United Cerebral Palsy of Los Angeles (UCPLA)

[Assistive Devices]

The Mission 

The United Cerebral Palsy of Los Angeles (UCPLA) is dedicated to advancing the independence, productivity, and full citizenship of individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities. 

The organization was founded by dedicated family members and volunteers with a focus on providing high-quality, community-based services and programs. 

The Work 

For more than 75 years, the United Cerebral Palsy of Los Angeles (UCPLA) has been dedicated to unlocking the potential that comes from integrating all individuals into society. They help individuals with disabilities advance their independence.

The organization has 40 programs and service sites across five counties in Southern California, and a staff of more than 600 professionals who provide support and services to over 1,000 families and individuals every day. 

Open Challenge

High Quality Tools and Devices For Creative Expression: Cerebral Palsy is a group of disorders that affects movement, muscle tone, or posture. Generalized symptoms appear during infancy or in early childhood and include impaired movement, abnormal reflexes, involuntary movements, unsteady walking, trouble swallowing, or eye muscle imbalance, which makes it difficult for both eyes to focus on the same thing. 

This challenge seeks new designs for adaptive tools like tripods, workstations, trackballs, or joysticks that can be made affordable and open source. The purpose of these designs is to give individuals with cerebral palsy and/or other physical challenges greater independence in their lives. 

Field Ready 

[Disaster Relief + Humanitarian Aid] 

The Mission 

Field Ready makes aid supplies in disaster zones, getting around bottle-necked global supply chains. They meet humanitarian aid and reconstruction needs by transforming logistics through technology, design, and engaging people in new ways. 

Field Ready works with local manufacturers to make useful items when and where they are needed, while also working to increase disaster resilience by strengthening local manufacturing, innovation hubs, and maker spaces. 

The Work 

Field Ready is pioneering innovative approaches to the toughest challenges, regardless of the sector. The impact of this is dramatically improved efficiency, which makes aid faster, cheaper, and better. Examples of their work in the field include 3D printed umbilical cord clamps in the Haiti earthquake recovery, heavy-lift airbags for search and rescue within collapsed buildings in Syria, and rotomoulded toilets for cyclone recovery in Vanuatu. 

Other examples include training refugees in Jordan to make items, like wheel chair cushions and grab rails, to help others with disabilities and making soap bars with toys inside to help form hand-washing habits for children in Bangladesh refugee camps. 

Open Challenge 

Fluid Warmer: A fluid warmer is a medical device used in healthcare facilities to warm intravenous fluids. The liquids are brought to body temperature levels in order to prevent hypothermia. Commercial fluid warmers are either cost prohibitive in many contexts or are not available for purchase. 

A low-cost reliable fluid warmer made out of easily sourced parts can be implemented around the world in many contexts that lack access to safe fluid warming technology. 

This challenge seeks designs for safe and cost effective open source fluid warmer that can be easily constructed and operated by those with limited components or knowledge of electrical systems.  

Marjolein's Open Fluid Warmer Thesis 

Versatile UV Wand for curing UV adhesive: UV Cure Adhesives are an incredibly powerful tool for fabrication and prototyping that cure within seconds of UV-A exposure. The technology is commonly used in at-scale production of medical devices, automotive, and in aerospace applications. Standard bench top UV cure stations cost more than a 1,000 USD. Traditional technologies for UV curing do not take advantage of LED light, as affordable UV LED technology has only matured in recent years.

This challenge seeks designs for an open source, cost effective, and energy efficient UV curing tool that can easily be fabricated in remote areas. Cheap, easily built manufacturing tools open Field Ready to more modes of manufacturing, which can increase efficiency and quality and allow them to provide better aid. 

Versatile Heat Sealer and Welder: Heat sealing or heat welding plastics is a powerful technology that opens up many doors for prototyping and manufacturing. With this capability, Field Ready could seal plastic wrap for packaging of items to deliver, heat weld sheet Polyethylene for manufacturing and prototyping, or manufacture textile goods without sewing (which is key for any textile implementation that needs a fluid barrier).

This challenge seeks designs for an open source, cost effective, and energy efficient heat sealer and/or welder device that can easily be fabricated in remote areas. Cheap, easily built manufacturing tools open Field Ready to more modes of manufacturing, which can increase efficiency and quality and allow them to provide better aid. 

Conservation X Labs 

[Conservation] 

The Mission

Conservation X Labs’ mission is to end the global extinction crisis through the democratization of science, mobilizing new talent to work on extinction and climate crises, and ultimately, delivering scalable and impactful solutions. Current trends indicate that endangered species extinction rates may be 1,000-10,000 times greater than background rates.

The Work 

Over the past five years, Conservation X Labs’ open innovation program and Garage program have inspired and implemented bold ideas for new environmental solutions. Through their grand challenges and prizes for conservation, they have brought together thousands of brilliant individuals from around the globe to develop hundreds of innovations.

The Garage program aims to deliver highly impactful technologies needed in the conservation field, including a platform for bringing user-defined artificial intelligence capabilities to environmental tools such as remote cameras (the Sentinel System), and a low-cost, field ready, handheld DNA analysis tool (the DNA BIT).

Open Challenge 

Combating Invasive Species: Global travel and trade leads to the introduction of non-native species in novel habitats around the world. Not all non-native species cause harm, but ones that outcompete native species can cause significant damage to local biodiversity, agricultural crops, and local economies. Prominent examples include Lionfish in the Atlantic Ocean, Cane Toads in Australia, Burmese Pythons in Florida and Feral Pigs worldwide. 

This challenge seeks new globally scalable systems and technologies that aid in the monitoring, prevention, and systematic removal of invasive species in aquatic ecosystems or on islands.

New Tools For Marine Protection: Protected areas in the ocean, unlike a forest patch, are far more difficult to manage and face increasing challenges, especially as they expand to enforce boundaries and policies with no observable boundaries or protective barriers to the sea. By enabling quality data collection and monitoring and surveillance of marine environments, important ocean habitat can be better managed, guarded against threats, and protected for conservation and sustainable fishing, etc

This challenge seeks methods for real-time monitoring of everything on or below the water with surveillance technology and data analytics designed for affordability and autonomy within the developing and developed world.

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