Rhode Island Foundation names 2013 innovation fellows

ADRIENNE GAGNON and Dr. Lynn E. Taylor are the winners of the Rhode Island Foundation's 2013 Rhode Island Innovation Fellowship, the nonprofit announced Tuesday. / COURTESY THE RHODE ISLAND FOUNDATION
ADRIENNE GAGNON and Dr. Lynn E. Taylor are the winners of the Rhode Island Foundation's 2013 Rhode Island Innovation Fellowship, the nonprofit announced Tuesday. / COURTESY THE RHODE ISLAND FOUNDATION

PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island Foundation has announced the two winners of its 2013 Rhode Island Innovation Fellowship, an annual program designed to stimulate solutions to Rhode Island problems by the state’s residents.

This year, Adrienne Gagnon and Dr. Lynn E. Taylor were chosen from a pool of 180 original applicants for their projects on “design thinking” and Hepatitis C, respectively. The winning proposals were selected by a panel chaired by Rhode Island Foundation President and CEO Neil D. Steinberg.

Gagnon was selected for her “Innovation by Design” project, which seeks to “foster the next generation of Rhode Island innovators by bringing the transformation tools of ‘design thinking’ to students across the state,” according to her project page on the Rhode Island Foundation’s website.

As part of her project, Gagnon plans to send out mobile design labs that have been repurposed from retired shipping containers to parks, school yards and vacant lots in Rhode Island cities to “engage students in free, hands-on design programs that will improve our communities.”

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Gagnon will work with students to design and create structures, products, public awareness campaigns and other interventions to “strengthen their neighborhoods, while also gaining academic and life skills.”

“I believe that by offering Rhode Island youth the tools of design thinking, we can create a generation of entrepreneurs, of creators, of engaged citizens who see challenges as opportunities and work together to solve them,” said Gagnon on her project page. “This fellowship will fund not just one great idea, but an entire generation of Rhode Island residents full of great ideas.”

The Innovation by Design project also plans to develop an online interactive design curriculum portal that will be available to all Rhode Island school districts, as well as a summer institute for teachers on using design thinking in classrooms.

Taylor was selected for her plan to make Rhode Island the first state to eradicate Hepatitis C. Taylor – a doctor, researcher, public health advocate and Brown University professor – called Hep C a “time bomb in Rhode Island,” on her project page on the Rhode Island Foundation’s website.

On the project page, Taylor said that, with the medical community on the verge of a “game-changing” shift in HCV therapy, Rhode Island’s cure rate could potentially be 100 percent, if the state scales up its delivery system, which “barely exists now.”

Taylors project is a multi-step plan that includes: awareness, rapid testing, linkage to care, building infrastructure for a sustainable model and evaluation.

“At no other time in history have we had such opportunity to eradicate this harmful, costly epidemic,” Taylor, assistant professor of medicine at Brown University and director of Miriam Hospital’s HIV/Viral Hepatitis Coinfection Program, said on her project page.

“Rhode Island has the optimal size epidemiologically, cooperation between stakeholders, scientific acumen, and medical establishments that make it possible to be the first state to defeat HCV,” said Taylor. “With this fellowship, we can save money and lives in Rhode Island, bring in additional resources, and lead the nation in curtailing this epidemic.”

The fellowship winners will receive up to $300,000 over three years to develop, test and implement their innovative ideas. The fellowship is made possible due to donations from Letitia and John Carter.

“We congratulate Adrienne and Lynn on their forward-thinking and creative approaches to addressing challenges and creating change in Rhode Island,” said Steinberg. “The Foundation is grateful for Letitia and John Carter’s dedication to and passion for Rhode Island and is proud to have transformed their dreams into one of the Foundation’s boldest programs.”

In addition to the two winners, the selection panel also named five finalist projects, which were recognized for their merit and potential.

The finalists were:

  • Lynae Brayboy proposed a smartphone app called Girl Talk that would provide sexual health information for girls ages 12 to 17.
  • Laura Briggs, Domenico Pacifici and Jonathan Knowles proposed the development, manufacturing and marketing of Solar Sail, an affordable and easily replicable textile photovoltaic system for solar power.
  • Al Dahlberg proposed “Get Ready Rhode Island,” which would create a statewide electric vehicle charging network.
  • Angela Jackson proposed the creation of a “pipeline of world language opportunities” in Mandarin Chinese, Arabic and Spanish for all K to 12 students.
  • Leo Pollock suggest creating “The Compost Plant,” which would be the first commercial compost facility in the state attached to a microbrewery contract facility. “Heat from the composting process would help provide hot water for the brewery, demonstrating that waste resources can serve as a catalyst for economic development,” said the Rhode Island Foundation.

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