High-frequency technologies for monitoring electricity and health outcomes in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
Layla Kwong, Professor
Public Health
Applications for Fall 2024 are closed for this project.
In large parts of Sub Saharan Africa, health facilities (e.g. hospitals and clinics) lack appropriate energy infrastructure. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where much of the continent's unelectrified are exposed to both climate and conflict pressures, the near-total absence of a central grid requires the health sector to manage not only complex biomedical equipment supply chains, but also the electricity systems needed for the delivery of modern healthcare services. In this project, we deployed a fleet of sensors and smartphone surveys across 30+ health facilities in the province of North Kivu, DRC to fill large data gaps at the electricity-health nexus. We aim to understand the pathways through which causal pathways from power quality to improved healthcare outcomes can be characterized and tested experimentally through collaborative solutions-based science.
Role: The students will aid in data analysis tasks, including data cleaning and visualization, including preparing github repositories for final cleaned datasets. Weekly meetings with lab group at co-working space, in-person or remote.
Qualifications: Interest in public health, engineering and data for development; humanitarian energy; Francophone Africa. Strengths in data management and processing in Python and Excel. Coursework related to international development valuable.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Samuel Miles, Ph.D. candidate
Hours: 6-8 hrs
Environmental Issues Biological & Health Sciences