GPOD Awarded Projects

Uniting Ecosystem Futures: Muni Lagoon and Winneba Ghana

Nancy Takahashi, Distinguished Lecturer (Landscape Architecture) and Guoping Huang, Assistant Professor (Urban and Environmental Planning)

We are an interdisciplinary, international collaboration of leaders/ stakeholders from Winneba Ghana and UVa addressing environmental challenges facing West African coastal cities and wetlands. We seek to map the future of Muni-Pomadze Lagoon and adjoining city Winneba, known for its fishing industry, teachers university, and rich heritage. Muni Lagoon has enjoyed protection as home of traditional gods and as a Ramsar-recognized site, but faces ever-increasing pressures of encroachment, environmentally unsustainable practices, and now climate change.  Our Lagoon Futures project is an urgent call for a restoration/ management plan to re-shape Muni’s future-- environmentally, culturally and economically-- linked to Winneba’s prosperity.

 

Developing Cost Effective Air Filters for Developing Countries

Gaurav Giri and Balashankar Mulloth (Chemical Engineering and Public Policy)

The air pollution in Nepal and specifically in the capital, Kathmandu, has been described as one of the worst in the world. However, millions of people are living in the valley in poverty, and cannot afford air filters. We harness the power of a recently discovered material, metal organic frameworks (MOF), as a barrier for air pollutants. We will use locally sourced textiles to make these filters available cheaply, as a form of social entrepreneurship. The core team of PIs Gaurav Giri and Balashankar Mulloth will coordinate from the University of Virginia with a network of collaborators extending across the US and Nepal in industrial, governmental, non-governmental and academic settings to assist with the scientific and the social aspect of our proposal.
 

Read more about Chad Wellmon (German) and team’s ambitious project to create a global digital network of print materials produced during the Enlightenment:

 
Learn more about the globally-scaled climate change mapping and modeling project lead by Professors Deborah Lawrence and Hank Shugart, inaugural recipients of the Global Programs of Distinction award: