A spotlight on China
It was a solar lantern headed for India, oddly enough, that brought Harvard senior Rachel Field to China last summer. As part of an independent research project through the D-Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Field helped to design a solar lantern that uses low-cost technology in the developing world. The project’s goal was to design a lamp that could be built and sold by a community group in the Himalayan mountains area of India. The project was successful, Field said, and piqued her curiosity about China after her partners kept inquiring whether they could build the lantern with Chinese parts, because of their low cost and the country’s extensive distribution network. Field, an engineering concentrator, decided she wanted to know more about the giant Asian nation. So she turned to the Harvard China Fund. Last summer, Field was among a handful of students who had internships in China, aided by the...
