Newsmakers

Lindbergh Grant awarded to OEB Professor Peter Girguis

The Lindbergh Foundation recently named Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Peter Girguis one its 14 Lindbergh Grant recipients for 2007. Girguis received the $10,580 grant — a symbolic amount representing the cost of building Charles Lindbergh’s plane in 1927 — for his project titled “Developing Microbial Fuel Cells from Soil for Lighting and Power in Rural Areas of the World.”

Girguis plans to develop low-cost microbial fuel cells (MFCs) to produce high-efficiency lighting for people living in rural regions of developing countries. Using an electrode and a bucket of soil, compost, food scraps, or other naturally occurring sediments, energy could be harvested to generate 1 volt of electricity for up to 18 hours.

The Lindbergh Foundation is a public nonprofit organization based in Minnesota that supports innovations that foster the environment.

Lown, ProCor grant inaugural Heart Hero Award

ProCor, a global communication program promoting heart health founded by Harvard School of Public Health Professor of Cardiology Emeritus Bernard Lown, has granted its first Louise Lown Heart Hero Award to the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s Children’s Programme. The winning project, based in Cape Town, South Africa, helps young children from impoverished settings develop heart-healthy habits by engaging them in activities such as growing vegetables for their daily meals.

Named in honor of Lown’s wife, a social worker, activist, and writer, the new award recognizes innovative, preventive approaches to cardiovascular health in developing countries and other low-resource settings. An award ceremony was recently held at the Nosizwe Educare in Khayelitsha, one of the Cape Town crèches currently benefiting from the Children’s Programme. Teachers, program officials, and children were all in attendance.