PopTech Audio: PopCasts

Nithya Ramanathan’s organization NexLeaf Analytics couples everyday objects like cell phones with sophisticated analytics to improve projects’ impact. In one example, Nexleaf tracked seabirds’ sounds on a distant island, and by processing the recordings with powerful servers, helped scientists better gauge the seabirds’ risk of extinction.

At the hospital, you expect to heal, but some buildings are actually making us sicker. With thoughtful techniques as basic as removing hallways and creating outside waiting areas for sick patients, Michael Murphy works with local communities to design buildings that promote health while also creating new jobs.

What causes African girls to miss up to 1.5 months of school each year? By providing access to sanitary pads, ZanaAfrica, founded by Megan Mukuria, is giving girls the freedom and self-confidence to stay in school, while also connecting the community of young women through an online forum that allows them to share information via social media.

Krista Donaldson runs D-Rev: Design Revolution, which creates world class products—market and user driven—designed to meet the needs of the four billion people all over the world living on less than four dollars a day.

What happens when ambitious and talented data scientists are connected with social organizations rife with data but lacking resources to do anything with it? Jake Porway’s DataKind (formerly Data Without Borders) helps bring these two groups together, using data in the service of humanity to design transformative visualizations and decision-making tools.

Erika Block founded Local Orbit to connect local farmers with chefs, institutions and consumers. Her online platform provides marketing, sales, logistics and inventory management for food hubs, farmers, and community groups. The result is a scalable system that makes healthy, locally produced food both affordable and accessible to everyone.

Dominic Muren’s organization, The Humblefactory, champions “makers,” craftspeople who make up the cottage industries of the world. His online platform helps empower these makers, linking them up with markets through co-manufacturing and product design strategy.

After a remarkable effort to help one Afghan boy reconnect with his family, David and Christopher Troensegaard Mikkelsen were driven to create a low cost, anonymous mobile tool and web platform designed to help refugees reconnect with loved ones. These tools streamline the family tracing process for individuals and for the NGOs helping them.

Chris Marianetti, a classically trained musician and composer, got started by bringing his recording studio to a Bronx school. Marianetti ended up recording an album with his students and then invited master musicians to contribute. Today, his organization, Found Sound Nation, creates collaborations all over the world, bringing people together through music.

Bryan Doerries’ Theater of War presents readings of Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes to military and civilian communities across the United States and Europe. By bringing these timeless plays to military audiences, Doerries attempts to create dialogue and community while de-stigmatizing the psychological injuries of war.

Amy Sun’s FabLab gives people access to tools and processes for the modern means of invention. In Afghanistan, participants wanted to “make the Internet;” the outcome was the creation of a city-scale wireless mesh network. FabLab brings together people with the tools, processes and guiding principles to envision and build a future that works.

In a process called bioremediation, Shaily Mahendra uses bacteria and fungi to indicate levels of pollution and ecosystem health. These same microorganisms can also be used to detoxify a wide variety of environmental pollutants, restoring a contaminated environment back to its healthier state.

Using genomes as an archeological record, Pardis Sabeti studies the patterns of natural selection. Why do some people have genetic resistance to disease while others do not? Her work has taken her throughout Africa to research the deadly Lassa fever and help doctors and nurses find a cure.

What sound does a tsunami make? An earthquake? The whole Earth? Milton Garcés studies infrasound, sound that is lower in frequency than the “normal” limit of human hearing. He shares some of his recordings of storms, earthquakes and tsunamis. Perhaps most astounding of all, he plays the vibration humming at the core of the entire planet.

Katherine J. Kuchenbecker studies how humans process tactile stimuli. Through her work, she is able to design haptic interfaces, virtual objects and distant environments that feel real to the human touch. Her work aids in everything from creating more immersive environments for surgeons to designing tablet computers with surfaces that simulate reality.