Boston University’s engineering program attracts some of the brightest engineering minds. The curriculum and training opportunities available to students reflect the university’s commitment to inculcate strong core engineering skills within its student cohort – the outgoing engineering class continues to be a cadre of motivated professionals that impact society through advances in research, innovation, entrepreneurship and service. However, while applications to global development issues do exist within BU’s many schools and departments, they are scattered and not always accessible to the student. What the university lacked was a cohesive, unified effort with which to tackle global development issues.

LEED was formed as a direct result of the Innovative Engineering Education Faculty Fellowship awarded by the Office of the Dean. Initially, LEED began as an incubator of knowledge and practical activity that developed new educational initiatives for its undergraduate program, particularly at the freshmen and sophomore level, on the potential role engineering could play in solving global health issues. In an effort to generate interest, new courses were designed for entry-level engineering students that introduced challenges in global health and development. Inter-departmental senior design opportunities were encouraged so as to draw from a wealth of interdisciplinary expertise and provide different perspectives.

At present, LEED is a multi-pronged initiative that actively engages students in problem-based learning with an emphasis on real-time applications in global health. LEED aims to strengthen health systems through technical capacity building and development of  contextual scientific innovation.