CSI Volunteers

CSI is supported by amazing volunteers who work diligently in providing electricity in off-grid communities. We are dedicated professionals who sense a unique opportunity in history to help eradicate global poverty. Many are practicing engineers. Some are educators, professors, managers, business owners, members of boards, doctors, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and heads of NGOs with experience in assisting developing countries.

Exemplary Volunteers

Nirupama (Niru) Prakash Kumar

Niru, as an online researcher and manufacturing liaison, has been instrumental at contacting potential Portable Battery Kit (PBK) vendors around the world. She has convinced them to send sample products that will adapt to the SunBlazer power station. Niru will review her findings and introduce a broad variety of battery solutions at GHTC ’13. Her work is highly appreciated. It supports CSI’s deployment strategy of the SunBlazer: To provide a central charging station for portable battery boxes which power light bulbs, cell phones and other low consumption appliances in village homes.

Niru has been actively volunteering with CSI the past several months. She Google-canvassed the world, contacted more than 75 manufacturers, reached out and built relationships with PBK potential vendors. Her efforts of encouraging vendors to forward evaluation samples will be highely appreciated at GHTC ’13 where she will be introducing a broad variety of battery solutions to all attending.

Niru grew up in India and obtained an undergraduate degree in power systems engineering. After working in high paying IT consulting jobs, she decided to move to the U.S. and further her interests in her first love of power systems engineering. She finished her Master’s in Energy Systems from the University of Washington in Seattle and then went on to work with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a Dept. of Energy run National Laboratory. Her research interests included effective demand response techniques to improve energy efficiency. She recently completed her MBA from Cornell University where she was recognized both as an ‘Environmental Finance and Impact Investing Fellow’ as well as an ‘Emerging Markets Fellow’. Her interests now include the most cost effective methods of making technology accessible to the base of the pyramid.

Apart from studies and work she is heavily involved with IEEE and is currently working as a research associate for their Community Solutions Initiative (CSI). Apart from other things, she is also helping CSI with strategies for women entrepreneurship based rural electrification projects. She also served on IEEE’s Humanitarian Ad Hoc Committee whose primary responsibility is to set direction and policies for IEEE member engagement in Humanitarian activities. She has also served as IEEE’s Region 6 (Western US, Alaska and Hawaii) Women in Engineering coordinator helping set up various Women in Engineering groups for the benefit of IEEE women engineers and also for helping in K12 outreach efforts for engineering.