Global Healers

With a string of inventions and ideas, Ashok Gadgil Ph.D. ’79 is easing hardships for millions around the globe. Hailed for his low-cost, high-impact solutions, the Berkeley professor and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist designed a fuel-efficient cooking stove for displaced people in Darfur, and devised methods for disinfecting water and removing arsenic from it. The groundbreaking research of fellow faculty member Kirk R. Smith ’68, M.P.H. ’72, Ph.D. ’77 elucidates the pollution risks of indoor cooking with wood and other solid fuels. Smith discovered that household air pollution in developing nations is responsible for nearly two million premature deaths per year, disproportionately afflicting women and children.