It’s no surprise that with the recent economic recession, scientific funding is going through a rough patch. A report  by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) shows that the NIH budget for 2012 was the lowest it’s been since 2001, and the number of grants funded by the NIH has declined every year since 2004. That means that a lot of important research goes unfunded, and the number of jobs needed to support that research dwindles.

"Engineering is about people," Dr. Jessica Townsend tells me. Her colleague and collaborator, Dr. Rebecca Christianson, agrees: "[Engineering] has real power for good, superhero style."

Both professors recently supported Promethean Power in designing stand-alone milk chillers for small farmers and dairy cooperatives in rural India. A clear focus on the human being receiving the results of their effort is what "made it so fun to geek out over the science and engineering pieces of [working with Promethean Power] because we always could connect that thread back to why we're doing this and who we're doing it for," Townsend says. 

For the last two weeks, we have been featuring science poems in celebration of National Poetry Month. In the first week, we featured poems by women about the details of plant structure and understanding different types of natural phenomenon. On our second week, we explored how humans and the natural world have been affected by one another. For our final week, we are featuring poems on the scientist Mary Sears, death, and space exploration.