We are delighted to inform you that Pallavi Gupta has joined us as Program Director for LASER PULSE as of April 1, 2021. Born and brought up in Uttar Pradesh India, Pallavi comes to LASER PULSE with more than 14 years of experience having worked across engineering, management consulting, social entrepreneurship and international development fields with...
Do you have an experience, project, or best practice on research translation your fellow LASER PULSE Network members should be aware of? Contact us at laserpulse@purdue.edu to see if we can feature your work in a subsequent newsletter.
POKET is an out of the box tool for researchers to deploy their own crowdsourcing engagements. The focus is on projects that can benefit from self-reported data, high-frequency data capture, citizen-generated data, participatory mapping or community-driven insights. POKET retrofits their suite of mobile and desktop tools so researchers can generate location-specific insights in a community, while...
A key component of LASER PULSE’s Embedded Research Translation model is the collaboration of researchers and practitioners in development research projects. LASER PULSE defines Embedded Research Translation as an iterative codesign process among academics, practitioners and other stakeholders in which research is intentionally applied to a development challenge. Core to this approach to translation are...
In the Exploring Blockchain Technology to Improve Food Security Through African Indigenous Vegetables project in Western Kenya, we have prioritized a co-design process between the research and research translation partners from the proposal development stage. Egerton University (research), Virginia Tech (research), and AgUnity (research translation) each bring their own, yet complementary, expertise to the project....
A new LASER PULSE project to develop and test an early childhood evidence-based intervention for social emotional learning in Uganda has begun to implement a train-the-trainer scale-up model. Due to travel constrictions, the team conducted trainings via teleconference with Nakaseke Primary Teachers College (PTC) trainers. While this approach allowed the project to complete critical training...
A recently-concluded LASER PULSE project, funded by USAID, can offer you insights into measuring local level capacity and commitment. In this research project, Texas A&M (led by Sylvie Hamie and Khalil Dirani) and University of Notre Dame (led by Tushi Baul and Lila Khatiwada) researchers collaborated with the Office of Learning, Evaluation, and Research (PPL/LER) in...
Enduring Results Study 3.0, led by USAID, CRS, and Accenture Development Partnership, is one of the LASER PULSE research studies under Private Sector Engagement buy-in. This study is the third in the series of Enduring Results Studies (ERS), which collect and disseminate evidence on the drivers of sustainability and scale in USAID’s partnerships with the private...
Psychosocial Support (PSS) interventions have a significant positive impact on students’ well-being and academic performance in areas of conflict and crisis. Results from a LASER PULSE-funded evaluation on Psychosocial Support in South Sudan show enhanced student reading scores and social well-being among students who received interventions. Common PSS interventions include activities focused on play, learning, and well-being,...
Colombia The Colombia RFA was announced February 7, 2020 in the sector areas of: YouthVenezuela migration responseIntegrated Rural Development The Colombia award process is continuing to refine selected proposals, review budget requests and obtain necessary documentation with regard to IRB, Assessment of Environmental Consequences and Mission concurrence. One of the awards have been fully executed, with an additional...
