Complex particle systems are ubiquitous and include a variety of common items from food to cement and water sediments, which provides COMPASS with numerous opportunities to integrate our educational activities with research work with students and faculty from African universities. This will serve to enhance cognitive diversity, i.e., will expand differences in perspective or information processing styles and/or increase diversity in how individuals think about and engage with new, uncertain, and complex situations. It will also minimize functional bias and other cognitive preferences that could be present in a solely U.S. team.
Collaboration and Exchange with Researchers in Africa (CERA) will directly contribute to the goals of broadening participation and innovation education of COMPASS. The ability to solve problems with limited resources in Africa (frugal) will be contrasted with the technology-heavy effort (USA). Development of frugal approaches to addressing grand challenges with limited technologies will be essential for sustainable technologies of tomorrow. The translation of this mindset back at COMPASS will lead to new approaches to implementation of the developed complex particles and associated theoretical foundations. This integrated outreach and educational effort will also create a recruitment pathway for diverse talented students to COMPASS universities. The ability to cross-pollinate ideas across such a diverse platform will lead to improved technological innovations and solutions.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 2243104.
Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.