News

The role of engineers in contributing to global poverty reduction and in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals is evolving. Typically, the engineer’s role in addressing these challenges has been confined to community-, regional-, or national-scale service interventions and technology design and development. However, after fifty years of such approaches, over...

Isolation caused by lack of transportation infrastructure affects almost every facet of life for the rural poor. Without adequate transportation access, families cannot access schools, health care, employment, or local markets to sell and buy goods. The World Bank estimates that nearly a billion people worldwide lack access to an...

Dr. Sherri Cook has been honored by the National Science Foundation with a CAREER Award, a five-year, $510,000 grant to study water treatment technologies and build models to help local governments and water operators improve their infrastructure and water quality.

In the latest episode of Buff Innovator Insights, a weekly podcast from the Research & Innovation Office (RIO), Dr. Evan Thomas shares how his family’s interests in journalism, engineering and entrepreneurship, as well as his experiences with Engineering Without Borders, inspired him to tackle global poverty through his work and...

On March 11th 2020, the Mortenson Center hosted the third annual Global Engineering Awards, recognizing two professionals and one student whose work aligns with the Mortenson Center’s mission and vision. These awards seek to highlight the work of individuals who contribute to the field of global engineering. This encompasses not...

A new project led by CU Boulder Assistant Professor Kyri Baker will evaluate how adopting electric vehicles may impact the condition of transportation infrastructure and cause higher disparities in communities. Electric vehicles do not contribute to gasoline sales taxes, which support road maintenance and electric vehicles currently require a significant...

Anna Libey, a PhD student in environmental engineering at CU Boulder, is the lead author on a new paper that compares utilities around the world and advocates for more subsidization in utility operations to provide clean water.

As rainfall is increasingly scarce in East Africa, existing groundwater supplies become the main source of water for people, livestock and agriculture. Maintaining access to this life-sustaining resource requires an extensive network of wells and pumps. Earth observations from NASA satellites can indicate that a drought might be on the...

NASA satellite data helps the people who maintain crucial infrastructure by highlighting the places most at-risk for drought and informing early warning actions to prevent the worst drought impacts on local communities.

A team from the center recently published results from a pilot impact evaluation of trail bridges in rural Rwanda. They installed sensors to monitor use at 12 bridge sites constructed by Denver-based nonprofit Bridges to Prosperity.