Engineers revolutionizing Third World housing and infrastructure featured at WARF Gilson event

The recent earthquake in Haiti graphically demonstrated to the world how the impact of a natural disaster is magnified by poorly constructed housing and unplanned infrastructure.

Four engineers, including a University of Wisconsin–Madison student who was in Haiti when the earthquake struck, will share how innovative building materials and engineering practices can revolutionize housing and infrastructure in the Third World, while also improving efficient use of resources around the planet.

The panel will speak at the Tuesday, March 23 Gilson Global Impact Series, which is free and open to the public and begins at 5 p.m. at the Fluno Center, 601 University Avenue.

The panelists for the event, which is hosted by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), include:

• Giri Venkataramanan, an award winning professor in the UW–Madison Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and co-advisor for the university’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders;

• Bhavna Sharma, a Pittsburg University doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering who will discuss bamboo as a sustainable modern construction method in resource-poor settings; and,

• Engineers without Borders student members Eyleen Chou and Paul Fossum, who will discuss their work on projects in Haiti, Rwanda and El Salvador.

The engineers also will describe how social responsibility multiplies the benefit of the innovation by making the technology accessible to low- and high-resource countries.

The program is followed by a networking reception at 6 p.m. Complimentary parking is available by registering at http://gilsonseries.org or by calling (608) 890-1621.

In 2002, UW–Madison alumnus, faculty member and entrepreneur Warren Gilson bequeathed a generous gift to WARF to promote entrepreneurialism in Wisconsin. Since 2005, WARF has hosted a series of events in his name to help connect the university with the Madison community.