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