Empower Student Engineers to Make a Global Impact
Give to the Capstone Fund
The project: A cleaner burning cook stove Key innovation: A spring-driven fan
Approximately 3.5 million people die each year due to smoke inhalation from cooking over open fires, accounting for more deaths in Africa than AIDS and malaria combined. A team of engineering students was tasked with creating a cleaner burning forced air cook stove as a capstone design project. Working with researchers at the UW, the students developed their design, built a prototype and tested it in a lab.
Thanks to support from the Capstone Fund, the team was able to purchase the materials needed to create their cook stove prototype. Their working model greatly reduces dangerous air particulates caused by rudimentary cook stoves. Future capstone teams will refine the design and production in the hope that it will be used in homes around the world.
Capstone design projects are the culmination of the UW undergraduate engineering education. Students apply their engineering lessons to open-ended problems while learning teamwork and communication, and gain the skills they will need as professional engineers.
Your gift to the Capstone Fund will allow engineering students to experience complex, full-cycle engineering design and contribute to student innovation with the potential for lifesaving impact.