The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced about $447,000 in funding for 18 teams of undergraduate and graduate students across the country through its People, Prosperity and the Planet Student Design Competition Program. Each team will receive a Phase I grant of up to $25,000 to develop their sustainable designs that will help solve environmental and public health challenges.
Fort Lewis College students will receive $24,864 to develop a Field-Deployable Droplet Digital PCR System for the Rapid Detection of Waterborne Bacterial Pathogens. This project will create a portable ddPCR system to provide accurate results on both the concentration and the genotypes of the bacteria population present within water samples. This effort will improve the efficiency and resolution of water quality sampling by producing instantaneous information in the field.
These teams will showcase their projects at EPA’s National Student Design Expo on June 29-30 at the TechConnect World Innovation Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. After the Expo, the P3 teams may compete for Phase II awards of up to $100,000 to further implement their designs.
For more information about the P3 Program, visit www.epa.gov/P3.
