November 18, 2004: Headlines: COS - Botswana: Engineering: Inventions: Awards: Lexington Minuteman: Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Amy Smsith is now MacArthur Fellow
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November 18, 2004: Headlines: COS - Botswana: Engineering: Inventions: Awards: Lexington Minuteman: Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Amy Smsith is now MacArthur Fellow
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Amy Smsith is now MacArthur Fellow
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Amy Smsith is now MacArthur Fellow
LHS grad is now MacArthur Fellow
By Brian Kelly
Thursday, November 18, 2004
A Lexington native recently received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship award for her work in developing new technologies to solve problems in poor countries.
Amy Smith, a 1980 Lexington High School graduate who works as an instructor in the mechanical engineering department at her alma mater, MIT, received the $500,000 prize, paid out over five years, after being anonymously nominated for the award. She still isn't quite sure exactly who sent her name in.
"Nominations are made anonymously, and then a selection committee follows up on everything and seeks out reference letters," explained Smith. "At some point my boss asked me for names of people who might write recommendation letters. They told me, 'We're going to ask you some questions and then you're going to have to forget about this.' I was rather surprised when I found out I was a recipient."
Smith, who now lives in Beverly, said she has been at MIT "essentially my whole life." Her father, Arthur, was a professor at the school, and she received both her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Cambridge institution. In addition to teaching there, she focuses much of her time "on engineering design and how it applies to developing countries."
After living in India for a year as a kid, Smith said she always "envisioned myself doing something like joining the Peace Corps," and she did, spending four years in Botswana. At that point, she knew she wanted to help people, and she know spends her time inventing technologies, such as a low-cost water purification system, to help the poor.
"Sometimes the technologies are very much driven by a community problem, and sometimes we go to a community and say, 'Here's something we've been working on, do you have any interest in it?,'" explained Smith, who has developed a grain-grinding mill machine for Haiti, worked to help communities make charcoal out of agricultural waste, and attempted to make improvements in water quality testing and treatment.
"It's sort of like a Tupperware party. You pull out different projects and see what people need, because what's right for Haiti might not be good in India. We are continuously refining things and working to adapt to different places," she said.
Smith said the money she received from the MacArthur award "will open up a lot of opportunities" and she'll be able to work on projects that she might not have been able to do otherwise.
"The funding will really help, and to some degree, the award sort of legitimizes the work we've been doing," she said. "I just feel like I'm a really lucky person because I get to work on things that I enjoy and that are really worthwhile to people."
When this story was posted in November 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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Story Source: Lexington Minuteman
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Botswana; Engineering; Inventions; Awards
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