Amy Smith

Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Amy Smith is the founder of the International Development Initiative at the MIT Edgerton Center and has taught classes related to this subject for more than ten years. After graduating from MIT in mechanical engineering, she served in the US Peace Corps in Botswana for four years and has also done field work in Senegal, South Africa, Nepal, Peru, Haiti, Honduras, Ghana and Zambia. She has taught engineering design at a variety of levels, ranging from undergraduate courses in mechanical engineering to high school enrichment programs to graduate courses in sustainable development. She won the 1999 BF Goodrich Collegiate Inventor’s Award for a phase-change incubator that operates without electricity and also won the 2000 MIT-Lemelson Student Prize for Invention. In 2001 she co-founded of the Service Learning program at MIT; she is also one of the co-founders of the MIT IDEAS Competition.

In 2003 she began teaching D-Lab, a series of courses and field trips that focus on international development, appropriate technologies, and sustainable solutions for communities in developing countries. In 2004 she was selected as a MacArthur Fellow, recognizing her efforts in creating technologies to improve lives in the developing world and for finding opportunities to inspire students to do the same. Her current projects are in the areas of water testing and treatment, agricultural processing and alternative energy.

Benjamin Linder, PhD

Associate Professor of Design and Mechanical Engineering

Olin College

Benjamin Linder is faculty member in Design and Mechanical Engineering at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering and a designer active in the Boston area. His teaching and research interests include sustainable design, international development, creative design methods and human-centered design. He is an experienced teacher and practitioner of sustainable product design and regularly consults and delivers workshops on a range of related topics internationally. He has co-taught Design for Demining at MIT for a number of years and has extensive experience working with the humanitarian demining community developing and testing products for use in landmine removal. Benjamin holds degrees in engineering focused on design from the University of Michigan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Harald Quintus Bosz

VP of Engineering

Cooper Perkins

Harald Quintus-Bosz is Cooper Perkins’ Chief Technology Officer. Harald has over 15 years of product development experience. Harald started his career designing medical X-ray imaging equipment at XRE later joining IDEO. After 6 years at IDEO, Harald joined Materials and Technologies, a semiconductor capital equipment start-up. Harald was the sole mechanical designer of the WaveEtch tool and was responsible for prototype development, production, publicity, market research, and business development. Harald holds 3 US patents and holds an SB degree from MIT and an MS degree from Stanford University in Mechanical Engineering.