Each year, we bring about thirty Ashoka Fellows into the Lemelson-supported group of inventor-entrepreneurs -- launch-stage Fellows, as well as mature social entrepreneurs. Most live and work in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Here they are:

 

Joseph Adelegan
Nigeria
Developing a commercially viable system that uses a fixed filter anaerobic biogas converter to clean air and water from slaughterhouse effluence

Juan Carlos Aguilar
Peru
Encouraging aspiring young inventors to use local materials and their own creative talent to improve living conditions among the poor

 

 

Hamzah Harun Al'Rasyid
Indonesia
Introducing technologies that improve water and sanitation in Indonesia  

Mohammed Bah Abba
Nigeria
Creating economic opportunities for Nigerian farmers through a system that naturally refrigerates fruits and vegetables

 

Abhijeet Bardhan
India
Launching a grassroots movement to train teachers to change the way science is taught in government-run schools

 

Paul Basil
India
Developing promising rural technological innovations into successful commercial enterprises

 

 

Anil Chitrakar
Nepal
Bringing together financing, simple and sustainable technologies, and marketing to support a range of socially-useful technologies, including water purification and solar tukis 

Omar Azad Chowdhury
Bangladesh
Advancing a new model of science and invention learning in Bangladesh

Mathais Craig
Nicaragua
Developing a community-based clean energy model dependent on local manufacture and maintenance of a specially designed hybrid solar/wind turbine along the impoverished Caribbean coast of Nicaragua

Isaac Durojaiye
Nigeria
Creating Nigeria’s first mobile toilet initiative to remedy rampant urban unemployment and poor sanitation conditions

 

Hany El Miniawy
Egypt
Developing eco-friendly methods of home construction that use local materials and create jobs 

Andres Martinez Fernandez
Spain
Designing and testing technologies – video microscopes, long-distance stethoscopes, and other diagnostic and treatment tools – to save lives and increase efficiency of rural health centers in Colombia, Peru, and Nicaragua

Willy Foote
United States
Financing developing-world rural business entrepreneurs and technologies that boost agriculture production and protect the environment

A.H. Md. Maqsood Sinha and Iftekhar Enayetullah
Bangladesh
Developing community-based, high-tech, low-cost composting plants to convert organic waste into income-generating fertilizers

 

Patrick Gathitu
Kenya
Empowering Kenyans to make good choices about what technologies to buy and how best to use them on their farms and micro-enterprises 

 

 

Gustavo Gennuso
Argentina
Battling unemployment among Argentina's young people by growing and inspiring inventors and entrepreneurs

Bir Bahadur Ghale
Nepal
Constructing micro-hydropower plants and linking them to industrial and commercial ventures to manage the system

 

 

Sameh Ghali
Egypt
Disseminating a new community-based latrine system and producing a water byproduct clean enough to use for irrigation

 

Amol Goje
India
Developing user-friendly and low-cost IT tools for farmers to increase productivity and stimulate economic growth

 

 

David Green
USA
Producing and disseminating socially-useful products - including affordable hearing aids and intraocular lenses - using a tiered pricing structure

 

 

 

Prema Gopalan
India
Training rural women to identify community needs and design, build and operate water and sanitation systems

 

 

Agus Gunarto
Indonesia
Creating the technical design for the construction and operation of community-financed and managed mini-sewage treatment plants

 

 

Vibha Gupta
India
Training rural women to use scientific skills and technologies to create economically productive enterprises

 

 

Victoria Hale
Global Fellow
Building the first non-profit pharmaceutical company to work with the mainstream pharmaceutical industry in bringing new drugs to the world’s poor

 

David Kuria
Kenya
Designing technology-enabled sanitation "kiosks" that halt environmental degradation and promote health and social cohesion in Kenyan slum areas

 

 

Juan Carlos Calizaya Luna
Peru
Installing environmentally friendly sanitation systems at the household and community level and building the social infrastructure needed to support them

 

 

Hamzah M.
Indonesia
Raising agricultural productivity through new farm products and a drip irrigation implement he invented, to benefit farmer cooperatives and markets

 

 

Dipendra Manocha
India
Using an open source approach to creating screen reading software for Hindi and other local languages and low-cost playback devices for disabled persons, particularly the blind

Maxwell Marshall
Nigeria
Widening access to housing for Nigeria’s urban and rural poor through the introduction of a new building technology that is low-cost, sustainable, and attractive

Francois Marty
France
Inventing construction tools that enable the building of ecologically-sound, energy-saving public housing on a large scale and in ways that mobilize and employ France's poorest residents

Tri Mumpuni
Indonesia
Tackling challenges of rural electrification and economic development by creating community-owned, micro-hydropower systems throughout Indonesia

 

Kovin Naidoo
South Africa
Providing access to eye care through technological innovations that reduce lens costs to $1.50

 

 

Bindeshwar Pathak
India
Introducing an eco-friendly, twin-pit, compost, pour-flush toilet technology for households - an alternative to the cost prohibitive sewerage or septic tank based systems of waste disposal

Kalyan Paul
India
Providing local communities in the central and western Himalayas with the organizational, technical, and managerial skills to effect ecological restoration of their area

Mahabir Pun
Nepal
Using solar power, tree-based relay systems and adapted technologies to create wireless networks that are suitable for the remote mountainous regions of Nepal

Onno Purbo
Indonesia
Building Indonesia into a knowledge-based society by bringing low-cost Wi-Fi Internet access to communities and schools throughout the country

 

 

Ravindranath
India
Mitigating flood disasters by introducing - through an active citizen network - such life-saving technologies as modified tube-wells to keep drinking water safe, quick-assemble toilets for use in floods, and stilt designs to elevate homes

Douglas Racionzer
South Africa
Transforming existing, small, technology-focused businesses into successful enterprises that deliver of community services

 

 

Vineet Rai
India
Providing venture capital financing and management support to socially conscious and environmentally friendly ventures with limited access to capital

 

 

Andres Randazzo
Mexico
Incorporating appropriate technologies — cisterns, ovens and houses — into the existing health infrastructure of Mexico’s poorest rural areas to better basic living conditions

 

 

Madan Mohan Rao
India
Refining a nearly extinct technology — the party line system — to provide connectivity to villagers living in rural areas unable to attract mobile phone service providers

 

Abhishek Ray
India
Drawing on the emerging field of Universal Design to create affordable, barrier-free environments that are highly functional for all people — regardless of age, ability or situation

 

 

Fabio Rosa
Brazil
Bringing electricity to the rural poor through low-cost electrification technology

 

 

 

Albina Ruiz
Peru
Working with Lima's waste management workforce to design products that improve their work flow - custom tricycles and a variety of trash collection and composting tools  

Balaji Sampath
India
Revolutionizing the way science is taught in India through low-cost materials that promote hands-on learning and creative dissemination techniques

 

 

Pradip Sarmah
India
Distributing safer rickshaws with improved ergonomic design through Rickshaw Bank loans geared towards ownership

Heike Schettler
Germany
Spreading bottom-up, child-centered Science Labs and curricula throughout primary schools in Germany

 

Lalith Seneviratne
Sri Lanka
Bringing sustainable electricity to rural Sri Lanka, and building the components that allow community members to maintain and finance small-scale biomass generation

Babu Raja Shrestha
Nepal
Replacing traditional kerosene lighting sources with solar-powered tukis, assembled and serviced by local people

José Roberto da Fonseca e Silva
Brazil
Enhancing small-scale farming with a solar-powered micro-irrigation system of production, marketing, and commercialization that makes farming profitable for poor farmers in Brazil's Northeast

 

 

Jack Sim
Global Fellow
Revamping the field of sanitation worldwide by bringing technical, financial, organizational, and market-related strategies to citizen organizations working on sanitation

 

 

 

Carlos Simao
Brazil
Adapting new shallow tube wells for Brazil’s semiarid regions

 

 

Bright Simons
Ghana
Combatting fraud in the pharmaceutical industry by creating a SMS-telecom solution that allows consumers to verify pharmaceuticals at the point of purchase 

Vijay Pratap Singh
India
Creating new access platforms - software and manual - to benefit rural Indians

S. Srinivasan
India
Promoting the production and distribution of essential drugs at affordable rates to the poor 

Yohanes Surya
Indonesia
Transforming the way children are introduced to, and engage with, science and math learning by creating new materials, science comics, and national and international competitions

Greg Van Kirk
Guatemala
Engaging rural entrepreneurs in distributing essential products through a "micro-consignment" approach

 

 

N. Muthu Velayutham
India
Pairing rural farmers with engineers to design products and distribute them through rural citizen networks

 

 

Rebeca Villalobos
Costa Rica
Developing a participatory system of eye care that enables Costa Ricans of all classes to access affordable medical services

 

 

Howard Weinstein
Brazil
Manufacturing and distributing low-cost hearing aids with extended battery-life options allowed by solar-powered batteries

 

 

Augustin Woelz
Brazil
Reducing the inefficient use of electricity for hot water heating through a do-it-yourself system disseminated by young people

Rosannah Zafar
Pakistan
Introducing solar technology to Pakistani homeowners through the national financial tools network she has built

Stan Zlotkin
Canada
Manufacturing and distributing affordable iron and nutrient supplements to combat "hidden hunger," the debilitating vitamin and mineral deficiency experienced by millions of women and children in developing countries