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Engineering students install water pump they designed

05/07/2008

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Left to right: Meaghan Geist, Asha Ananthu, Ryan Reinke, Chris Hopkins and Emily Yeager.

The village of Guelekoro, in Mali, West Africa, will receive a much-needed water pump through the efforts of a group of senior engineering majors at Miami University. For their senior design project, the team designed and fabricated the water pump during the past school year. They will travel to Guelekoro soon after Miami's May 10th graduation, to install the system and train villagers on how to maintain the pump.

Advised by Osama Ettouney, chair of mechanical and manufacturing engineering, seniors Asha Ananthu, Meaghan Giest and Emily Yeager, all engineering management majors, and Chris Hopkins and Ryan Reinke, mechanical engineering majors, were charged with designing a simple, durable pump with parts easy to find or fabricate locally by the villagers.

"This is the best project anyone could have been asked to work on," explains Ananthu, the project leader. "We get to use our education to help other people and that is truly amazing."

The team has incorporated a merry-go-round as an alternate means of powering the pump and can also be enjoyed by children in the village. The pump will be used to fill a holding tank with water, allowing the villagers to be self-sufficient during the summer months when area wells dry up.

"We don't know what it will be like when we get there, but we know that we want to make a difference in the Malian people's lives and we are giving it everything we have to do so," says Ananthu.

The department of mechanical and manufacturing engineering supports a variety of international projects each year. For more information, contact Ettouney at ettounom@muohio.edu.