IDEAS winners aim to improve the world's "quality of life"

The annual MIT IDEAS Global Challenge awards ceremony awarded $79,500 on Monday night to 13 student-led teams to further develop inventions and ideas intended to solve pressing environmental and health challenges in developing countries. "Today marks an important opportunity for emerging entrepreneurs to take a big leap forward in their journey to improve the quality of life in communities around the world," Keely Swan, the Public Service Center's IDEAS Global Challenge program administrator, said in her welcoming remarks. Launched and run by MIT students, the winning ventures took home prizes of $10,000, $7,500, $5,000, and $1,500, to further support prototyping and field-testing, among other things. CleanData-CleanWater, a $10,000 winner last night, plans to use its earnings to manufacture 1,000 of its sensors, which gather previously unavailable data on water filter usage in developing countries. The sensors fit on a filter's tap and track how long the tap stays up or down, measuring the frequency and duration of use. The company plans to integrate the sensors into a new line of ceramic pot water filters being installed across Ghana by the company Pure Home Water, a previous IDEAS winner.