TrickleS

I did my undergraduate training in Ghana, doctoral degree in Alabama, USA and postdoctoral training in Boston, USA. During the course of my education I have seen a global effort to make quality education accessible. For instance there is a drive towards making journal publications free and open-access to every student and faculty in the world. However, one area that is still under-developed is affordable access to quality professional seminars. The major expense to organizing these seminars is the institution paying for the professional's travel and accommodation. 

We have created a platform, TrickleS, that eliminates the travel and accommodation cost be leveraging on the professional personal trips.

Poor quality education widens the socioeconomic gap while increasing poverty globally. Academic institutions globally are constantly searching for expert professionals and researchers to present their work to their students and staff. Seminars play a crucial role in students training--- making it possible to have real life hands-on approach to their careers and academic goals.  Research has shown that students who do not get access to seminars during college have a high likelihood of dropping out or not graduating in time.

However, the cost of organizing seminars is extremely expensive especially when the institution pays for invited speaker’s travels and accommodation. Due to the high cost of the seminars only few well endowed institutions can organize frequent seminars compared to less endowed institutions or institutions located in emerging countries.

Finally, it cost the department thousands of dollars for the speaker to present an-hour seminar. This increases the carbon footprint of professionals and also unproductivity.

Our primary goal is to extend accessibility to quality education to college and graduate students in under-resourced institutions in 'developed' countries and developing countries. We do this by connecting experts visiting a specific city with institutions at their destination. The platform connects professionals such as faculty members, postdoctoral fellows and entrepreneurs to universities and colleges who needs these experts in their school. For example, the platform can connect a professor in genetics at Harvard to a Biochemistry department in Ghana.

Also, it solves universities perennial problem of student drop outs. Through seminars the university can retain students and improve performance.

To provide a cost-effective solution to this problem, we built TrickleS, a platform that connects researchers and professionals to academic institutions. The platform significantly eliminates two major costs (travel and accommodation) associated with seminar organization. When a professional adds a seminar to their personal travel itinerary, it saves the institution the cost of paying for her travels and accommodation. 

In addition the platform enables academic institutions to efficiently find local professionals to present their work to students. This way academic institutions can acquire excellent speakers at the fraction of the cost. 

TrickleS Goals:

• TrickleS allows less endowed institutions to attract the same caliber of professionals as well endowed institutions. 
• Also, developing countries can now invite renowned professionals which was harder before this platform. 
• Finally, professionals who would like to give back to the community can now be able to do so.

TrickleS enable professionals to consolidate their travels to reduce the carbon footprint of their travels and reduce travel fatigue. Usually professionals travel to the same city separately for personal or professional purposes. Sometimes a professional may visit a city like Boston three times in a month to present their work. This increases waste while increasing the carbon emission of their travels. Through TrickleS the professional can consolidate their travels.

We combine the professional's personal travels to their professional engagements. Through trickleS, the professional can consolidate their travels; combine their personal and professional travels and find speaking engagement easily.

Without TrickleS, institutions would have to rely on the traditional method of inviting speakers which is costly and inefficient.

Our solution uses matching algorithm to connect speakers' expertise to departments and colleges needs. As a professional travels globally his skills are not utilized. TrickleS identifies these skills and gives the professional an opportunity to discuss their work at their destination.

We rely on internet of things to match speakers to institutions.

Colleges that organize seminars show an increase in student retention by about 70% compared to colleges that do not provide this crucial resource. 

Seminars:

• Improve academic performance.
• Broaden the scope of student learning.
• Improves stress management.
• Understand the demands in a particular field.
• Understanding deficit in knowledge.
• Procedural improvement in a field.
• Critical Thinking, intellectual flexibility and independent thinking.

Seminars can be organized cost effectively through webinars. However, student prefer the face-to-face seminars because it encourage them to:

• Practice Listening
• Question theories
• Stating and defending claims
• Favor dialogue
• Consider alternate point of view
• Promote student social skills through discussions and celebrating diversity.

The cost of organizing seminars is quite high. An average department will spend $3000 to organize monthly seminars (mostly for travels and accommodation). This cost (yet another problem) has limited the number of seminars organized in colleges especially in minority and under-resourced institutions. TrickleS eliminates this cost completely.

Currently, we are serving professionals in Boston area. We also have professionals from all over the world. Most of customers are early career scientists such as postdoctoral fellows and assistant professors. 

We have piloted this project with 80 people and tested the service in institutions in USA, Ghana, Mexico, United Kingdom and Europe. In the coming years we will scale up to 300 in a year and in 5 years make the platform accessible to all institutions in the world.

Scale up to many cities in the USA. We are pilot testing the platform in Boston and we hope to scale it up to many cities in the USA before expanding to major cities globally.

Marketing Barriers

• Fundraising
• Marketing staff

Technical Barriers

• Software engineer
• Accountant
• Lawyer

• Actively looking for investors and applying for grants.
• Looking for technical experst such as a software engineer to build the TrickleS app.

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Andrews Agbleke

The founder has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He has skills in seminar organization and website development as well. During graduate studies he co-founded Sena Institute of Technology, a nonprofit for research development in Ghana. He has management and technology innovation skills. He is prototyping TrickleS mainly in Boston to test key concepts in the platform.

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Revenue

• Crowdsource to make the platform free and accessible to speakers.
• Charge a subscription fee and matching fees to the institution for every connection.
• Grants

Expenses

• Server fees
• Maintaining the platform such as hosting and security fees
• Marketing
• Staff salaries

Through institutional payment for our services. Institutions will be charged a small fee for our service. The fees will enable us to continue to provide the service at an affordable level for all institutions.

To connect with other solvers to partner and collaborate on building a stronger product. Also, I would like to build a team through the Solve network. Finally, I would like to collaborate with other organizations in the education sector. 

How do solve community move from pilot phase to roll out to a larger community. I would like to interact more with other solvers at my stage in prototyping to learn more about their strategy. And also be involved in the community to share ideas and learn from each other.

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I would first partner with universities in Boston including Harvard, MIT, BU, BC, Northeastern, Tuft and Umass. I will also partner with Community colleges such as Bunker Hill community College and smaller universities such as Lesley Universities. Professionals visiting Boston can present in any of these universities. Also, professionals from these universities can present their work to other institutions when they travel out of Boston.

• Professional organizations
• Colleges
• Departments
• Conference organizers

Using blockchain and AI, we will improve the matching process to make it robust and more predictive. It will also reduce the cost and time required to generate a perfect match. It will help us identify institutions with the most need so that we can serve them better. 

We will be able to predict and score matching probailities that will help institutions to contact the best match and reduce waste. Also professional can access the institutions requirement s that they can apply for the best fitted seminar. This alignment will ensure that both parties needs are matched.

With AI, we will be able to integrate functionalities such as weather forecast and trip status/advice to professionals during their travels. We can give trip advise through our platform such as emergencies, latest news and exciting places to see. 

With AI, users will have an enriched experience on our platform.

The price will be used to expand the platform to minority institutions and 2-year colleges where schools have the biggest challenge in recruiting expert speakers to their institutions. By recruiting experts to present seminars at these institutions, students will be motivated to take up STEM and develop interest in STEM education. 

There is nothing more fulfilling than to see a scientists who some years ago was in your shoes. We hope to inspire students to take up STEM through the scientists who talk at their schools.

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The data we generate will be used purposely for connecting speakers to their destination institutions. Data will be secured on encrypted system. The prize money will be used to secure data from breaches.

We will encourage more professionals to combine trips and consolidate activities to reduce carbon waste that is generated when we make multiple trips to the same destination.

Through TrickleS, we hope to reduce carbon footprint and improve the aviation emission rates.

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