12/3/2015
A Global Prize: Class Project Nets $100,000 Gates Foundation Grant for Three Students - Smith College Grécourt Gate
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A Global Prize: Class Project Nets
$100,000 Gates Foundation Grant
for Three Students
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Announcements
Gates Foundation grant awardees Yashna Sureka '17 (left) and Darpan Bohara '18 with assistant professor
of engineering Sarah Moore (center). Not shown is Christine Yee '17, who is also working on the project.
Published November 16, 2015
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A project for an introductory engineering course has resulted in a $100,000 Gates Foundation
grant for three Smith students.
With support from the grant, Christine Yee ’17, Darpan Bohara ’18 and Yashna Sureka ’17
will develop a fingerprint authorization system that will allow merchants in Nelamangala,
India, to accept non-cash purchases from customers. Connected with cell phones and
integrated with a national government database, the system will reduce transaction costs,
increase financial literacy, and provide people with incentives for opening bank accounts that
will allow them to save toward financial goals.
The project is being funded through Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative of the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Smith team was chosen from more than 1,100 applications—and the applicants weren’t
just college students. The competition included professionals, faculty members and others
from 91 countries all over the world.
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A Global Prize: Class Project
Nets $100,000 Gates Foundation
Grant for Three Students
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Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds individuals worldwide to explore ideas that
can
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Yee, Bohara and Sureka began the project in spring 2015 as part of Smith’s Engineering 100
Will Visit Smith
course, Engineering for Everyone, taught by Sarah Moore, assistant professor of engineering
A Mindset and a Set of Tools:
—though none of the three grant recipients are engineering majors. The course serves as an
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introduction to the engineering design process, Moore notes, and students are invited to
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work in teams to create something new to meet a societal need.
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“We’ve had a lot of great ideas come out of this class in the past,” Moore notes, “but because
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12/3/2015
A Global Prize: Class Project Nets $100,000 Gates Foundation Grant for Three Students - Smith College Grécourt Gate
of the background of these students”—Yee and Sureka are economics majors, and all three
students have lived and traveled abroad—“they really understood the need.”
Sureka said she couldn’t believe it when she heard they’d won the grant. “We’re not
engineers,” she said, “and we literally were competing with the whole world.” But then she
thought, “maybe this is why I am at Smith. This project is possible because Smith allows us to
explore and take classes in different fields. Bringing in knowledge from other fields is what
Smith is all about—and what the liberal arts is all about.”
Moore said that what Sureka described as a “lack of expertise” may have helped the students’
in this project. “Instead of starting with answers, which can be limiting, these students
started by asking good questions,” Moore said.
Moore and Sureka note that the grant represents a team effort involving not just Moore and
the students but also faculty departments including economics, computer science and design
thinking—and alumnae, too. “The students were very open during the process,” Moore said.
“They recognized that good conversation may be the spark that ignites a good idea.”
The students’ work continues in preparation for a summer 2016 product launch: in addition
to weekly meetings with Moore, they are developing software for the program, preparing for
upcoming research and focus groups, and soliciting feedback from Smith faculty and others
on and off campus. The entire Smith student team will travel to India for a month over
Winter Break to interview merchants and consumers and develop a stronger sense of their
needs.
About the Student Grant Recipients
Christine Yee ’17 is an economics major originally from Auckland, New Zealand, and
currently living in South San Francisco. Darpan Bohara ’18, from Pokhara, Nepal, is
considering a major in computer science. Yashna Sureka ’17 is an economics major from
Bangalore, India.
The students are continuing their work this
semester and hope to compete for a $1 million
Grand Challenges Explorations follow-on grant in
the near future.
About Grand Challenges Explorations
Grand Challenges Explorations is a $100 million
initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation. Launched in 2008, more than 1,160
projects in more than 60 countries have received
Grand Challenges Explorations grants. The grant
program is open to anyone from any discipline and
from any organization. The initiative uses an agile,
accelerated grant-making process with short twopage online applications and no preliminary data
required. Initial grants of $100,000 are awarded
two times a year. Successful projects have the
opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to $1
Christine Yee ’17
million.
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A Global Prize: Class Project Nets $100,000 Gates Foundation Grant for Three Students - Smith College Grécourt Gate
How have students, faculty and staff
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