Amy Smith, a lecturer at MIT on technology for developing nations, will be visiting town tomorrow to speak at Duke and then visit our house at 102 Millingport Court in Chapel Hill at 9:30pm to talk about technology in the field of international development. If you'd like to talk to Amy and hear her speak, come and visit!

If you are on Facebook you can RSVP at http://unc.facebook.com/event.php?eid=8967360090.

Come meet Amy Smith (TED Talks, Wikipedia, NYT Article, Good Magazine) , at an informal house party hosted by Village (www.villagestartup.com/). The event will include a presentation by Amy Smith as well as her student Jessica Hsu who is working on a project, called Biolight, that can make electricity out of dirt with microbial fuel cells. No really she can.

Amy Smith's approach to problem-solving in developing nations is refreshingly common-sense: Invent cheap, low-tech devices that use local resources, so communities can reproduce her efforts and ultimately help themselves. Smith, working with her students at MIT, has come up with several useful tools, including an incubator that stays warm without electricity, a simple grain mill, and a tool that converts farm waste into cleaner-burning charcoal.The inventions have earned Smith three prestigious prizes: the B.F. Goodrich Collegiate Inventors Award, the MIT-Lemelson Prize, and a MacArthur "genius" grant. Her course, "Design for Developing Countries," is a pioneer in bringing humanitarian design into the curriculum of major institutions.

We're in a new development not yet on google maps so:

DIRECTIONS FROM DOWNTOWN CHAPEL HILL
From HW54 (aka Raleigh Road) coming down the hill from Chapel Hill, take a left on a Meadowmont Lane, go to end of road (1.5 miles) then take left onto Park Bluff N. then first cul de sac on right into Millingport Court. House is #102.

FROM DURHAM/RALEIGH
Take I-40 East to exit 273 toward Chapel Hill. Take right at Meadowmont Lane. Go to end of road (1.5 miles) then take left onto Park Bluff N. then first cul de sac on right into Millingport Court. House is #102.