2025 IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC)
Last week, many members of the lab attended IEEE's Global Humanitarian Technologies Conference (GHTC) at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, where Emma Balevic, Sophie Frey, Debbie Hodson, and Olivia Wilburn presented their ongoing research projects!
Student Poster Session
Kicking off GHTC with a poster session, Emma, Sophie, and Debbie presented their posters. Emma’s poster described the preliminary results of her interviews with engineers, where she’s investigating strategies that industry engineers use to engage stakeholders. Emma received Honorable Mention in the student poster competition—Congrats Emma! Presenting her upcoming research, Sophie used her poster to showcase her proposed methods for identifying, characterizing, and analyzing the use of non-energy impacts as inputs for energy system planning models. Debbie’s poster outlined her proposed research methods to develop and validate a framework that characterizes the influence of contextual factors on technology transfer.
Technical Paper Presentations
Emma presented her paper titled, “Volunteering in Humanitarian Engineering Projects: Motivations and Challenges Experienced by Students, Professionals, and Retirees.” Co-authored with Dr. Grace Burleson, this paper analyzed a subsection of questions from a survey that was sent to a large engineering organization. The three questions used for analysis related to volunteers’ motivations to begin and continue volunteering and volunteering challenges. Using these questions, Emma looked for statistically significant differences between the responses of students, professionals, and retirees. The differences between the three demographic groups allowed for proposed methods of strengthening recruitment and retention which included providing professional opportunities for students or enhancing retirees’ team-wide communication skills.
Olivia presented her abstract "Exploring Global Responsibility During an Immersive International Design Experience" co-authored with Dr. Grace Burleson and an Engineers Without Borders (EWB)-Australia Collaborator, Dr. Alexandra Gartrell. This study evaluates a Design Summit hosted by EWB-Australia, a four-week immersive design experience for undergraduate students from Australia and New Zealand. Using phenomenological and ethnographic methods, Olivia explored how students’ perspectives on global responsibility evolved throughout the design summit. The data was collected using three methods: surveys, pre- and post-summit semi-structured interviews, and observations/field notes taken during the program. This presentation shared preliminary findings and emergent themes, offering insights for educators and program designers seeking to integrate global responsibility more effectively into engineering education.
