Challenges for Spring 2013

Design

The design team challenges are available in a separate google doc. The design team will consist of 4-8 students that will work on these tasks individually or in pairs. Desired (but not necessary) skills: Mathcad, AutoCAD, 4540, fluids, Spanish fluency, and engineering design experience.

PR

Evaluate whether there are benefits to registering as a club (we concluded a club wasn't beneficial previously.)
Work with Engineering College Corporate relations to identify target corporations and donors. Meet with Abby Westervelt of the College of Engineering Corporate relations to discuss strategy.
Goal is to raise funds to support the R&D effort. Explore connections with Autodesk, CH2M Hill, CDM. Also pursue Gates Foundation and Warren Buffet Foundation.
Create an active web presence using blogs and twitters. Create blogs at least every 2 weeks. Sources for blogs are the team trip to Honduras, news from APP, AguaClara LLC, India, and, of course, the Cornell R&D teams.
Lauren Chambliss of the Atkinson Center may be willing to provide some guidance on fundraising as well.
Work with Joe Rowe of CEE to provide photos and videos for the TV screens in the CEE lobbies.
Write a story for National Instruments about the sedimentation tank hydraulics team and how we used the donated NI camera system to learn why floc blankets didn't form in the AguaClara plants that had flat sections in the bottom of the sedimentation tanks. Explain how we used the camera system to test various geometries.
Arrange for Monroe to give a TED talk. (http://www.ted.com/nominate/speaker)
Create a powerpoint slide that addresses the question of what AguaClara technologies do with pathogens. It is very common to think that the AguaClara focus on turbidity removal is misplaced and that we are ignoring pathogens. To address this misunderstanding we need a slide that shows microphotographs of clay particles and various pathogens (Cryptosporidium, Giardia, pathogenic E. coli, Vibrio cholera, etc.) to make it clear that these pathogens are larger than or similar in size to clay and that the same mechanism for removing clay will work to remove these pathogens.

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