Global Health EngineeringOpen OpportunitiesThis project aims to tackle a practical issue that has been overlooked in space exploration: managing menstruation in microgravity. Right now, most female astronauts rely on hormonal contraception to stop their periods during missions, but this approach is not sustainable for long-term space travel. As missions extend to destinations like Mars, we need solutions that allow astronauts to manage their natural biology safely and effectively.
Beyond just managing periods, menstrual blood itself holds untapped potential. Not only can it be used for its nutrients as fertiliser, but it also contains stem cells that could be used for regenerative medicine onboard spacecraft, which is particularly valuable in the resource-limited environment of space. Developing a system that can collect and transfer menstrual blood for laboratory use could open up new opportunities for on-board medical treatments and resource recycling, which are critical for the future of deep-space missions.
In 2022, SpaceshipFR -the French representative of the European Space Agency project to develop human technologies for Moon and Mars- has initiated the development of a reduced gravity adequate menstrual cup. This project aims to build on the insights learnt and further develop prototypes of menstrual blood collection devices that can effectively retrieve menstrual blood in reduced gravity conditions. - Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- Bachelor Thesis, Master Thesis
| The safe provision of intravenous (IV) medications to pediatric patients requires highly controlled delivery, especially due to the small dosages such young patients need. In high-income settings, an infusion or ‘syringe’ pump is typically used to electronically or mechanically maintain a set rate of delivery. Additionally, the use of these pumps creates a need for consumables that are not interchangeable between pump brands and creates a unique and highly specific supply chain requirement. In humanitarian crisis settings, pediatric patients face complex health challenges, some of which require the patient to be put under anesthesia or receive medications or fluids over time. Infusion pumps are rarely available, so healthcare providers do not have a quick nor reliable way of measuring the flow rate of IV delivery. As a result, pediatric patients do not receive the care they need.
Recommended reading to further understand the context of critical care in humanitarian settings: Lee JS, Roberts SWP, Götsch K, Moeller U, Hawryluck L. Caring for Critically Ill Patients in Humanitarian Settings. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2019 Mar 1;199(5):572-580. doi: 10.1164/rccm.201806-1059CP. PMID: 30290131; PMCID: PMC6677375. - Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- Bachelor Thesis, ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Article 6 of the Paris Agreement promotes international cooperation, allowing high-income countries to meet carbon reduction goals affordably by funding projects in lower-income countries and claiming the resulting offsets. Under its CO₂ Act, Switzerland, through the KliK Foundation, aims to offset 40 million tonnes of CO₂ by 2030—10% of its national emissions—over half of which will occur abroad. One planned collaboration with Malawi involves distributing 10,000 household biogas digesters to dairy farmers2, expected to mitigate 436,000 tonnes of CO₂e. These digesters convert organic waste, primarily animal dung, into methane-rich biogas, replacing wood as a cooking fuel and reducing emissions from deforestation and biomass burning.
Dr. Natalie Boyd Williams, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Global Health Engineering group at ETH Zurich, is seeking a student for an exciting Masters thesis project. Dr. Boyd Williams' fellowship focuses on assessing the efficacy of the Malawi biogas project's carbon savings, which hinge on households effectively and consistently using biogas as their primary cooking fuel over firewood. Accurately estimating biogas usage is critical to understanding the project's impact. Traditional methods, such as surveys, often rely on users recalling their cooking habits over long periods, introducing significant uncertainty and error. This thesis aims to address these limitations by developing and trialing a citizen science biogas usage estimation methodology that complements surveys, improving the accuracy of usage data. - Environmental Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), Master Thesis, Semester Project
| Black carbon (BC) is a critical component of atmospheric aerosols, with significant implications for climate change, air quality, and public health. Affordable monitoring of black carbon is essential for advancing research and policy in under-monitored settings. Currently, commercial black carbon monitors are expensive, limiting their accessibility and deployment. Open-source black carbon monitors offer a promising alternative, providing a low-cost and customizable solution. However, existing open-source black carbon monitors typically measure light absorption at only a single wavelength, which restricts their ability to differentiate between BC from various sources.
A previous master’s student conducted an extensive literature review on the components required to develop a low-cost black carbon monitor and conducted a preliminary cost analysis. This proposal seeks to build on that foundational research by developing a low-cost, dual-wavelength black carbon monitor in the laboratory. - Environmental Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Article 6 of the Paris Agreement encourages international cooperation and allows high-income, high-polluting countries to meet their carbon reduction commitments affordably by funding carbon reducing activities in lower-income countries, claiming the carbon reductions for themselves1. Specifically, Switzerland, under its CO₂ Act and through the The Swiss Foundation for Climate Protection and Carbon Offset (KliK Foundation) aims to offset about 40 million tonnes of CO₂ by 2030—10% of its national emissions–with over half of these offsets occurring abroad.
One upcoming collaboration is with Malawi, which involves distributing 10,000 household biogas digesters to dairy farmers2. This project is expected to mitigate approximately 436,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) annually. The primary function of these digesters is to convert organic wastes, predominantly animal dung, into a methane-rich gas. Biogas can be used as a cooking fuel, replacing wood, which is often sourced from local forests, thus reducing carbon emissions from deforestation as well as from the burning of biomass.
The model being installed is the Sistema.bio biogas digester, a plastic bag digester with other components such as valves, pipes and stoves for cooking. These biogas parts are sourced globally—though the exact origins are uncertain—and then assembled in another country. They are shipped to Malawi as ready-to-assemble kits. Biogas has been used as a carbon offset technology for years, but the carbon footprint of the digesters are overlooked in carbon offset calculations. Sistema.bio, as well as other manufacturers, are implementing biogas projects in many countries worldwide using carbon financing, making it crucial to understand the carbon footprint of the installations to accurately estimate their carbon offset potential. Several life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of similar biogas digesters suggest that biogas plants need to operate for up to two years to offset their construction emissions3. This has significant implications for global carbon offsetting and trading and would mean that projects might not be offsetting as much carbon as calculated, and buyer countries, such as Switzerland, should do more to reduce their carbon footprints. It is currently unknown what the carbon footprint of Sistema.bio digesters are as well as other competitors with similar business models and how the carbon footprint compares to more traditional cement and brick digesters that can be built in the country of implementation. It is thus also unknown how the digester footprint might affect carbon reduction estimations of the projects. - Environmental Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Monitoring and treatment of plastic washing wastewater from recycling processes is often overlooked, though the high pH, chemical oxygen demand, suspended solids, and oil and grease concentrations can be problematic (Ozdemir and Yel 2023). Treatment of wastewater from plastic recycling is critical to both public and environmental health, since solid waste, sanitation, and water are inextricably linked (Narayan et al. 2021). This thesis project will contribute to a closed-loop plastic recycling pilot for HDPE bottles in Blantyre, Malawi. - Environmental Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Non-electrified health facilities offer 40 % fewer basic health services and threaten the safety of patients and providers. In an effort to make renewable energy design and implementation more accessible to non-electrified facilities, we are creating a set of open-source engineering tools to assist with load estimation, system sizing, and performance simulation. We are conducting a case study using these tools with an Indigenous community in northern Colombia. The hope is to eventually conduct a pilot implementation of an optimally sized off-grid solar+storage+micro e-mobility system.
A group of students at Universidad del Norte have prototyped the electrical load cabinet for the pilot system. The cabinet’s function is to manage the loads of the health post. For example, in the event of low solar radiation reaching the clinic and little energy stored in the batteries, critical loads (i.e., the most important ones) will be connected and others will be disconnected. These are controlled by contactors and an Arduino. The purpose of this project is to devise multiple control schemes for the turning on and off of loads, based on the solar irradiance, battery state of charge, and simulated demand scenarios and evaluate the energy and health consequences of the control schemes. - Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Appropriately sizing a renewable energy system for a health facility requires knowledge of the types of appointments and medical equipment used given the patient population. Right now, most sizing approaches utilize only information about the medical equipment (e.g., energy specifications) and the number of hours the devices are expected to be utilized per day to estimate the facility’s electrical load. We propose a more patient-centered approach that takes into account the health profile of the clinic and community. This is particularly important for never-before-electrified health facilities, which (naturally) do not have any historical load information upon which new demand estimates can be anchored. Additionally, accurate technical specifications of the medical equipment are important to reaching an appropriate load estimate. These specs are often pulled from devices available in high-income countries or from records provided by multilateral organizations.
We hope to start a free and public database of medical devices being utilized in low- and middle-income settings, so that clinics, renewable energy engineers, etc. can refer to the database when sizing new systems. - Communications Technologies, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| eWaka (https://www.ewaka.tech/) is a last-mile e-mobility startup in Nairobi. They sell two electric bike models and one electric motorbike. Their business is to “green up” the last leg of delivery transportation by managing a fleet of electric vehicles and offering clients reliable and trained riders. One difficulty the company faces is creating a robust battery charging infrastructure for their riders that simultaneously ensures they are never stranded without power and there is no extraneous use of the chargers by non-riders. One idea they have is to distribute the charging infrastructure amongst their clients who run small and midsize enterprises (SMEs). By placing chargers in some subset of these locations, riders can more easily reach a charger when needed. However, eWaka would like to implement an RFID (radio frequency identification) tag system to “unlock” charging capabilities only for riders who will then carry the tag with them. Ideally, the solution will also track which of the riders charged at that location and how much energy they consumed. - Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- Bachelor Thesis, ETH for Development (ETH4D) (ETHZ), ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Master Thesis
| Filamentous fungi grow as mycelium, a net-like structure consisting of hyphae. To feed themselves, the fungi secrete enzymes from the hyphae that break down organic compounds. Due to their broad substrate specificity, these enzymes have been shown to be able to break down environmentally harmful substances such as crude oil, plastics, antibiotics and pharmaceutical residues. Fungi also developed different mechanisms to be agonistic against human pathogenic bacteria and helminths. With these properties, they could have great potential for use in human waste management. So far, no scientific studies have dealt with the direct treatment of human faeces by mycelium. With this study, you will be part of a pioneer project in the field of fungal treatment of human waste. To get the project started, development of standardized methods to measure mycelial growth speed on human faeces are needed. The developed methods should allow safe and rapid screening of the potential of fungal strains for the treatment of human faeces. Today, mycelium growth measurements are often done by hand and are therefore error-prone and labour-intensive, as the sample must be measured by hand at regular and short intervals. Automating the detection and measurement of the surface area would streamline the process and reduce the error rate due to its automated nature.
**Phase 1: Constructing an Optimized Container**. The goal in the first phase is to construct a container optimized for detecting mycelium. It is unclear whether one or multiple direct or indirect light sources are necessary to clearly observe the growth. This phase will involve experimenting with different lighting setups to determine the most effective configuration. As a basic setup, the CoCoNut photobox can be used and further adapted.
**Phase 2: Developing an Automated System**. In the second phase, the student will develop a system based on a Raspberry Pi to automate as many steps as possible. Ideally, this system will:
- Capture images of the sample at given time intervals.
- Process and analyse these images locally to detect and measure the relevant area.
- Generate a time series with images and the corresponding surface area measurements.
The ideal end result would be a reliable, automated system that provides accurate and consistent measurements of mycelium growth. - Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- Bachelor Thesis, ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Master Thesis
|
|
