CU Boulder Is Engineering a Better World
Styvers Kathuni strives for clean water in Kenya.
It’s a hot morning in northern Kenya. The sun lifts from the horizon as a camel lowers its head to drink from a community borehole, taking its fill for the days ahead.
For the local pastoralist families who depend on livestock like camels for transport, farming and milk production — not to mention elements of cultural expression and identity — that water means everything. So when a water pump fails, it’s not simply an infrastructure problem: It’s food, income, survival.
“Four billion people still lack access to safely managed drinking water — almost half the world’s population,” said John Edem Ecklu (MEnvEngr’23; PhD’25), a postdoctoral researcher with the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering and Resilience at CU Boulder. “But in some of these regions, people care just as much about having drinking water for their animals as they do about having safe drinking water for themselves because their animals are their livelihood.”
For more than two decades, the Mortenson Center has challenged engineers to think differently about global development and build better partnerships with communities around the world.
Instead of exporting answers, the center cultivates engineers who partner with locals to create practical, lasting solutions together.
Alongside members of these communities, students and engineers like Ecklu work to ensure boreholes stay functional for both people and livestock by collecting data, monitoring pumps and, most importantly, partnering with local leaders and investors to keep critical infrastructure running.
“We start by talking to the community,” said Ecklu, who is also an engineer with Virridy, a Mortenson Center spinout that supports global water access and quality monitoring. “Why is this problem here? Was there a solution previously that didn’t work out? What would be their preference in terms of a solution?
“Working with them to come to a consensus — valuing and taking community knowledge into account — it’s critical.”
Designed for Global Good
Founded at CU Boulder in the early 2000s, the Mortenson Center was originally the Engineering for Developing Communities program. In 2009, a landmark gift from Mauritz “Mort” Mortenson (CivEngr’58) and Alice Mortenson (HonDocHum’26) endowed and renamed the center.
Today, the Mortenson Center works alongside more than 80 global partners in 30 countries to improve water and food security, sanitation, energy and sustainable infrastructure.
But technology alone has never been the goal.
“The Mortenson Center is developing new models for global water, food and infrastructure security, using technologies and methods that are grounded in a deep understanding of why so many past efforts have fallen short,” said professor Evan Thomas (AeroEngr, Jour’06; MAeroEngr’06; PhD’09), the center’s director. “We treat food, water and energy as long-term services that require sustainable financing, ongoing monitoring and built-in accountability.”
Engineering in Action
When it comes to the field of global development, the Mortenson Center goes beyond pure theory, emphasizing hands-on opportunities for students to partner with communities to create sustainable, scalable and equitable engineering solutions to the problems they face.
“We treat food, water and energy as long-term services that require sustainable financing, ongoing monitoring and built-in accountability.” — Evan Thomas
Some students arrive shortly after completing their undergraduate degrees, while others bring in-depth experience leading projects around the world. Doctoral candidate Styvers Kathuni (PhDCivEngr’28) has been working to solve water challenges across Africa for years.
His passion for the work started around age 10, when his elementary school class in Kenya visited a hydropower plant.
“I was mesmerized by what was going on there — how they were playing around with water and getting electricity out of that,” he said.
Inspired, he dedicated his education and career to providing communities with safe, clean water. Kathuni now serves as the country director for the Millennium Water Alliance in Kenya, while also working toward his PhD with the Mortenson Center.
Fatma Köroğlu (MCivEngr’24; PhD’27), who has a background in the arts and engineering management, also seeks purpose-driven engineering.
Eski Mardin, in the Mesopotamian region of Turkey
“Sometimes opportunities come to us to work on a certain problem in the world,” she said. “Understanding that journey and thinking about how this problem would be solved — and what we need to consider for people to benefit ... just makes life interesting.”
Köroğlu’s doctoral research focuses on carbon financing and agricultural water management in Turkey. She’s exploring how carbon-financed programs can support farmers in adopting climate-smart practices, such as drip irrigation, while responding to the economic pressures and policy challenges they face. She also examines how these programs can be designed to be economically feasible and practical for the companies, consultants and other stakeholders who implement them.
“It humbles me, working for the good in the world, even as I experience the complexities and hardships,” said Köroğlu.
That’s what makes the Mortenson Center’s approach unique. Its students are not simply reading textbooks about engineering; they are actively working to implement solutions around the world.
Investing in Impact
The full impact of the Mortenson Center is measured not only by the elegance of the solutions it supports, but by the people who carry its approach into communities — and by those who invest in its future.
Earlier this year, Alice Mortenson, the Mortenson Family Foundation and Mortenson Construction donated an additional $10 million to the center, creating two new professorships and strengthening the center’s general endowment.
“The Mortenson Center has helped prepare generations of engineers to work on some of the world’s hardest challenges, from clean water and food security to climate resilience and infrastructure,” said Thomas. “This gift recognizes the power of engineering education to create practical, lasting impact.”
One conversation and one borehole at a time, the Mortenson Center is empowering and partnering with people to create better lives for themselves.
Photos courtesy of Styvers Kathuni and Fatma Köroğlu