[MUSIC PLAYING]
My name is Diana Jue.
Hi, my name is Ambar Mehta.
Hi, my name is Leonie Badger.
Hi, my name is Greg Tao.
Hi, my name is Hallie Cho.
And my company is Essmart.
I was the founder of MIT InnoWorks.
I'm one of the co-founders of Fula&Style.
And we're OttoClave.
It turns out that in the developing world,
everybody cooks their food in a pressure cooker like this one.
And they're very, very cheap.
And this can also be used to sterilize medical instruments.
And it works just as well as the hundreds of thousands
of dollars worth autoclaves that you
have at MGH or other large US-based hospitals.
And what we've added to that system
is a little sensor that can monitor the internal conditions
to make sure that it's heated up appropriately,
and a cycle monitor that tells the user what to do,
when to do it, when the process is finished,
and if they did it correctly or not.
We've worked over the last year in Nepal, distributed
over 20 of these, over 15 are still in use.
And people really love this cycle monitor
because it speaks in their local language,
and it's just cool electronics.
What we're trying to do with Fula&Style is to build
a fashion house that focuses on corporate wear for the African
middle class worker.
We believe that everyone should look good
earning their paycheck, but doesn't
have to spend their entire paycheck looking good.
What we are providing is a Fula&Style kit,
which includes the customers' chosen half-finished garments,
and the buttons, zips, and other accessories that they need
to complete it.
The customer can then take this to the tailor
and have their own tailor finish it for them.
Ghana, Senegal, and other West African countries
have lots of small-scale but skilled tailors,
and we believe that by incorporating them
into our business model, we'll be
able to impact a lot of tailors while serving
our African customers.
MIT InnoWorks is a free science and engineering
program held during the summer for underserved middle school
students in Cambridge and Boston,
I realized when I came to MIT that one of the biggest
reasons why I really wanted to do science and engineering
was because of the science and engineering programs
I was fortunate to be able to go to when I was in middle school.
That really fostered my interest in these fields.
And so I wanted to provide a similar opportunity
to other children, to also foster their interests
in these fields, but who may have not
had the role models and the very strong family support system
I had growing up that pushed me to pursue these opportunities.
Essmart gives rural retail shops access
to essential technologies that improved their customers'
lives.
When I was a senior at MIT, I took MIT'S D Lab,
and I saw all of my classmates making great technologies
for the poor, but when I went into the field,
I saw that people who were supposed
to be benefiting from these technologies
were not actually benefiting from them.
So this sparked an interest in me
about technology dissemination, and I
decided to pursue my graduate studies here at MIT
in order to research this.
So I think when people think of MIT, they often think of,
I don't know, like cars and carbon nanotubes
and amazing gizmos that we're not
really sure what they're for.
But really, so many of our MIT students
come in the door passionate about service.
So we start working, from the moment that they're freshmen,
we have some big programs that students get involved
in in the local communities.
And we keep involved with the students throughout their time
here.
And so many of them, really, have this passion
to take what they're learning at MIT and apply it in the world,
but also to say, look, I've have this great privilege.
I've been able to come to this great university,
and I can take what I'm learning here and apply it elsewhere.
In a real sense, I think a lot of students
feel they have a responsibility to do that.
So it's not just amazing, abstract gizmos.
It really is real projects for the real world.
And that's what we're seeing so many MIT students
doing today, and excited to be doing, with their careers
and with their academics.