We are a multi-disciplinary, multi-national academic research and design team with years of experience living and working on water and sanitation challenges in Panama, Mozambique, Peru, and Haiti.  We were inspired originally by the Fertiloo, a project developed at Stanford’s d.school by a team of students in the Design for Extreme Affordability course, to harness container-based toilets to address the challenges of sanitation in urban slums.  Since that time we have continued to experiment with both container-based sanitation and resource recover more broadly in an effort to accelerate innovative ideas.

Our Team:

Kory Russel, Co-Founder:
Kory is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon and the Chair of the Container-Based Sanitation Alliance (CBSA). He focuses his efforts on water supply and sanitation issues in rural Africa, specifically Mozambique. Prior to pursuing his PhD, Kory spent 3 years serving in the Peace Corps in Mozambique, where he assisted in planning and helped realize several nationwide projects that focused on women’s empowerment, skills training, HIV prevention, and science education. Kory is an EPA Star Fellow and a 2013-2014 Stanford Graduate Public Service Fellow. Kory attended high school in Papua New Guinea, and earned a BS in Environmental Biology and MS in Environmental Science from Taylor University. He earned an MS and is finishing his PhD in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Stanford University.

Sebastien Tilmans, Co-Founder:
Sebastien is the Executive Director of the CODIGA Resource Recover Center at Stanford University. He completed his PhD in Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. His dissertation focused on extracting value from the resources in organic wastes to improve the social, financial, and environmental outcomes of waste management services. Prior to his PhD, Sebastien spent 3 years in Panama designing and building energy-producing sanitation systems in rural communities with funds from USAID. He was a Fulbright Scholar, a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow, and an EPA STAR Fellow. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering, Suma Cum Laude, at Cooper Union in New York City.

Current Student Team at the University of Oregon:                                                                      Adam DeHeer, Nick Sund, Molly Winter, Dayna Hansberger, Emma Hershey, Summer Young

Our Advisors:

Jenna Davis, Associate Professor, Stanford Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering:
Jenna Davis is the faculty advisor to the Poop Group and a co-founder and faculty lead of the Water, Health & Development program at Stanford. Her research and teaching focuses on the interface of engineered water supply and sanitation systems and their users in developing countries.

Ashish Jhina, Management Consultant and Co-founder of NextDrop:
Ashish Jhina has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Biochemical Engineering and Biotechnology (with a focus on applications in wastewater treatment) from IIT Delhi as well as an MBA and an MS in Environmental Resources (focusing on water and sanitation) from Stanford University. Ashish has worked in wastewater treatment laboratories in France, Denmark and India and has studied sanitation solutions in India, Haiti, Senegal and Kenya. His interests include understanding viable sanitation business models and technologies, resource recovery and how to increase access to funding for small scale sanitation and water providers in urban areas. Ashish has worked as a management consultant for the Boston Consulting Group on projects in Asia, Africa and North America since 2005.

Friends:

Many people have worked and continue to work with us or provided advice and support, and we don’t want to miss the chance to acknowledge them. Laura Kwong, Daniel Tillias, Rachel Sklar, Nick Adams, Rachel Hochstetler, Nabil Mansouri, Elise Guinee-Cooper, Rita Lonhart, Kari Hanson, Carrie Siu Butt, Joan Dorsey, Maeva Fincker, Gao Nou Moua, Aparna Surendra, Stuart Colson, Jim Patell, Sahil Bhagat, Riddhi Mittal, Markus Buchgraber, Jim Loudin, Matthew Freshman, George Chia-Yu Chin, William Tarpeh, Lauren Steinbaum, Tallie Faircloth, Keli Fenson-Hood, Belinda Tang, Katherine Steele, and the tireless staff at SOIL, Thank You!