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“At some level, all engineering is humanitarian,” says Jordan Ermilio, PhD, ’98 COE, ’06 MS, director of ��������’s new Center for Humanitarian Engineering and International Development. “Engineers often provide services or design systems that improve people’s lives and society as a whole.”

Established in 2020, the Center is an outgrowth of the �������� Engineering Service Learning program, which was formally established a decade ago and now works with 16 partners in 12 countries — Cambodia, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Laos, Madagascar, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Tanzania. Students and faculty provide technical support in the form of engineering design and research services to humanitarian organizations worldwide.

“The most exciting part of this center is that we have successfully integrated outreach with curriculum and research,” Dr. Ermilio explains. Students work on engineering projects that include the design of educational technologies that improve access to high-quality learning resources in remote schools, and research projects on best practices in development that explore sustainability metrics.

The Center delivers a rigorous curriculum on complex global challenges through a new Humanitarian Engineering minor and an International Development track within the College of Engineering’s Sustainable Engineering graduate program. Working with hundreds of students, from first years to PhDs in various disciplines of engineering, the Center engages with international partners in a variety of projects aimed at improving the quality of life for people in developing communities.

“At the same time, we are performing high-quality research using methods that engage partners and communities as co-creators of knowledge,” Dr. Ermilio says. “We develop research questions and strategies as a team.” Ethical engagement is the guiding principle at the root of this work, with three core principles: partnership, community and humility.

“We firmly believe that empowering the local communities to address their own needs is essential to long-term sustainability,” Dr. Ermilio explains. “We teach our students to look at local community members as experts in their own development. To solve a problem, you must first understand the problem, and no one understands it more than the people who live with it.”