A team of researchers from Lehigh University and Bengal Engineering College in India received the Mondialogo Engineering Award at a recent international symposium sponsored by Daimler-Chrysler and UNESCO in Berlin.

The team, led by Arup K. SenGupta, the P.C. Rossin Professor of civil and environmental engineering at Lehigh, was one of 21 research teams out of 221 competing teams that were chosen to receive the award.

SenGupta gave a presentation at the symposium on “Providing arsenic-free water in remote villages in West Bengal, India.” The team also included John Greenleaf, a Ph.D. candidate in environmental engineering; Lee Blaney ’05, who just received his B.S. in environmental engineering; and Anirban Gupta and Sudipta Sarkar of Bengal Engineering College.

Mondialogo, a joint venture of UNESCO and DaimlerChrysler, promotes dialogue, understanding and exchange among young people of different cultures.

The symposium was the organization’s first worldwide contest for engineers who are developing sustainable technical improvements in developing countries.

Projects were judged for technical excellence, sustainability, feasibility and intercultural dialogue among members of the research group.

SenGupta has developed a cheap, effective filtration system that removes arsenic from drinking groundwater. With help from students and professors at Bengal Engineering College in India, he has installed his system in 135 villages in the state of West Bengal, India.

--Kurt Pfitzer

Posted on Thursday, August 18, 2005