The past year GradID student Siddharth Vanchinathan along with other select Art Center students participated in a joint project with Caltech and SaintGITS that took them all the way to Kerala, India to conduct field research. The Caltech class entitled Design for Development was led by visiting Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Ken Pickar. Instructor Nathan Allen (Product Design) served as the Art Center faculty mentor for the team. The goal of the class was to come up with innovative solutions to help industrial laborers in the Kottayam district of Kerala, India.
Siddharth was part of the Ideabag team along with Alta Fang (Caltech), Stephanie Kato (Caltech), Cinny Sunny (ST GITS) and Sajith Sundar (ST GITS). They designed a gravitational mixing process that could considerably lessen the workload of the laborers at the Vembanad Chemicals facility in Kottayam.
As part of the class, the team/project with the best final paper with a commitment to continue implementation wins a $1000 prize. The Ideabag team plans to use the funds to help facilitate future prototyping and engineering costs when implementing the first pilot in Kottayam.
To learn more about the project check out Siddharth’s blog