[4] "At one point I had sort of an epiphany, sitting at my desk looking out over the bush, when I realized I wanted to do engineering for developing countries", Smith said.
[5] "People in the developing world scrape every last ounce of life that they can out of objects, and my students used to bring me things to fix, and I always enjoyed being able to do that.
She founded the MIT D-Lab program, which works with people around the world to develop and advance collaborative approaches and practical solutions to global poverty challenges.
D-Lab's mission is pursued through an academics program of more than 20 MIT courses and student research and fieldwork opportunities; research groups spanning a variety of sectors and approaches; and a group of participatory innovation programs they call innovation practice.
She also co-founded Innovations in International Health to facilitate collaboration among researchers around the world to develop medical technologies for resource-poor settings.
"[5] Smith's designs include the screenless hammer mill and the phase-change incubator, and she is also involved with the application of the Malian peanut sheller in Africa.
[4] Smith invented a motorized hammermill that converts grain into flour which she successfully tested in Senegal.
Smith's mill sifted out finished flour aerodynamically using a simpler design that could be manufactured locally by village blacksmiths.
"[9] More information on the corn sheller including instructions on how to make it is available under a Creative Commons License at the D-Lab Resources page.
Smith co-founded the MIT IDEAS Competition where teams of student engineers design projects to make life easier in the developing world.
"[10] WorldChanging reported on August 14, 2007 that the results from the first International Development Design Summit had been very positive with end products including an off-grid refrigeration unit tailored for rural areas using an evaporation based cooling method to store perishable food and a low-cost greenhouse from recycled and widely available materials.
"[12] The workshop was co-organized in October 2011 by industrial design faculty at the Delft University of Technology and the D-Lab of MIT.
[13] Smith and colleagues at D-Lab have been working on a new type of curriculum - Creative Capacity Building or CCB.
"[14] The CCB curriculum teaches the design process without expecting strong literacy or other academic training.