Energy and Resources Group

Ray, Isha

Submitted by cmjones on February 28, 2007 - 1:29pm.

Name:

Isha Ray

Research Interests:

Politics and economics of water, on-farm water use, common property resource management, transnational river conflicts and access to water for the rural and urban poor – especially in developing countries. Isha Ray teaches courses on research methods in the social sciences, and on development and environment studies.

Achievements:

Isha Ray’s research interests are the politics and economics of access to water in developing countries, technology and development, common property resource management and social science research methods. She has research experience on problems of drinking water as well as irrigation management in India, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Mexico. She also has extensive work experience in the non-profit sector on sustainable rural development in India, and on international water-and-development problems. Professor Ray serves on the advisory committee of several water and development related NGOs and on the editorial committee of Annual Review of Environment and Resources.

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Website:

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/erg/people/faculty/ray.shtml

Department Name:

Energy and Resources Group, Assistant Professor

Gadgil, Ashok

Submitted by cmjones on February 28, 2007 - 1:24pm.

Name:

Ashok Gadgil

Research Interests:

Ashok Gadgil has active research in energy use and airflows in buildings. He also has long and active research in analysis, research, development and implementation of technologies for improved energy-efficiency and environmental performance in the developing countries, in a range of sectors.

Achievements:

Ashok Gadgil received an award from San Jose’s (CA) Tech Museum of Innovation, which honors people who use technology to help humanity, for developing a water purification system that kills bacteria with ultraviolet light. The system, called UV Waterworks and marketed by WaterHealth International, Inc., is used daily by about 300,000 people in Mexico, the Philippines, and several other countries. Several systems will soon be installed in his native India. Money is currently being raised to install the system in tsunami-stricken regions of Sri Lanka and India. His invention appeared in Forbes Magazine in 2003. Ashok Gadgil is also developing a cheap and effective way to provide safe drinking water to 60 million Bangladeshis who live under the specter of arsenic poisoning. His idea is to create arsenic filters from coal ash, the fine gray powder that piles up at the bottom of furnaces at all coal-fired power stations, waiting to be discarded. Although still in the investigational stage, Gadgil’s technique would involve coating the ash with a compound that attracts arsenic, filling teabag-sized pouches with the powder, and distributing the filters throughout the countryside, one per family per day. Water drawn from any one of the millions of contaminated wells that dot Bangladesh could then be poured through the filter and safely consumed. Gadgil has numerous publications spanning the areas of drinking water efficiency and indoor air quality.

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Website:

http://eetd.lbl.gov/staff/gadgil/AGadgil.html

Department Name:

Energy and Resources Group, Adjunct Professor

Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL)

Submitted by cmjones on February 23, 2007 - 2:06pm.

Name of Research Center:

Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL)

Description:

The Renewable and Appropriate Laboratory is a unique new research, development, project implementation, and community outreach facility based at UCB in the Energy and Resources Group and the Department of Nuclear Engineering. RAEL focuses on designing, testing, and disseminating renewable and appropriate energy systems. The laboratory's mission is to help these technologies realize their full potential to contribute to environmentally sustainable development in both industrialized and developing nations while also addressing the cultural context and range of potential social impacts of any new technology or resource management system.

URL:

http://rael.berkeley.edu/

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