Amy B. Smith facts for kids

Amy Smith (born November 4, 1962) is an American inventor and teacher. She is the founder of the MIT D-Lab. This is a special program at the MIT. She is also a senior lecturer in mechanical engineering at MIT.

Amy Smith's Early Life and Education

Amy Smith was born in Lexington, Massachusetts. Her father, Arthur Smith, was a professor of electrical engineering at MIT. When Amy was a child, her family lived in India for a year. Her father worked at a university there. This experience greatly influenced Amy.

She saw a lot of poverty in India. This made her want to help children around the world. She said, "Living in India is something that stayed with me. I could put faces on the kids who had so little money."

Amy Smith earned her first degree in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1984. Later, she returned to MIT to get her master's degree in mechanical engineering.

Helping Others: Peace Corps Service

After her first degree, Amy Smith joined the Peace Corps. She volunteered for four years in Botswana, a country in Africa. During this time, she noticed something important. Often, the people who needed help the most were not able to create solutions for their own problems.

While working in the Kalahari Desert, she realized what she wanted to do. She decided to use her engineering skills to help developing countries. Amy liked solving problems creatively. She saw how people in developing countries made the most of everything they had. Her students often asked her to fix things, and she enjoyed helping them.

Teaching and Innovation at MIT

Amy Smith is a senior lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT. She focuses on engineering design and appropriate technology. This means creating simple, useful tools for developing countries.

She started the MIT D-Lab program. D-Lab works with people globally to find solutions to poverty. They offer over 20 courses at MIT. Students can also do research and fieldwork. D-Lab also has research groups and programs that encourage innovation.

Smith also helped start Innovations in International Health. This group helps researchers create medical tools for places with few resources. She teaches courses like D-Lab: Development and D-Lab Design.

Amy Smith encourages women to become engineers. She notes that her classes often have more women than men. This is because humanitarian engineering appeals to many women. They like to see how their learning can make a real difference.

Amazing Inventions and Projects

Amy Smith has designed many useful things. These include the screenless hammer mill and the phase-change incubator. She also helped apply the Malian peanut sheller in Africa. She is a co-founder of the popular MIT IDEAS Competition. In 2000, she won the Lemelson–MIT Student Prize. This award honors inventors who are also great role models.

The Smart Hammermill

Smith invented a motorized hammermill. This machine turns grain into flour. She successfully tested it in Senegal. Older mills had a problem: their screens, which filtered out rocks, could not be made locally. Getting a new screen could take months.

Amy Smith's mill was different. It used air to sift the flour. This simpler design could be built by local blacksmiths in villages. She used some of her prize money to make and share these mills.

The No-Power Incubator

Amy Smith also worked on an incubator that does not need electricity. This is very helpful in places without reliable power. The phase-change incubator won the 1999 B.F. Goodrich Collegiate Inventor's Award. Smith planned to start a company to produce this incubator. She cared more about helping people than making money.

The Handy Corn Sheller

With her D-Lab team, Smith helped create a small, easy-to-make corn sheller. This tool removes dried kernels from an ear of corn. It can be made from aluminum or a sheet of metal. You can find instructions on how to make it on the D-Lab Resources page. These instructions are available under a Creative Commons license.

The MIT IDEAS Competition

Amy Smith helped create the MIT IDEAS Competition. In this competition, student engineers design projects. These projects aim to make life easier in developing countries. Many winning projects have been very successful.

For example, a water filter that removes arsenic and germs is now used widely in Nepal. A microfilm projector called Kinkajou helps with nighttime reading classes in Mali. They are also working on a system to test water for safety. This system is being tested in several countries.

International Development Design Summit

Smith is a main organizer of the International Development Design Summit (IDDS). This event happens every year. People come together to study problems in developing countries. They then create real, working solutions.

Amy Smith believes that the best solutions come from working with the people who will use them. Bringing diverse groups together leads to many new ideas. For example, the first IDDS created an off-grid refrigerator. It used evaporation to keep food cool in rural areas. They also made a low-cost greenhouse from recycled materials. More information on IDDS projects can be found here.

Rethink Relief Design Workshop

In 2011, Smith helped create the Rethink Relief Design Workshop. This workshop focuses on creating technology for humanitarian relief. It aims to bridge the gap between short-term aid and long-term development.

The workshop brought together designers and relief organizations. They explored different ways of thinking about aid work. Groups worked to create new ideas and prototypes. These included solutions for clean water, reusing aid materials, and better ways to transport supplies.

Creative Capacity Building

Amy Smith and her D-Lab team are developing a new teaching method called Creative Capacity Building (CCB). The main idea of CCB is to put the knowledge and skills directly into the hands of the villagers, not just at MIT.

The CCB program teaches people how to design solutions. It does not require strong reading or academic skills. The goal is to help individuals and communities identify their needs. Then, they can design and build their own solutions.

Awards and Recognition

• Collegiate Inventors Award, 1999 (for the phase-change incubator)
• First woman to win the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, in 2000.
• MacArthur Fellowship, 2004–2009.
• Time magazine named Amy Smith one of their Time 100 Most Influential People for 2010. She was recognized in the Thinkers category.