised by the wide range of people who were there. We were sitting next to physicians, CEOs, other students, health workers, and other types of people. A common theme of the day seemed to be collaboration between different organizations and people. The keynote speaker talked about how pharmaceutical industry reform is possible through teamwork between NGOs, and other speakers also talked about how organizations needed to come together to solve various problems.
After the keynote we sat in on a series of conferences talking about HIV treatment and prevention and the importance of mobile technology in healthcare. I was surprised to learn that there is not that much progress on an HIV vaccine and that microbicides seem to be a promising avenue for HIV prevention.
Then, in the afternoon was our presentation. We were put in a room about clean water issues, which didn't really go with our topic but there were a few other projects that also weren't on this topic. The presentation went very well and we had a few questions after. There was a lady there from the CDC and we ended up talking to her for a while afterward because she works with the immunization department and is working with a project similar to ours. She gave us her contact information and I believe she will be a good resource in the future.
On Sunday, we attended the first of three keynote addresses in the morning. It was given by Jeffery Sachs, a professor of economics at Columbia University, who has also advised the Congress on budget issues. He talked about the recent budget crisis in the USA and how our spending and tax plans compare to other wealthy nations, making the point that the USA is lacking in good, ethical leadership. I was blown away by the talk and the information he gave as to how terrible the economic situation really is in the USA.
Then, we took a break in a coffee shop to talk about some information we found that Dr. Gammino has published about the cold chain. After that, we attended a series of lectures on product design and implementation. One lecture in particular was related to our situation because the speaker was part of Catapult Designs, which is a nonprofit engineering organization that helps groups who are looking to make a social impact in the developing world. His team may be able to help us with design details or product implementation in the future.
Next, we ate at a vegetarian restaurant, called Claire's, and the food was fantastic. Our experience there actually inspired us to establish a Team FRESH twitter account (@TeamFRESHumd) because they gave us a free slice of cake out of the blue!
After lunch, I went to a workshop that was lead by the director of the hospital I worked at while I was in India during my Unite for Sight trip. I talked to him for a little while after the session, and it was nice to catch up, since we had not kept in touch for a while. It also turned out to be worthwhile because two other men came up and talked to him, so I was able to connect with them, as well. One was an MBA student at University of Maryland and the other had been a professor at the University of Maryland Medical School for 20 years! It was an amazing coincidence, and I believe they will be able to give us some information or put us in contact with the right people in the future.
The last talk I went to was about photography for NGOs. A professional photographer talked about his experiences all of the world, including Kenya, Bangladesh, and Russia. It was interesting to see how much detail goes in to taking a photograph. This talk was a great end to a fantastic weekend! I look forward to pursuing the opportunities that our new contacts can provide!

-Ravi

Unite for Sight Part 2!!

Soo Kelly did an excellent job of summarizing most of day 1's events. We networked and made some awesome connections that will hopefully help take us further in the product development phase of our project. Despite a suprise rain storm at the end of the day we managed to see a little of yale's very harry potteresque campus. Overall it was a successful day!!

Towards the middle of the day the team decide to break out and attend different sessions. As a member of the marketing subgroup, I decided to attend Dr. Elizabeth Bradley’s workshop, “Innovation Dissemination and Take-up: What works?” Throughout the conference, a critical message was echoed: in order to successfully implement new innovations in the field, a good business model must be in place. Rather than following a traditional model for innovation implementation which assumes that products will be well-received within a community without consideration of cultural or social norms, Dr. Bradley took a more community tailored approach. Comparing her business model to the viral replication process, Dr. Bradley spoke of the importance of good receptors within the community to disseminate information of new health innovations. Perhaps one of the most important take-home points of the presentations was that innovations need to fit within the community. The community is a set entity in which the innovation can be easily integrated to best addresses the community’s needs. This concept can be directly applied to our project seeing that no cold chain is the same. Our product needs to be easily integrated into cold chain as it exists today while considering the cultural and social norms of the country in question. The conversation we had with Dr. Gammino of the CDC reflected this point when she spoke of her experience trying to implement a new type of cold box in a low-resource nation (she was talking super fast so can't specifically remember which country it was, oops!). The box was designed to have straps that go across the body in order to make it easier to carry for both men and women. At a presentation, a worker from the field commended her on an excellent idea, however, he commented that the straps were "too nice." Dr. Gammino asked why he could possibly not want "nice straps." The gentleman said it was because soldiers would use the straps to carry their weapons...just a short example of some cultural situations that should be considered.

More blog posts to come!!

-Amanda

Unite for Sight Conference - Day 1

Today was the first day of the Unite for Sight Global Health Conference at Yale University! I meant to blog when we arrived last night, but I was pretty tired after our trip and a few rooming mishaps (the joys of traveling!). Short version: we made it safe and enjoyed driving through the motherland - good ol' Jersey, baby.

But back to the conference... I thought I'd be really lost as an engineer at a global health conference, but it was all pretty interesting! There were a ton of topics being discussed by a slew of folks with crazy resumes (I felt like I was surrounded by celebrities!), though we tried to catch the ones that would be more related to our project.

After the Keynote address, we listened in on a few lectures regarding HIV prevention and the developing vaccinations, and then caught some talks on other technology innovations in global health. After lunch, we split up to go to a few different things - I ended up going to a workshop on "Making Sure Your Solution Fits The Social Problem." The speaker was Mark Koska, the founder of SafePoint Trust, who designed a syringe that auto-disables to prevent reuse. A large problem in the developing areas that he visited was the reuse of needles, when essentially infection is spread unnecessarily to others because of poor sanitation procedures. His story was rather interesting as he described the process of research and identifying a specific, real problem (from the original broad scope of curing HIV).

On to the the main event - our FRESH presentation! Ravi did a great job speaking on our behalf. It was well done, and the audience seemed to enjoy it. More importantly, we were fortunate enough to speak with Victoria Gammino, an epidemiologist who works for the CDC and is actively involved in designing a new cold box. She gave us a TON of information which was really enlightening.

Well, the first thing she said was that UNICEF would not buy into our idea. According to the Product Quality Standards, cold boxes in developing countries typically do not use phase change materials without a unique exception. I asked her if any products had ever been approved with this exception, and she only replied that some projects were moving forward with the idea, but the topic was difficult to pitch. She was telling us about the economical and logistical difficulties that PCM would introduce into the cold chain in comparison to the currently used ice pack system. First, that there is a disconnect between the three financial parties - the vaccine manufacturer, the equipment suppliers, and the users. Each has its own agenda and perception of need versus cost. Also, she mentioned that it was difficult to quantify a justification for this need. When a vaccine is frozen, it is at risk of being impotent, but there is no way to check that it is in fact dangerous without use. Thus there are no ethical metrics for this.

Regardless, I think that our project is still very much valid. There is a lot of science we can contribute to in regards to the PCM geometry and arrangement, and in the future I still think that this could be incorporated into the cold chains. Projects are underway for these things, and one day someone has to realize and justify the potential for it. Victoria Gammino also gave us a lot of background information and alternative focuses, and we hope to continue talking with her!

All in all, a great day; nothing to get discouraged about; and we made a great contact! Keep it FRESH!

TRIP TO HOME DEPOT

Last night, Sahil and I went to Home Depot to buy a few of the supplies needed to begin construction of our prototype. There were only two items on the list: a sheet of polyisocyanurate and and two sheets of extruded polystyrene. Luckily for us, the local home depot in College Park carried the two exact brands of insulation we were looking for.

HOWEVER, Sahil failed to mention to me that the sheets of insulation were enourmous. To be exact, one sheet was 4 ft. x 8ft; the other was 2ft. by 8ft. There was no chance of these fitting in my small sedan. We opted to wait until Jason fixed his convertible so that we could fit the sheets in his car with the top down.

April 12th Non-Mentor Meeting

Our Tuesday night meeting was a meeting to remember. Matt was conflict resolution (read: food provider), and we all thought that he had forgotten to bring some chow... but suddenly he pulled out an enormous steak from his netbook... and voila! we had a feast.

Now, that clearly didn't happen... but imagine if it did! In truth, we reviewed our goals for the week, and heard Ravi give a run-through of his upcoming Unite for Sight presentation. He spoke clearly and intelligently, and we are excited to hear the feedback he gets from the conference this weekend. He will go through another dry-run this Thursday in our mentor meeting with Dr. Shah.

We broke up into sub-teams after to bring everyone up to date:

Materials/Construction: ordered all parts, and is awaiting arrival. Will be going on a field trip tomorrow to the local Home Depot (We can do it, and they can help!) to purchase the remaining materials.

Case Study: Deciding on an "action plan" to merge the Thesis proposal and NSF proposal into a formidable study!

NBA Playoff's Team: Andrew took 3:1 odds that the Knicks make it farther in the playoffs than the Hawks.

Modeling: Matt and Kelly will spend the next few days breathing Comsol, and experimenting ElmerFem... an opensource finite element analysis software based out of Finland... sounds like a blast!

Good luck Team and keep it FRESH!

- Jason

Imagine...A Stronger Health Workforce

Here’s a great animation produced by the Global Health Workforce Alliance regarding the importance of health workers.

Follow ‘Flo’, a skilled health worker who leaves her home in search of a better life. What happens to the people she leaves behind? What would it take to keep her in her own community, saving lives and improving the health of the people there?

Think Cold Chain

April 7th Mentor Meeting

Today we had our usual meeting with Dr. Shah to discuss our week's progress.  Marketing reported on the rough cost analysis they completed and recorded in a Google spreadsheet ("Pricing"--I shared it with you guys).  The projected cost for the materials that make up the ice box, excluding PCM, currently stands at about $27.  We also have an estimate on how much money we're saving from preventing vaccines from being exposed to freezing temperatures (assuming those vaccines are spoiled upon exposure).  Last, we took a look at the WHO and UNICEF vaccine carriers, and benchmarked some prices.  As of now, we're at least competitive.  Moving forward we need to do the final calculation matching our product up to the field.  Marketing had some help from team members from other subteams-- Sahil and Ravi.  The commitment of all our team members never fails to inspire me, and I really think it'll prove fruitful both for our team in the short-term, and the world in the long-term.  Glad to know all of our teammates and be part of FRESH.

Not to get too mushy, I'll keep going with the minutes.  Matt had an idea on testing the technological advantage of using our approach surrounding using sensors on the PCM against the existing approach involving the shake test.  More details to come from the PCM team on how they will do this.  Quint, Amina, and Amanda plan to go in to Dr. Shah's lab tomorrow at noon to set some experimental goals and get cracking.  Hopefully we can best utilize the skills of our cool high school assistant, Oheni, before he leaves us.  

For the thesis, our first editing group will be Matt, Amina, Foo and Young.  Thanks for going first guys!  The entire team will be editing the thesis at some point, but it was great that these four stepped up.  We're going to need some experts to read over our thesis, so we're going to try to contact some professors we've worked with in the past.  

Since our ice box is really taking shape now, our team is now trying to figure out strategies to integrate a marketing plan in the field.  Towards this end, the team decided to start asking experts the set of questions we formed some time ago.  Also, we're going to try to look for small grants that may help us along the way.  The team is also considering the MTech Entrepreneurship competition for senior year.  

That's all folks, have a great weekend!

~Veena

April 5th Non-Mentor Meeting

Great meeting tonight FRESH!

Here are a few notes to keep us focused for the next week.  Since we don't have too many tangible goals down for the remainder of the semester, Young suggested we brainstorm a set to keep us accountable.  Awesome idea, Meeting Lead!

Most exciting news first- our other PCM has arrived at last.  Now all we have to do is test it against the Greenbox PCM.  Quint and the rest of the PCM team hope to accomplish this in the next two weeks.  Next up, our presentation team is continuing to revise the poster they designed for Undergraduate Research Day, as well as getting a script ready for the 5 minute (so short) Unite for Sight presentation.

In terms of actually building this box, we still have a few hurdles to cross.  After paying for the PCMs, thermocouples, and conference fees, we have depleted all of our Gemstone funding.  Since we have so many creative people on our team, we really view this as a blessing in disguise.  Just imagine all of the fun ways we can raise some cash-- bake sales, fundraisers, Foo's online schemes, there's a lot out there.  [But NSF, if you're reading this, please feel free to throw us some cash this way.  We will gladly take it!]

The construction team made the final list of materials needed to design the box, so we're really waiting on the money (about $55) to go out to Home Depot and buy them.  This week they will start contacting people in the engineering department/mechanics shop to get a better idea of the steps to physically construct this box.  Also in light of long-term mass manufacturing costs (knock on wood, we get there!), we want to get an idea of how buying individual panels matches up with creating a mold for a box.

Moving on, the finite elements team is hard at work on the modeling.  Kelly briefed the rest of the team on some errors that came up in the program.  It's only a matter of time until these two (Kelly and Matt) get it right...If you guys can't do it, I don't know who else can.  Finite elements will give us an update in two weeks.

Proposal team (me, Amanda, Amina, Jason) briefly addressed refining the first three chapters of our thesis (including the potential public health concept paper).  In the next week, each subteam will internally edit their contribution to the thesis.  The following week, an editing team will be selected to nail the grammar and style issues.

Last, but not least, the marketing team (plus a few others) trudged on in their effort to get a projected price for our box.  Sahil, Ravi, Young, and I worked on this for the majority of the time.  We looked over some of the articles we've collected over the past few months, and found some valuable stats regarding freeze exposure rates (based on a systematic lit review of cold chain studies), and even a few speaking to how precise the FreezeWatch is in detecting loss of vaccine potency.  Another interesting statistic we found pointed to ~16% freeze exposure found in developed countries, compared to ~35% in developing countries while in transport...I also saw an article in the American Journal of Public Health the other day on detecting freezing in the Texas cold chain.  Maybe we ought to revisit the industrialized world to see what lessons they can teach us.  Even after using PCM's and expensive infrastructure, there still seems to be freezing.

The percentage of wastage is enormous, meaning the sum of money lost is enormous, which has left us enormously confused as to how these rates could possibly be true.  Why hasn't something been done about this loss earlier?  Still thinking on that one.  More updates to come.

~Veena

March 31 Mentor Meeting

At our mentor meeting, we discussed next semester's mentor meeting time (again, we spend 70% of our time discussing when to meet next). We then had sub-group updates from marketing, finite elements, construction, and outreach. The marketing team has finished the marketing team objectives and is looking into non-profits we can get in contact with. We also need to focus on how we're going to make our box economically competitive. The finite elements team planned on checking the model after the meeting. Matt found how to track one point in the model so it can be compared with the experimental group’s findings. Kudos to Matt! The construction team discussed their materials which include Styrofoam sheets and adhesive nails. Outreach is still working on a team to bring in high school students to the lab.

I'll spare you the boring parts about our Undergraduate Research Day poster improvements [Team FRESH: reference the notes in GroupSpaces for the dets]. We decided to still try to work on a concept paper, as we think it would be very beneficial to publish it. By the end of the semester, we hope to have a final, albeit very rough, draft.

Also, Ohene if you're reading this, we discussed maybe having you post on the blog... Get excited!

22 days to Undergraduate Research Day and counting,

Amina

March 29th Non-Mentor Meeting

After a nice long spring break, everyone is back and ready to go! At our non-mentor meeting on Tuesday, we covered meeting times for next semester (it seems like most of our time is spent discussing when to meet!) and went over our thesis parts. The thesis sections are coming together nicely and it is a huge relief to have part of it done (only 136,234 pages to go!).

We also discussed WHO standards for vaccine carriers. WHO dictates that how large ice packs need to be in cold boxes, but since we're not using ice packs we hope that we can get permission to bypass that standard.

Young put in the order for probes and we calculated that we are just within our budget for this semester. We still need to register for Unite for Sight and prepare our presentation for the conference. After discussing these topics, we broke into sub-teams and worked on our goals.

28 days to Undergraduate Research Day and counting,

Amina

St Patrick's Day Mentor Meeting

Wow. Apologies to the team for this missing post. I was almost sure I had posted it on the Friday before break on my way to New York, but Bolt Bus's Wifi can be finnicky. I hope everyone had a great spring break and was able to find their parts of the outline of the thesis paper in the google doc where the previous less detailed outline was.

Minutes from March 17 meeting.

Jason informed the team that the letter to Dr. Wallace detailing our grant expenditure was in, and we have since been approved to use our funds to send 3 of our members to the Unite For Sight Conference at Yale in April.

The Materials for Construction sub-team detailed their assumption in ordering materials for the initial prototype construction. The initial model will have 1 cubic foot of storage space and therefore be on the larger side of WHO prescribed cold boxes. It will be assembled from styrofoam insulation sheets, polycarbonate glass and corrugated plastic. Some questions remain on the best way to attach these parts together, and Dr. Shah suggested there are some pretty handy guys hanging out in machine shops around campus that will usually answer a quick question about these things.

The marketing team gave an update on the first three sections of the marketing plan template which are Goals, Objectives, and Audience. There was some discussion about this. I suggested that the Audience should specified as two parties: users and customers; the users are the health workers in the rural health clinics and the customer is most likely an employee or committee at UNICEF.

The rest of the meeting was spent outlining the first 3 parts of our Thesis and splitting up parts among the team. The resulting outline is available in the "NSF Proposal Assignments" google doc.

-Matt

Non-Mentor Meeting March 15

Before breaking out into sub-teams at our non-mentor meeting Tuesday night, we had to sort out together one team goal of utmost importance to our success: how to schedule our meeting next semester without having to meet at 8 AM, as we have the previous two falls. For some reason our when2meet crashed, so Divya created a new doodle which everyone is supposed to fill out by the mentor meeting today. As of now there are 6 non-8 AM spots left!

In other news, we are sorting our financial matters with gemstone for the Unite for Sight conference, preparing slides for the conference due March 1st and preparing our Undergraduate research day poster by March 28th. The Finite Element Team promises some real snazzy pictures by the end of spring break.

After that we broke into sub-teams, for which I can only account for my own and the few teams I eavesdropped on. Kelly and I talked over meeting our goal for Finite Element Analysis this week, which is to have a working phase change model in 3-D. We're also trying to figure out how to sample specific points in the 3-D model space and track their temperature over time (i.e. simulate the experimental team's thermocouple leads.) This is important in meeting our goal of matching the simulation to experiment.

Veena, Amanda, Quint and I had a good conversation towards the end of the meeting about how our current design is implemented, which is a conversation we use to have very often in the previous incarnations of our design but haven't had in detail with this new concept. We suggested that there will be more boxes than PCM packs, and the PCM packs will be the only part that ever goes in a freezer. When it reaches each successive point in the cold chain, the ice packs can be replaced with previously frozen PCM packs and sent on its way or stored. When it reaches its final point of the cold chain, it serves as storage. If the final destination has some kind of freezer, the PCM packs could be cycled indefinitely. In a perfect world, once the vaccines were used up the clinic would send the box and a set of spent PCM packs back to the main distribution center, but there's no reason one clinic couldn't have more than one box at a time.

From what I heard in the rest of the room, the construction team was having some intense conversation over which plastics were best/easiest to work with/cheapest/lightest/most durable as they got together the materials list for a prototype for their goal this week.

-Matt

March 10th Mentor Meeting

We used our March 10^th mentor meeting to bring the team update on goals for the rest of the semester. We got updates from the Gemstone staff from our team liaison mainly regarding Undergraduate Research Day and the new location in the colony ballroom. The team also filled out a Gemstone program and mentor survey. Afterwards, we developed a new list of goals and due dates according to subgroup. The Marketing subgroup hopes to get at least 2 sections of the marketing plan drafted each week with an entire marketing plan draft complete by the end of the semester. The PCM subgroup plans to acquire and test AcuTemp and to complete testing of the Greenbox by the end of the month. PCM also hopes to have 2 new PCMs tested by the end of the semester. The Finite Elements subgroup is gradually working towards matching the theoretical models with results from the ice box experiments. They hope to develop a working 3D model of our box with ice and PCM as well as another model 3D model with ice and insulation by the end of the month. Initial comparisons between the models and ice box experiments are scheduled to be completed by the beginning of April while all modeling and ice box experiments comparisons are scheduled to be completed by the end of the semester. The construction team hopes to have materials ordered by the 15^th of March with the prototype sized by the 17^th. Brainstorming and research into the fabrication process of the prototype should be completed by the end of March and all relevant materials are scheduled to be assembled by the end of the semester. Finally, the Experimental Physical Testing subgroup plans to have all experiments proposed within the NSF proposal completed by the end of the semester while the Proposal subgroup is working on getting chapters 1 through 3 of our Gemstone thesis completed. The schedule is ambitious but the team is doing great at following it so far!

-Amanda

March 8th Nonmentor Meeting

During our nonmentor meeting, we discussed some overall group matters for a short while before breaking off into our subgroups. First, we need to decide our meeting times for next semester, so Veena created a when2meet for us to fill out. We also assigned times for Undergraduate Research Day, so people will be present throughout the entire event and poster session. Additionally, we created a strikeforce to create the poster with all our latest research for the event. After these major group matters, we split up to work on individual tasks. The building team researched materials to order, and the Icebox/PCM team put in the order for the new thermocouple and probes. At the end, we further detailed who would be writing the different parts for the thesis.

-Sahil

March 3rd Mentor Meeting

This week during our mentor meeting, we had an update presentation from every subgroup in order to get everyone up to speed.
Before we started this, we had some important news updates: Amina was going to sign us up for Undergraduate Research Day, and our abstract was accepted by the Unite for Sight Conference! Going to this conference in Connecticut would be Ravi, Kelly, and Amanda. They will have a 5 minute presentation, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A. This will be our team's first presentation outside of the gemstone department, so we are all excited for feedback from the global health community.

For the subgroup presentations, the PCM/Icebox team has decided on a new, 8 probe thermocouple to order, since the current one is malfunctioning too often. Additionally, they have an outline of dates to measure and test the 2 additional PCMs that we have acquired. The Computer Simulation Team has decided on a new way to model phase changes on COMSOL, which simplifies the 0 degree temperature change as a very slight temperature increase in order to make the program easier to work with. They hope to integrate this into the current model system soon. The Building and Design team presented a theoretical design for the ice box, and will continue to tweak this as necessary. They are currently going to acquire materials to build a rough pre-prototype. The Marketing team did a lot of research into alternative uses for this cold chain besides vaccines. Some possible uses are food, other pharmaceutical supplies, blood, and even organ transport. As a team, we hope to have our first three chapters of our proposal written by spring break. Our updates were very informative, and gives us clearer goals to work towards for the end of the semester.

-Sahil

Week of 2/21/11

This week we had no formal meeting with our mentor and instead focused on completing many of the goals we have due in the coming weeks. At our first meeting of the week we decided to tackle some of these goals by breaking into the subgroups that had goals due the soonest. The subgroups whose goals we decided to work on were the Marketing and Materials and Building teams. The Marketing team worked on organizing the information we have about the different costs related to the cold chain in a more efficient manner, as well as finding a template for a marketing plan that we hope to have finished before the end of the semester. The Materials and Building team was focused on compiling a list of the necessary materials that will need to be ordered.

For our second meeting of the week, we decided to meet at the usual time that we would have met with Dr. Shah. Again, we broke into subgroups. Kelly and Matt worked on COMSOL some more, hoping to have success after the Tuesday breakthrough that came with the help of Dr. Kim. The rest of the team discussed our goal of having our Thesis Paper written by the end of the semester. We decided that everyone should have their respective parts of the paper done before Spring Break, so that we can have a first draft compiled and ready to edit after we get back from break. We also discussed the possibility of attending the Unite for Sight Global Health and Innovation Conference, taking place April 16th & 17th at Yale University. The conference is $125 per person and the deadline to register at this price is Monday, so we must decide on this matter quickly. If we wish to register we must also submit a proposal to Gemstone ASAP. We hope to be able to send at least two or three members of our team to this conference.

We look forward to having Dr. Shah back next week and discussing everything we were able to accomplish.
Let's keep up the good work team!

-Anthony

COMSOL hope??

So Matt and I were able to meet with Dr. Jungho Kim to discuss our COMSOL modeling problem. Turns out he was able to give us a different, super simple solution within a minute! Basically he is saying that, even though the temperature stays constant during melting, we can treat it as having occurred over a very small temperature difference. We can then use that difference to relate the material's heat capacity to the heat of fusion (energy=mcdT=mL). Translation: genius. There are still a few mechanics and the actual implementation to work out, but I'm excited to see where this goes!

Take-home point: always ask for help.

- Kelly

2/18 Mentor meeting

This week we were able to send off our NSF proposal! It took a lot of time and muscle, but we are very happy with how it turned out and look forward to seeing what comes of it.

During our meeting, we spent some time discussing how the proposal development process went before Dr. Thomas and Dr. Wallace (members of the Gemstone staff) came to sit in on our meeting. We gave them a general recap on our project and also updates on where we were with it. They were encouraging that we should begin to consider the end of our project, in that we may want to present at conferences or write an academic paper. It is certainly something to think about! All in all I think they were pleased with our progress, but there's still plenty to get cracking on.

With that, we turned our focus towards goals we still needed to complete, including looking into prototype materials and manufacturing; researching other markets where our product could have application; testing other PCMs; working on the COMSOL model/simulation; continuing the icebox experiments; and working on our thesis. I'm pretty stoked to see all of these things come together and can't wait to get a prototype going.

Next week we are foregoing our mentor meeting, since Dr. Shah has to be out, and we're going to do some serious work on these goals. Get excited!

-Kelly

P.S. Matt was awesome and updated our website - check it out!
http://teams.gemstone.umd.edu/classof2012/fresh/

Submitted!

And now, we wait. Nice work.

-sameer

Almost there...

The NSF proposal is in its home stretch. Team FRESH has done a phenomenal job pulling together experimental and theoretical data, devising a credible experimental plan, and emphasizing the public health relevance of their work. They've also described their outreach efforts with BCCHS and EHRS in excellent detail. The Team FRESH Blog even makes a couple of cameos!

This proposal will be competing with proposals from world-class research groups in bioengineering, mechanical engineering, and materials science... and I think it will hold its own.

Great work and good luck!

Sameer

Feb. 10th Mentor Meeting

This week we focused on the NSF proposal. After our non mentor meeting, we sent our draft to Dr. Shah, which he edited and talked about at our mentor meeting. We still had to add the figures and some of the references. Dr. Shah stressed that the first two pages were essential in establishing what the project was about and why it is important. Therefore, we had to cut out most of the background part, and focus more on the scientific and societal significance. Then, we decided how we were going to go about editing the paper. We decided that we would edit in teams at different times, so each team would only have to look at one set of edits, instead of one person trying to compile four sets. The proposal must be submitted by Tuesday morning, so we planned to have it edited by the end of this weekend. After discussing the proposal, we took some time to talk about the overall structure for this semester. Every subgroup will update their progress weekly on the blog, even if they do not have anything substantial to report. Also, we have some icebox experiments scheduled to be done next week, and we are trying to update our literature review, as some articles on vaccine refrigeration have come out in the past few months. Next week is our meeting with Dr. Wallace and Dr. Thomas, so are going to spend some time next week preparing for that at our non mentor meeting.

Ravi Vaswani

Feb. 7th Nonmentor Meeting

At our Nonmentor Meeting this week, we focused on updating and editing our NSF proposal. We spent time working on writing our respective portions and adding in references as needed. We had to overhaul the basic structure of the proposal because it was not conveying what we wanted it to focus on. After we worked on it, it now emphasizes our experimental work, such as the modeling with COMSOL and the icebox experiments. At the end, we sent this version to Dr. Shah for his review and submission to the university. We are going to meet Thursday to finalize the proposal.

Ravi

FRESH Start!

Thanks to Divya who took the minutes before I arrived! The meeting was scheduled at the Engineering Building, not the Kim Building. Today, I learned that the Engineering Building is a part of the Math Building, and isn't in the Kim Building. Anyways..about our meeting!

Here's a brief recap of our meeting:
1) Outreach Program at BCC: Students interested in learning more about our project will get back to Amanda by February 15th, 2011 to determine when they can come and visit us.
2) NSF Proposal:
- Dr. Shah went over his edits and for our NSF proposal. The biggest problem was the little attention to scientific background, and too much justifications/broad impacts. We need more analysis on the technical components of our research, such as the implementation of the PCMs, geometry of integration of the ice box, and what is novel about what we are doing?
- We need to include references! Our rough draft only had three references. This is an anomaly from the other papers we've written which had more than enough.
- Dr. Hwang has agreed to put his name on our proposal. He will need to look over the paper before we submit it to NSF.
- We will be submitting our edited NSF proposal back to Dr. Shah by Tuesday, February 8, 2011.
3) Syllabus:
- Currently, we have very few goals after March. We must make it a priority to set more goals for the rest of the semester. By March 20th, 2011, we must set new goals for the semester.
- Marketing subgroup needs more goals. It should be their goal to add details of the marketing plan, such as finding a template.
- Blog Updates: The Minutes Keeper for the week posts minutes for both meetings and updates the blog. For subgroups, each member will rotate to see who posts on the blog that week.
- Attendance Policy: 2 excused/scheduled absences are allowed. If you are 20 minutes late, it counts as 1 unexcused absence
4) Deadlines:
- February 17,2011 - Finish the previous goals we have before Rebecca and Dr. Wallace (Gemstone staff) comes to visit
- March - Before the students from BCC come to visit, we must complete the goals regarding the icebox experiments. We want to share with the students the experiment experience we have.
- Spring Break - Prepare the end-of-the-semester deadlines, prepare to build the prototype, and finish writing parts of the Thesis so we can edit when we come back from break.
- April 22, 2011 - Undergraduate Research Day - Chance to share our research with the school
5) Miscellaneous
- Non-mentor meetings will take place on Tuesdays, from 10pm-11pm
- The Sensors Subgroup will change to the Materials/Building Subgroup
- Mentor Meetings will be at 3:45PM

This semester, we are hoping that there is more fluidity amongst the sub-groups. We want to make sure everyone everyone is participating. If you find yourself doing nothing, bring it up at the mentor/non-mentor meeting. We should all strive to do something to help our research progress.

Looking forward to a great semester!

-Young

First Non-Mentor of the New Semester!

All the members survived the "snowstorm," and we had our first non-mentor meeting for the new semester! As the semester begins, we immediately set out to work on our Gemstone project. The very first goal was to edit the syllabus for our team. Before we got started, we had to share some good news. We now own a Greenbox to run tests, and we found a group of students from Chevy Chase HS that are willing to come and visit us to gain some lab experience.

Some changes to the syllabus include:

- Reinstatement of the late fee. The penalty will be $0.25/min for a maximum of $5

- Every member is allowed two mentor/non-mentor schedule absences

- Keeping up with blogs

• The Minutes Keeper for the week is responsible for posting on the blog twice a week after the non-mentor, and mentor meetings.
• Each subgroup will update the blog after their meetings. Members in the subgroup will rotate to see who posts on the blog.

Expect a lot more of posts from Team FRESH!

-Young