Ten African Inventors Selected to Compete 25 May in Nairobi

Ten African Inventors Selected to Compete 25 May in Nairobi in First Global Competition for Hardware with a Social Purpose

Sign Language Barriers, Fetal Health, Malaria & Agriculture Among Causes Tackled by These 2017 ASME ISHOW Finalists

NEW YORK, 26 April, 2017 – The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the world’s largest organization for the field of mechanical engineering, today announced the finalists of the 2017 ASME Innovation Showcase (ISHOW), the first international competition of hardware-led social innovation.

Ten social-minded inventors from Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda will present their design prototypes in Nairobi. They are among 28 finalists who’ll compete in Kenya, India and the United States over the coming months. Here’s a link to the ten hardware designs whose inventors have been selected to present in Nairobi on 25 May at the Golden Tulip Westlands Nairobi Hotel, 65 Muthithi Street, Nairobi: 

https://thisishardware.org/competition/2017/kenya

An esteemed panel of judges will choose three hardware designs per country as grand prize winners. This year, ASME received more than 150 submissions vying for the $500,000 in cash and in-kind prizes that the organization has offered to help bring these socially innovative hardware-led solutions to market.

“ASME originally created ISHOW three years ago after our research showed a tremendous lack of support for hardware innovators seeking to enter global markets and make a societal impact,” said K. Keith Roe, president of ASME. “With this year’s entries among the most promising we’ve seen since ISHOW first launched, we’re confident they all have the potential to address some of the most vexing issues faced by mankind.”

The 2017 ASME ISHOW will feature a range of devices that promise to make a transformational economic, environmental, and social impact in underserved communities around the world. During the competition, the finalists will pitch their product prototypes to a panel of judges that include successful entrepreneurs, academics, and founders of venture-funded startup companies. The pitches will outline the engineering design attributes of the prototypes and also include a discussion of plans for manufacturing, implementation, marketing, and financing.

The winners selected in Nairobi and two other ISHOW events in Bangalore, India (27 April), and Washington, D.C. (22 June), will share $500,000 in seed grants, technical assistance, design and engineering reviews and access to ISHOW’s partnership network. “ASME congratulates all finalists,” noted Roe.  “We celebrate their new ideas and innovations, which are pushing our collective knowledge frontier outward and solving problems to improve the lives of all people.” For more information about the finalists and the ISHOW, please visit: ThisIsHardware.org

Contacts:
Deborah Wetzel
Media Relations Manager
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers
212.591.7085
wetzeld@asme.org

Peter Himler
Flatiron Communications LLC (for ASME)
Google Voice: 516-308-1120
Twitter: @peterhimler
phimler@flatironcomm.com

Isabelle Jetté
McPherson Strategies (for ASME)
(m) 312-636-6390
isabelle@mcpstrategies.com