Past Pardee Fellow is Co-Author of MIT Report on Solar Lanterns

Jonars Spielberg, a 2011 Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellow, is among the co-authors of a first-of-its-kind evaluation report on the use of solar lanterns as part of a development program.  The report, recently published by MIT’s Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation (CITE), is titled “Experimentation in Product Evaluation: The Case of Solar Lanterns in Uganda, Africa.”  It  details the first experimental product evaluations designed and implemented by CITE, a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-supported program led by a multidisciplinary team of faculty, staff, and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Spielberg, a 2012 graduate of Boston University’s International Relations and Environmental Policy master’s degree program and now a MIT staff researcher, was part of a nine-member team that traveled to western Uganda in 2013 to conduct surveys of consumers, suppliers, manufacturers, and nonprofits to evaluate 11 locally available solar lantern models. More details about the research are available here.

Spielberg was a member of the third cohort of Pardee Graduate Summer Fellows to be selected through a competitive application process. Applications are currently being accepted for the 2015 Pardee Graduate Summer Fellowships and the deadline is March 16.