Stewart Isaacs got interested in developing solar-powered chicken egg incubators in 2016, when he was an undergraduate student. The project’s goal of supporting self-determination and food sovereignty in West Africa resonated with his desire to use his engineering skills to support communities in need and break down inequities. “I liked what the incubator project was trying to do,” he says, “but I didn’t think it would be interesting technically. I was wrong.”
Even as he pursued a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics, Isaacs kept a hand in the ongoing egg incubator project. He visited Burkina Faso to see the project in action. Then, in 2019, when he finished his master’s, he flew to Ghana to learn more. Propelled by nagging questions about the incubators’ solar power conversion, he decided to go for a PhD, which he earned this past May. He is now a postdoctoral fellow at MIT pursuing...
