LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Two proposals that received contributions from University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) students won awards at the recent 2019 Global Grand Challenge Summit (GGCS) in London, UK. Both projects were aimed at improving the gynecological health of women and post-surgery recovery in developing countries.
Jointly hosted by the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, US National Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, GGCS aims to inspire the next generation of engineers, policymakers and the public to creatively address the pressing issues the planet currently faces, in particular the world population reaching 10 billion by the year 2050.
In Collaboration Lab – in which UNNC students participated – students from three nations with diverse disciplines were required to propose innovative solutions within 24 hours.
Team “EmPads”, which included UNNC student Juncheng Shen, proved most popular among the audience as well as investors for its simplicity and potential impact in developing countries.
It innovatively proposed that by setting up factories in India to reprocess waste clothes into sanitary pads, it could provide ultra-affordable products as well as numerous employment opportunities for local women.
As the only business student in the team, Juncheng created a financial model and set the price at $0.01 per pad. He further forecast the annual profit would be $38,000 if producing 9 million pads per year.
“As waste clothes are usually shipped back to factories in developing countries, enterprises pay no extra charges to send them to us,” he explained.
The “EmPads” proposal won approval from an Indian scholar for its feasibility and potential influence, and a mentor from the US gave it a 10 out of 10 score, the highest possible at the competition.
The team is now seeking to turn its scheme into a real-world project with the support of their mentor Jennifer Jia, a scholar in Neuroscience from Cambridge University.
Fellow UNNC student, Zhefan He played a similar role in another winning team, which aimed to facilitate greater home-based post-surgery recovery by combining technologies garnered from data analyses, remote monitoring and community nursing.
Contacts
Chuchu Lou – Content Manager at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China
Email: [email protected]
