Michigan State University senior Christopher Zatzke, who’s majoring in horticulture, has received a $500 award from the U.S. Agency for International Development and $5,000 from VentureWall for PhotosynQ, a global open-source database of plant data.
Nov. 8-10, Zatzke and four other MSU students participated in USAID’s Student Innovation Marketplace in Bay Area, Calif., which attracted 44 student teams from eight Higher Education Solutions Network labs and universities.
MSU's Global Center for Food Systems Innovation sent 10 students and 15 faculty/staff members to the conference. The center's student innovation grant recipients David Wilson and Jeremy Robinson from Purdue University also participated at the Student Innovation Marketplace and won second prize for designing the Practical Utility Platform vehicle in Cameroon.
“The Practical Utility Platform, or PUP, is an off-road vehicle that was designed and built to provide sub-Saharan Africa with an affordable method of transportation,” they said.
The Student Innovation Marketplace was part of USAID’s second Technical Convening Conference. More than 500 participants from HESN labs across the country attended.
At the conference, Eric Crawford, director of GCFSI, led a panel on how climate change affects food security and nutrition. Also during the conference, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah highlighted the efforts of GCFSI to solve global food system challenges in Malawi.
Led by GCFSI core faculty members Charles Steinfield and Susan Wyche, farmers in Malawi participate in and learn from videos.
GCFSI is one of eight development labs in the country. It’s a global consortium established to create, test and enable the scaling of innovations in the food system, using a multidisciplinary approach focused on the entire food system, considering major trends that will affect future food system performance.