Autodesk Foundation Team
Following the success of its inaugural Engineering for Change (E4C) Summer Fellowship in 2021, the Autodesk Foundation supported an additional 24 E4C Summer Fellows in 2022—nearly doubling the cohort to a total of 57 Fellows. Twenty-three of the 2022 E4C Fellows collaborated on projects with nonprofits and startups in the Autodesk Foundation’s portfolio, and one worked with organizations participating in Autodesk’s Technology Impact Program.
Each E4C Summer Fellow commits to a five-month project in one of three categories—Design for Good, Advancing Workflows, and Impact Research. All projects are designed to align with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
E4C Fellows in action
The Autodesk Foundation-supported 2022 E4C Summer Fellows advanced engineering projects spanning 15 countries and five continents, advancing 12 of the UN’s 17 SDGs—from reducing the carbon footprint of building projects in Kenya to digitizing and improving the UNHCR’s database of WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) technical designs for refugee settings. Many of the Fellows used AutoCAD, Inventor, and other Autodesk software to complete their projects.
Alex Inoma, a Nigerian mechanical engineer, worked with Amped Innovation to conduct customer research and create product materials to inform a go-to-market strategy for the company’s new line of solar generators intended to eliminate barriers to user acceptance in Nigerian communities.
Alex used Fusion 360 to create photorealistic 3D renderings of the sell sheets to simulate their in-field usage and inform his development of “visual and easily comprehensible specification sheets and sell sheets.”
Maël Sonna Donko, a Cameroonian structural engineer, worked with Kheyti—a social enterprise that designs low-cost farming solutions and provides end-to-end support to smallholder farmers, giving them a seamless path to increasing climate-resilient incomes. Maël simplified Kheyti’s larger greenhouse designs and the installation process by replacing existing parts with modular components, optimized using Autodesk Revit, Robot Structural Analysis, and Fusion 360.
“The software permitted us to investigate the structural fitness of the ideated modular versions of the greenhouse, yielding excellent safety factors,” said Maël.
Future Fellows
In 2023, the Autodesk Foundation will support another cohort of up to 30 E4C Summer Fellows working with 26 nonprofits and startups. We’ll be sharing more stories on how the next cohort of emerging engineers is leading with impact in design and engineering this summer on social media.
Learn more about the 2022 E4C Fellows in the full Impact Projects Report.