IRES: Toward Sustainable Water and Sanitation Infrastructure

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This US-Peru award will support six undergraduate and thirteen graduate students from the University of Colorado at Boulder, under the direction of Dr. Karl Linden, to carry out field-based research in Peru for three years. Two other US faculty mentors and several Peruvian scientists and students will be involved in the project. The program is co-organized by Zulema Sevillano Bartra from the National University of the Peruvian Amazon, Juán José Milón Guzmán from Universidad Católica San Pablo, and Marcos Oversluijs Vasquez from Water Program Service (Civil Association for Conservation of the Peruvian Amazon Environment). The project will give students the opportunity to identify key factors that lead to the creation of sustainable water and sanitation infrastructure in developing communities by comparing 'market-based' to 'charity-based' approaches. The goal of the proposal is to evaluate such strategies through hypothesis-driven research. The project is interdisciplinary in nature and it merges the fields of engineering, social sciences, anthropology and economics. Research will be conducted in two distinct geographical regions within Peru (wet vs dry) with different socio-economic factors.This IRES will bring together a diverse community of researchers and graduate students from the United States and Peru. Research results will impact engineering design as well as provide valuable data to the fields of sociology, anthropology, public health, geography, and business. Students will have the opportunity for cultural and educational exchange through scientific inquiry. In addition, the project will involve high school students in the largely Spanish-speaking and minority-based pre-engineering program at Centaurus High School (CHS) in Lafayette, Colorado. Students will be engaged through a variety of communication platforms including interactive networking, teleconferences, social media and in-class presentations. This award is supported by the Office of International Science and Engineering and the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems of the Directorate of Engineering.