Clean water in Ecuador project earns audience award at NAE Grand Challenges Summit & Create@UH Showcase

A passionate interest in their chosen topic and a range of engineering knowledge were the keys to success for the team of five that took home the audience award for the Fall 2025 UH NAE Grand Challenges Summit & Create@UH Showcase. 

“Accessing Clean Water in Guayaquil, Ecuador” was chosen by the audience as the most impressive poster presentation, from a pool of more than 70 projects. Advised by Alex Landon, a professor of practice and the director of the Cullen Honors Program, the team members were: 

• Mia Torres – Civil Engineering
• Keira Schnittke – Biomedical Engineering
• Kamia Gordon – Computer Engineering
• Hao/Sam Trinh – Industrial Engineering
• Kaitlyn Philip – Biomedical Engineering

Torres described it as a mix of emotions to learn that they had won. 

“When I found out that we had been selected as the winning group, I was genuinely surprised,” she said. “There were many strong projects, including one focused on vaccines that involved creating an app to track vaccination rates in different areas. Because of that, the experience was somewhat bittersweet. It was difficult to see so many impressive projects not win, but at the same time, we were very proud of our work. We had put a lot of effort into the project and genuinely believed the solution was viable and could realistically be applied.”

The goal of the group was to examine the issue of contaminated water in Guayaquil, a port city of more than 2.7 million in Ecuador. According to their poster project, rapid urban growth has outpaced the development of the sewer system, leading to about 75 percent of sewage being released untreated. 

“We ended up choosing Guayaquil, because while the city has access to water, much of it is not clean or drinkable,” she said. “We were intentionally looking at places that already had water but lacked safe access to it.”

They considered three potential solutions – sewage treatment, floatable beads and microbial enzymes. Using a five-point decision matrix, the enzymes were determined to be the most promising option. 

Torres said her group decided on this project based on her past familiarity with the area, the importance of the issue, and their ability to leverage their industry connections. They interviewed a senior project manager at IDS Engineering Group, distilling that information to a digestible format for their peers. 

While the group took the same class together, they did not know one another well before working together on the project. Torres noted that coming at the problem from five different engineering disciplines was a “major strength” that allowed them to expand and deepen their research. 

“With backgrounds in chemical, mechanical and civil engineering, we were able to examine each solution from multiple perspectives,” she said. “This was especially helpful when comparing different approaches and determining which one was the most effective overall. Having different disciplines and outlooks allowed us to analyze the problem more thoroughly and make a more informed decision.”

The next student showcase will be in Spring 2026, with events held on the main campus and in Sugar Land.

For a photo gallery from the event, click here!