Indians the world over are making us (Indians) proud. They are now solving issues that concern the world at large, and not just trying to solve small issues restricted in their relevance to local realms. And this time, its students of engineering and management at Stanford who have shone. Rahul Alex Panicker and Naganand Murty are part of a 4 -member team at Stanford which formed a non-profit called Embrace. Embrace came out of a project based course at Stanford - Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability. The problem this team was thinking about was that in the developing world, where at least 20 million low-birth-weight babies are born every year, incubators are so expensive - they are totally out of the reach of the people who need them most. They typically cost a cool $20,000, plus you need to plug them in. The Embrace Team figured out how to take electricity out of the equation while slashing that price tag down to a mere $25. In a report covered by the Stanford Magazine here, Embrace CTO Rahul says - “Hypothermia, a common complication among low-birth-weight babies, is a significant cause of these deaths. Babies who survive may still have lifelong problems, because during the first month when their organs should be growing, their bodies are devoted to keeping them warm”. Also part of the team was Linus Liang, who went to Nepal to observe their target market in their daily lives and understand the problems faced by them during an average day inside their environment. When Liang returned to Stanford, the Embrace team decided that instead of building a cheaper version of a box with a plug, they’d seek a concept that would work in rural areas without electricity, where most women give birth at home. “Technology should not be the starting point—real need should be the starting point,” Panicker says. Embrace created a “sleeping bag” designed with a removable heating element. It’s a little like the hand-warmers used by campers. The team used phase-change material (PCM), a waxy substance that, as it cools from melted liquid to solid, maintains the desired temperature of 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 F) for four hours. The PCM is enclosed in a plastic pouch. To reheat it, mothers place the pouch beneath a metal flask filled with hot water, often a readily available energy source. “It’s a very simple concept,” Panicker says. “It essentially uses high school physics, and there are few ways it can fail.”

These are fine examples of how students from India, when they travel abroad, are still interested in solving problems plaguing the developing world. In this case, the solutions are going to have direct impact on the lives of people in countries like India, Nepal etc. Universities like Stanford are spring boards where creative is given the highest importance and thinking out of the box is greatly rewarded rather than relying on rote learning and lacking hands on experience. Find out more about this course at Stanford here.