Design Team + Refrigerator - Parabolic Trough Solar Collector

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: (12.08.07)

Life Saving Vaccine Refrigerator Wins Design Competition

East Lansing, MI – Engineering students at Michigan State University teamed up with The Appropriate Technology Collaborative to create a simple, inexpensive solar powered refrigerator. The refrigerator is designed to be built and used in very remote parts of the world where half of all vaccines spoil before they can be used. The student team of Andy Coleman, Alan Katz, Lindsay Kredo and Jessica Theis created the life saving technology, from first sketch to final prototype in just one semester.

Vaccines must be kept cold to maintain their potency. Vaccinations in rural areas depend on time limited technologies such as ice, dry ice, and cold storage boxes. As a result, 50% of rural vaccines are wasted through spoilage due to lack of cooling. Public health suffers as a quarter of all children born every year–34 million infants–are not protected against diseases for which there are inexpensive vaccines and an