EOS is thrilled to offer a Data Science Fellowship to Megan Lindmark, an Engineering PhD student at University of Iowa. Megan is a 3rd year PhD student at the University of Iowa in the College of Engineering’s Civil and Environmental Engineering program, with a concentration in Sustainable Water Development. Her research focuses on drinking water solutions for resource constrained communities. She is interested in elevating existing and new solutions to include real time monitoring through cellular networks so that communities have access to information about their own drinking water.

Megan has been working with EOS and Xylem since October 2018 when she and Dr. Just received a pilot grant from the University of Iowa’s Environmental Health Sciences Research Center to design a remote water sensor system, allowing the community and ministry of health officials to see the quality of their water in real-time. Megan assisted in the installation of the first “Smart” chlorinator in EOS community La Sirena, Nicaragua in the fall of 2019. Through this partnership we hope to not only allow more and more communities access to water quality information but also to allow EOS technicians to access information that can help them constantly improve the services EOS delivers.

In Megan’s new role as a Data Science Fellow, she is helping us streamline our measurement and evaluation database. We use the online database mWater, and thanks to her help, we have been able to organize and upload over 20,000 rural community visits that our teams has done in the last decade. The data from these visits have been critical in understanding historical water quality trends in the regions that we are working in. Through Megan’s analysis, she has found some very positive correlations with the water treatment residual in drinking water systems, which she is planning to publish in an academic journal paper so that other NGOs and researchers can learn from EOS’ work. Unsurprisingly perhaps, this information points to EOS’ chlorinators effectiveness in providing a safe source of drinking water.

The EOS team makes monthly visits to the rural communities that we serve, and we are now able to capture photos, community water quality data, and even community testimonials in an efficient manner.

Megan will graduate with her PhD in 2022 and hopes to continue making significant impact in the drinking water sector.