Cleveland –
Organizers from the Cleveland Water Alliance are back for another round of competition to find solutions to the pollution problems in Lake Erie. Having already seen success with the first iteration of the competition, teams from across the region are vying to create innovative solutions to some of the most entrenched problems. Awards again total approximately $100,000 in cash and services.
During the last ErieHack, awards were given to groups from Akron, Detroit and Buffalo that helped make their designs a reality. Third-place finishers from Akron have already started producing their low-cost sensors for citizen scientists to measure phosphorous levels in water. The ground-level of data that will be collected is crucial to understanding the scope of the problems affecting the lake – and create awareness.
“People in the act of measuring will be part of the solution,” said assistant professor of polymer science Hunter King to Cleveland.com. “They’ll start to care about the issue.”
The Water Alliance thinks that with enough hard work, Cleveland could become another center for innovation similar to Silicon Valley. ErieHack2.0 begins with a kickoff event in Cleveland on February 7th at the Alliance’s new offices in the Mid-Town Tech Hive. Winners will be announced June 20th.
The Great Lakes Observer 