Competencies and Problem-Solving Frameworks for Solving Societal Challenges (KeyNote S3 2024)

I want to quickly introduce Dr Padu he is a professor and director at George Mason University where he has served in multiple leadership positions including the associate Dean for academic Affairs director of the stem auxiliary program and the director of the center for outreach and Mathematics during the last decade he has initiated and directed a variety of research educational and Out programs incl including faculty development post-graduate and graduate and undergraduate research K to2 Outreach teacher professional development and enrichment programs to Foster the interest of students and teachers in stem at all different levels he works with the ad ministries of Education Science and Technology as well as universities across the globe to help them transform their institutional practices in April 2019 he was selected as one of the figures that matter for his contributions to Academia and society and was awarded honorary doctorate by fer University brusselles thank you so much for joining us Dr pdue and I'll hand over to Virtual make to you thanks a lot Ryan well thank you very much for uh giving me the stage to uh engage you all in uh in what is needed by the workforce and or the society to actually uh be able to solve some of the greatest uh challenges and our institutions uh our organizations preparing students uh with the right skills and competencies to be able to face those challenges so I'm going to uh wear the hat of an educator because that's my primary role and uh so today I'll be talking about uh problem solving and competencies uh that are needed to solve uh societal challenges so but before I start uh go ahead and type on the chat I'm not sure if if the chat is open to all but u in a word uh what sustainability means to you um go ahead you know our sustainable development for example what does it mean to you just a word as you're as you're thinking through this you know uh sustainability is one of those words that means different things to different people um you know while the theory of sustainable development so okay there I get uh yeah so we yeah thriving good that's good one keep keep typing that's great preservation very good preservation thriving and uh uh so uh so those two words for example uh preservation you know uh it sounds almost uh like an environmental uh responsibility environmental uh justice environmental need right so and uh uh and resourcefulness very good okay okay resourcefulness is uh sounding more like uh economy and uh you know uh needing to really uh be economically viable coming up with uh you know urgent Solutions and there seems to be more coming from Q&A I understand so um uh not eating one's uh seat con very nice stewardship now you're talking social stuff so uh making things last very good okay wonderful and uh these are all really great responses because what you're doing right now is categorizing sustainability into three pillars so I heard uh preservation and other ideas which is more towards the environmental uh uh aspects and then I heard uh things about resources and so econom economy and then the third one I saw was stewardship you know uh social aspects of it so uh of course there are multiple Frameworks to that is trying to help us to understand what these are one of them being the United Nations sustainable development goals also referred to as un sdgs uh now uh they are also uh often referred to as 2030 goals now if you know a little history about sustainable development goals they used to be called The Mill Millennium development goals the mdgs now of course uh when you when you post goals you post like a lot of lot of ideas now goals doesn't mean that you will accomplish everything and that's exactly what what happened with the mdgs they were able to accomplish some of them like mosquito health and things like that uh they were able to solve some of the challenges but they were not able to solve everything so a group of people met in 2013 in Rio I believe and then uh came up with the idea that uh we should come up with uh uh something called the sustainable development goals but what was interesting is that they came up with something called targets for each one of these goals so they came up with 169 targets now of for each Target they also came up with indicators now have you achieved the goal that's an indicator so you know essentially so sustainability was was almost like a well like a marks given to achieving a particular Target within a particular goal you know so you may all be only aware of 17 goals but under each one of these goals are targets 169 Targets in total so there's a lot of work to be done now I primarily uh use goal number four which is quality education because that's my profession but I try to connect quality education to all the other goals I'm going to give you some examples now as uh along with these are what are called as the National Academy of engineering goals which are actually goals that uh is about uh building things like for example secure cyberspace to reverse engineering the brain to advance personalized learning now interestingly there are some challenges like provide access to clean water happens to be in the sustainable development goals also that's Clean Water Sanitation goal number six now the National Academy of Engineering Grand challenges is is put together by uh a group of uh Engineers who came together and around again the 2008 to 2015 they came up with these Grand challenges now of course you and I can come up with grand challenges in the next half an hour our own brand challenges but what is interesting about this program is that they came up with the challenges but they said uh they asked the institutions they challenged them to actually uh come up with what does research mean in these challenges what does uh Service Learning mean in these challenges what does uh ENT entrepreneurship and uh a viable business means in this uh in these challenges what does uh uh interdisciplinary mean in this challenges and the most important thing what is global what does it mean Global versus glob local in these challenges now where they actually uh you know specified these things now many universities have taken these uh challenges and now they are all named National Academy of Engineering Grand challenges so just like Honors College that many of you probably are uh in um there is now many universities that have something called the National Academy of Engineering Grand challenges if there are high school students listening to me today when you apply to programs to universities look for if the University is a National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenge University okay and then you can actually get into that program then you finish these five competencies that I just told you research competency Service Learning competency entrepreneurship competency Global competency interdiscipline competency this could be through a course through a project once you finish that you will actually get uh uh opportunity to become a National Academy of engineering Grant challenge either way whether you're solving the nationaly or the United Nations sustainable development goals you are trying to solve a societal challenge so I'm going to show the picture of three people now uh does anyone recognize any of these people go ahead and type on the chat you don't recognize any okay good uh but I can bet on it that you guys use this every day some something that they created every day uh does that ring a bell I mean without this there's no more no life in uh on Earth anymore so uh anyone recognize anybody so if you didn't recognize uh the first two guys are PE you know two very popular people who started something in their garage and uh it uh uh uh interesting Dalton I don't know who Dalton is okay uh it turns out it's Larry pagee and Sergey Brin okay there it is Larry Page and Sergey Brin who founded co-founded Google so uh you know in the back of a garage they decided one day okay uh let's do Google and uh we all use Google every single day the third person his name is uh Vin surf he's very well known uh he the kind of his name is Google's internet evangelist uh number three in Google I would say uh he's known for uh something that you all know again you know without uh what he came up with we won't be able to communicate with people over cell phone zoom and all that he created what is called as tcpip uh transmission communication protocols and internet protocols so essentially uh you know that's how you communicate with other people people text and page and all these different things and all that stuff so uh he was a natural ad to Google now I just happened to be in a board with win Surf and I asked win the following question I would like you to answer the following question for me I said hey VN what happens if I type education makes me on Google go ahead type on the chat what do you think finish the sentence for me education makes me and I can tell you what most people I've given this to I don't know thousands of people most of them say very common things go ahead type on the chat what is the one word that comes to your mind education makes me what Dash education makes me and I'm I'm seeing I'm watching the chat so I can actually follow and uh say what you guys are saying smart that's almost always the first response what else education makes me resourceful very good education makes me wise I'm so happy that on a Saturday morning you guys are all like or if you're tuning in from India you're probably it's night or you know whatever it is um I'm so happy that you guys are all very positive minded but I have to tell you that this is what Google says and you're welcome to Google yourself and you will find that the number one answer is depressed now you are like my God why are we studying what is going on the mother of all search engines is telling you that education makes me depressed now why would that be and it's amazing you guys are you know keep keep being positive that's very important but you have to understand the search engine called Google tells you education makes me depressed now you need to take a message from that okay that means there are many many people in the world typing in the word depressed now that's all because we got to move from say on the stage you know like here is how you solve a problem uh you know and giving you all the techniques you need to you know uh just so moving beyond the philosophy of uh you know here is the techniques go solve the problem to here is the problem let's find the techniques to do it so that's the philosophy I use okay so in terms of Education unfortunately most of them any educational system you think about they're all like here's the math here's the chemistry here's the biology go solve the problem and then if you turn that around most people are struggling to figure out which math should I use which chemistry should I use which uh physics should I use which uh environmental topic should I use to solve and you guys are all many of you are college students and you guys are all like oh I'm getting a major in chemical engineering okay what are you going to do with this are you going to do research for consequence or research for impact and that's what I'm talking about so we got to move Beyond and this is a message for the faculty if they're listening in also moving beyond stage on the stage to you know getting students excited that's what you need to be you know you need to really think about and all that so you know so how do you get excited well you by exercising uh competencies often referred to as 21st century skills now these are communication collaboration critical thinking creativity those are what are called as the fores but along with that you also need to be good with foundational competencies like data reading data scientific literacy being able to write being being able to communicate article but along with that I would say more importantly is character qualities like you know grit mindset failure I mean these leadership these are much more important qualities and all that stuff that is going to be there um recently the last two years America succeeds introduced something called durable skills I was so happy to see along with the four C's uh they also introduced fortitude leadership metacognition mindfulness uh character growth mindset said these are all very very important when you try to solve uh societal challenges let me start to give you some examples of how I bring STEM Science technology engineering mathematics into solving societal challenges here is goal number SE 16 peaceful peace and Justice so or you know opioids one of the major societal challenge in the world now imagine if you're a drug addict you're watching TV you just came back from drug rehabilitation and you uh you watch TV and the syringe comes up and you are tempted to take drugs what do you do well exactly at the point you're getting up to go take drugs from somewhere you have stacked it at the exact same moment what if your mom calls you what if your best friend calls you and says let's go for coffee what happened at that particular moment was in the moment distraction so I distracted you from what you were about to do and that's exactly what we did and we didn't realize we can actually get a pattern for that so imagine if I had given a variable to all these uh folks that just came from Rehabilitation and imagine if the the variable is tracking all these different uh things like heart rate sweat index electrical response uh your uh even things like uh other inside uh uh features and all that stuff at the exact moment when you want to take drugs you're starting to get up and all of a sudden all these numbers change and something goes on in the cloud my area I work in the area of mathema iCal modeling and machine learning so it's it's funny people do machine learning to you know I want to write the fastest code I want to write the you know cheapest uh code I want to write uh I want to get more accurate solution I think a little beyond that I asked my students to think can we use machine learning for real impact now here is an example of real impact this so what happens is all this data has turned the cloud and uh at the exact moment something a trigger happens uh a cell phone app is triggered and then it basically already has your favorite music it may be ACDC or it could be your mom's number Mom is calling you or it could be your best friend saying hey let's go for coffee all I did there was in the moment distraction here is a solution a sustainable solution which is for solving a societal challenge I hope you get the idea here let me give you another one that I worked on uh uh Africa uh this is Tanzania every 15 minutes and elephant dies and uh is killed actually uh and that's because of the uh HS these HS are sold uh in black market for uh $50,000 uh you know Rhino hor for example is can go for $1.5 million you know why the these things are sold uh so the poachers that are trying to kill these elephants uh you know they get they make a lot of money and uh it's unfortunate there's lots and lots of ele elephants that were D this was a problem that I tried to take uh uh tried to to solve a few years back with a group of students now uh uh so there were lots of solutions that you can think of like you know can I Dy the uh uh the tusks or you know or can I do something lots of other things and all that stuff to uh uh so it turns out at the end of the day the solution that uh you know I'm trying to always combine stem to something societal and so and trying to see a sustainable solution for that and so it turned out that uh we came up with the idea of a drone and that's the vice Chancellor of Nelson Mandel African of Science and Technology and that's Eric that's holding the Drone who got a PhD for this and you know having these drones actually fly on top and they have uh they have uh and this is where uh you know all the things that you learn starts to make sense like you know how do I you know when you're seeing from the top how do I know everything is going to be a like a blob how do I know it's an animal versus a human well that's why you learn about warm blooded and cold blooded so what about temperature sensors on the top okay then uh then you have images now so from images you can use machine learning to figure out a lot of things about you know where they are and things like that and uh and so this idea of drones was uh you know simple it didn't come out immediately but it it took some time to really you know connect something that you are good at but then to connect something in the in the society so uh as I said I'm very interested in sustainable development goals and uh uh and as I quality education specifically and U if you did not know how to actually evaluate uh you know how the countries are doing there's this website which is called HD I mean this dashboards what I will do is uh if I can probably minimize my screen I will take this and I'm going to just do a quick demo for you just so that you know because I see people just talking uh uh a lot about the sustainable goals sometimes they don't know what uh the you know you have to dig in deeper here's an interactive map of all the countries it's you know who who's it tells exactly where they are in terms of sustainability this it tells you about the rankings how they are Finland is on the top you may you may Wonder like why us uh and you start to search for us us is not even in the top 20 for example and you want start to wonder what about other countries and all that so us is right there I just saw us somewhere so uh uh 39 so and then you could actually have a country profile and you can actually click on the country so you know you could go into any country and then see how they are doing and uh uh for example this is a country that I work with Surinam you can actually it'll tell you exactly how they're doing in each of the goals uh you know are they on track are they moderately improving are they stagnating are they decreasing so for example they're doing something interesting in water so they seem to be doing well and all that I could actually click on it uh and then I get uh uh I get to visualize on the map and I can actually see how the entire world is doing and I can see a rod of red in Africa uh India is fully red and uh uh you can see that Colombia is red but then Venezuela is here orange Guyana is here and all that let me try quality education number four and you can see how all the other countries India's improved in quality education uh here is uh Surinam which is the Dutch Guyana if you did not know there's the French gyana on the right that's also orange but then interestingly Guyana on the left so when I see things like that I say what is Guyana doing that Surinam is not doing you know they must be doing something in the policy something sustainable uh you know that they want to improve and all that stuff so now that you know this website you can you can play around with it and um so clean water let's take one of those things that seem to be both both of the challenges as well as uh the goals so if you dig deeper into clean water you will see that there are multiple targets so for example examp Le better water quality to uh healthier ecosystems and all that stuff now I as a as a you know somebody in uh you know who's in mathematics machine learning computer science bioengineering education I look at it completely from a what kind of stem Solutions can I bring in for this so I I I'm going to give you some techniques these are very simple techniques but then it's very powerful so uh this is a strategy called about how many I'll give you how I'll I'll run through this technique so suppose I ask you about how many uh piano tuners are in Chicago you're like what is he asking you're like this is not a traditional question yes it is not that's why I'm asking you because this is where how I challenge students so let me give you one more uh simple data so the data point I'm going to give you is that there are three million people in Chicago now this is exactly where you got to start putting your creative minds together and see okay let's see how to solve this at least in an educated way let's Suppose there are uh you know uh in every family uh uh has mom dad and two children that's four people in a family so that's 750,000 simple division by four now let's suppose that not everybody can have a piano so let's suppose that every fifth house has a piano so in that case there are totally about 150,000 pianos that's just divided by five now let's suppose I am a a piano tuner I go to one end of Chicago and then do the repair and then go to another end of Chicago do the repair it's lunchtime then I go to another end of Chicago another of Chicago that's four jobs a day now look at how I'm making assumptions okay now how many days are in a week you may actually say seven but I want to take two day vacation even though we are all working on a Saturday today so but because four time five is easy so that's 20 jobs a week how many weeks are in a year now you may want to say 52 but I want to take two week vacation now notice how I'm making assumptions I'm taking easy numbers like 50 weeks times 20 jobs that's thousand jobs that I have to actually work on so so the number of piano tuners approximately is 150 because it's 150,000 divided by th000 I just showed you a back of the envelope calculation to figure out something that sounded like a really challenging problem right now the man who did this idea uh is this person who if you saw the movie Oppenheimer you will see Oppenheimer referring to him a lot of times his name is Enrico FY 1938 Nobel Prize winner but he was known for how he taught he will not tell people what teaching but he'll try to get the get it out for example so I uh I can I have a FY challenge today a good firy challenge would be how many gallons of water is wasted in a year so I can connect it to the sustainable development goal for example Clean Water Sanitation or the uh National Academy of Engineering Grand challenges as well now uh you could think about like you know how many days on a year how many hours uh or in a day how many seconds and what all do you do use water for taking bath you know uh you know cooking cleaning uh you know all these things everywhere water if you did not know internet uses water if you did not know that okay so uh you are like oh what internet uses water yeah you have to do your math to figure it out so but you can figure out and then you can actually calculate a number and that's is a back of the envelope calculation right so this guy's name this guy it's called the quick and dirty approach right so and uh uh how many how many hair is in your dog and things like that so in sustainable development it's very important to have such back of the envelope techniques under your sleeve to solve okay so because you don't have time to solve like you don't say like oh I'll solve the water problem in two years you got you got only two hours to solve it or you got only two days to come up with a initial solution so for me is a very interesting approach and you can see we actually waste about one trillion gallons of water okay that sounds like crazy right but then I I take it even personal for example food wastage zero hunger goal number two sustainable development goals if you did not know in the high schools in the US uh kids waste about3 pounds of food every week in the cafeteria the elementary school students is 1.13 pounds of food now I engage students in these things uh with my uh in my classes so here is a recent class that I taught and you can see uh students coming up with their own versions of I say estimate how much is wasted in the US using FY approach and what you're seeing here is students using all these students are using FY approach here and uh this is through a uh uh Jam board Google Jam board I engage students all across the world through this so you know and they're actually breaking it down and actually doing computational thinking on figuring out how much is wasted and all that okay good so this is how you can bring these things and then of course uh next I'm going to uh go into a pedagogical thing so then uh and I I'm trying to keep one theme today the water for example right so I'm when I ask people pedagogical practice called what do you notice and what do you wonder when I show this picture most of them are saying oh I see jugs I see jars I see jars sitting on metal plates uh they're are all in rows and columns I mean they are bringing their expertise and all that um and that is how I engage that's the first uh E I want you to remember and then I actually asked them to do some this is where I assess and this is the explore phase so they are like oh these are all water purification techniques oh boiling I see boiling is number 10 is boiling oh clay filter ation that's number five and so I I do a match the following this is a preassessment as an educator I I want to know what you know and what you don't know and so once I do that then of course we share what each one of these things is we talk about osmosis reverse OS what is reverse osmosis and things like that osmosis is the op you know the the signs of pushing you know water actually moves from higher concentration to lower concentration but then what if you push it back and so this is an idea that is used for purifying water you know from from uh dirt and things like that so it's called reverse osmosis and so many other things now I'm bringing science into what we are learning right so you're all like going to college why why are you learning chemistry why are you learning physics why are you learning mathematics you need to be able to connect it to sustainable development goals then you can't just say I do sustainability without really being able to connect what you're learning in college to really solving real problems okay and then the kids of course I teach them what is called as decision Matrix which is where they actually rank which one uh they should pick and and so they are learning some math they're learning some weighted averages they are actually picking which is the best one here they have picked reverse osmosis to be the big big one but then they need to know what osmosis is so uh even though they it seems like a cool technique to do so reverse osmosis as I just said is basically to reverse the direction from high concentration to low concentration water moving so this is where you know you try to uh split the water and the thing and then to get pure water and all that stuff very popular technique this so this is where I explain that's the third e so remember I said engage explore explain and and then we do experiments for example like if you put a actual egg into vinegar and uh you uh try to let it be for like a day or two you'll be very surprised that what happens because vinegar actually neutralizes calcium carbonate that's the shell of the egg and releasing carbon dioxide and weakening the shell so essentially the shell breaks the water goes inside osmosis because there's a lot of water in the outside which is in vinegar there's not much water inside the egg the egg goes inside the water the egg becomes bigger have you ever seen big bonsy eggs if not try this experiment and it's all simple osmosis okay now that I say that then I go deeper for people that really like chemistry for example right so it's basically nothing but calcium carbonate uh you know uh combining with acetic acid now why are you learning all these balancing the equations in chemistry have you ever wondered is there a real use for these things well you should ask your teachers and when you do that you get this uh you know carbon dioxide and uh some other reactants but then this is also an opportunity to connect to something that you all learn about pH and things like that you know water is neutral to battery acid this is very acidic to you know drain cleaner is very base and things like that so it's gives you an opportunity to teach different levels kids I I teach kids from kindergarten all the way to post-doctoral students so you know so I know what what to talk when to talk who to talk what you know all those things so so now if we take this bouncy egg and put it in Conn starch what do you think will happen well Conn starch doesn't have a lot of water so the water that is inside the egg will start to come outside and so again through osmosis and you get a Shel deck now while you're doing something like this you're still keeping in mind you're getting them excited about water Clean Water Sanitation but you're explaining osmosis so you don't want to leave the stem behind but you still want them to get EX about what they're learning but also try to connect to a big problem they solving and then really tell them like for example you use this for dialysis you know this is exactly osmosis and dialysis or the all the O all the you know carbon dioxide that goes inside the water you know and acidic all the shellfish and all those creatures with shells they're all going to break because of the experiment that I just told you and then uh those are eaten by the fish and guess who eats the fish right now you know you you know sustainability humans uh you know think about these types of things and all I have a whole course on this it's called design thinking it's about the art of human- centered approach to problem solving you start with empathy you then Define a problem statement you ideate different types of solutions you prototype and you test it and uh you can take any challenge it could be you know uh education it could be you know poaching and lots of things but I take students through these types of techniques and uh here's an example of students that uh were asked to create like uh uh uh something for the developing World they came up with uh uh healthc care device and they came up with a a small uh uh incubator which was uh uh they reduc a lot of expenses but the challenge was uh they could not take it to Nepal for example so then they rethought about what they did and then they figured out the first ever baby infant uh baby uh warm or coolers called Embrace they are multi-billionaires right now but it was just a matter of rethinking how they did the stem and now they have these little sleeping bags that they' have created for the babies here's another example children are afraid to go into a cancer room for MRI scanning and all that stuff and they're crying and the nurses don't know what to do the mother is crying the the dad is walking around doesn't know what to do and the when you ask the doctor the doctor is saying oh give the kid an ice cream that's not a solution give the kid an ice cream kid will be quiet for like two minutes and then they'll start crying again so here is a challenge right so how so what you need to do is you should ask empathy to the right person the right question in this case you should not have asked the doctors you should not have asked the nurses you should not have asked the parents you should have asked the children if you ask the children they would say oh why don't you make it fun for me an experience that's fun for me so here is how the California hospitals have adopted there's a Treasure Island there's a chest on the other side the comes in they play a wakao game and they actually find their weight and things like that it's a simple idea and the kids are already excited to give their own readings and measurements and all that now what if I combine design thinking with sdg and this is what I'm doing right now so if any of you in the call are interested in these types of challenges uh here is the student that I mentored High School student I already published four papers full right to College of William and Mary uh you know uh created ideas for you know every everybody was modeling covid I uh with her we were able to model domestic violence during covid uh there is a person you know uh here know to students who wanted to model uh opioids dynamics of opioids and that's the type of thing that I actually am excited about is like real challenges and they actually are going to be published also it is somebody who wanted to learn why African-Americans and Hispanic Americans are being denied mortgage mortgage so highly and so he collected data and then he used machine learning to actually figure out that this is actually true and then here's another example of student wanted to know why are people of different races uh stopped by polis differently and so we use data visualization to do that one uh by five maybe about 10 seconds and tell me what you see in this picture it's called the most intelligent photo what do you see in this picture anyone see any interesting people interesting ideas well if not uh I can tell you the most common answer that I get is Albert Einstein you're all happy you're all smiling because you figured out Albert Einstein also but you figured out probably n bore you figured out Heisenberg and lots of other people well lots of white guys here and uh you have about uh 29 people 1927 Soul boy conference what you may not have seen is the lady that is sitting right in the front with all these white guys you see the third person that's Mary cury she didn't have one Nobel Prize she has two Nobel prizes chemistry and physics so she beat them all by the way there are 70 Nobel Prize winners in this group here okay now that's why it's called the most intelligent photo so the challenge is we don't have enough women in stem solving these types of challenges because somewhere something happens for example Harvard did a crimson ra did a review it's because somebody is telling them that they're not uh you know fit to do the research that's not true more than like 70% of the people that I actually end up working with 200 students I me mentored they're all women and they're so bright and top colleges and all that stuff and uh you know 19% of them hearing comments about their mathematical ability this is Harvard research about gender ability so where does this connect to well it connects to gender equality number five so I'm going to finish how do I change the system this is me changing the game look at me I'm the only man in this picture that is how you transform institutional uh practices that's how you create new programs you know turn the game turn the game around and you can see this is a program called Focus that I've created we I have impacted over 850 girls in eight years they come in the summer they engage in stem and they solve real challenges like coaching and uh you know create mobile apps and all that stuff so uh Focus stands for females of color and those underes stem so just to let you know I come from an educational perspective you're going to hear a whole lot of uh other side of sustainability I try to bring solutions to sustainable uh and societal challenges through these types of stem ideas so my final thought is you're all students lots of students you're all thinking like I need to get into IIT I need to get into MIT I I need to get into so you're like focusing on content content content you know discipline specific start thinking about Competency Based education transferable skills beyond your content can I talk to a client can I give an elevator pitch can I actually really convinced my project is going to not just be useful but it's going to impact a lot of people with that uh I will finish uh I I urge you each and every one of you to create a smart goal uh and uh if you want to learn uh thank you very much this is my contact I I sincerely hope that you all you all can uh you know contact me uh through YouTube just type my name and you should be able to uh find me it seems like we have two quick Q&A questions that came in the chat um one person asked um kind is Su such Rel to the sustainability development for the nonprofit Community oh absolutely absolutely so it's going to be something very very important and many of the nonprofits are interested in solving a certain challenge so the key is going to be to how to connect that uh particular thing you know sometimes nonprofits are looking for uh uh you know also funding to really convince something so next week I'm talking to Gates Foundation and I'm you know talking to the kwell director the director of for Gates Foundation so when I talk to them I'm going to tell them about uh a certain problem so you got to really come up with you got to tell them exactly the problem that you want to fix for example I want to fix teacher shortages in this country in many many countries so because there's no incentives uh for teachers to you know and there's a lot of other things that's happening and uh so you know politically well it's very hard because you have to convince a lot of political people but foundations you can convince uh for example Google has a policy called uh uh 8020 so you work four days of a week on Google's Mission and one day you can actually do something that aligns with Google so what if I take all the Google employees and ask them to come into the classroom for one day I mean that would solve a major problem they come with experience all I have to do is teach them how to teach the students and so so nonprofits need to really look for those Niche ideas to before they approach uh and and connected to and it connects to goal number four sustainable uh development goals which is quality education gotcha um we're getting a lot of thank yous in the Q&A and um velle is asking what are your thoughts on public perception on science and how it could impact sustainability and what we can do to make them more relatable accessible and effectively perceived by the public very good question Melle and that last three things is the most important thing is is relatable uh and uh you know so I think uh so we need to get students uh not just uh uh trained on the subject matter which definitely is important but being able to communicate so every student should take science communication classes every student must know how to do an elevator pitch what if B Bill Gates walks into an elevator and you got 30 seconds to go to the next floor would you be able to convince him in like few seconds on what you do well Mr Sol Khan did it and uh he got he got uh you know his Khan Academy really grow and uh you know and Bill Gates was really impressed right so it's about uh the skills that you learn in a major that uh you know uh that you don't learn in a major so if you are in a mathematics major for example there's a less chance that you have a class on science communication there's less chance that you have a class on design thinking so look for those classes I actually teach design thinking if you all want to take my class feel free to I'll I'll tell you how to do it but uh you know so you never learn about design thinking you don't because that's not math you would think that's not math you'll be very surprised I've published a lot on con connecting design thinking and mathematical modeling to solve real world challenges so my suggestion will be you guys be the ambassadors to uh to uh go look for those things outside your classwork and my other important message that I said before do not uh you know there are more more and more Educational Systems are using the philosoph if you here is the stem or science go solve the problem it's time to reverse the philosophy here is the problem which is coming from sustainable challenges let's find the stem to do it so start reversing the way you solve problems then you will automatically see you know how critically you're thinking and creatively you're solving problems and we have one last question and that should be our time before going into a short word our sponsor um one last question by Joseph is how does the internet related water how does uh I'm not going to tell you that because you know I'm gonna play I'm gonna play devil ADV Wicket and I'm gonna give you I'm gonna ask you to think about it so actually let me ask uh you know I know it's time but this is a good one for a homework for everybody how does internet use relate to water uh you know or is it even you I mean how does it come like you know remember that I told you about tcpip uh information exchange information processing going through cables and lots of other things from place to place and you know of course you got to get those electricities going and electricity needs uh lots of other things so I'm not going to give you any more clues okay uh you know it's not like you have to pour water on your cell phone it's like water is there indirectly uh when you're actually doing uh things and all that okay so good question though that's that's uh I'm going to play that Mentor that says go find out and come back and tell me what you find out okay perfect awesome thank you so much