The BK21 FOUR (Fostering Outstanding Universities for Research) R&E Center for Sustainable Living System at KU convened a MAKEathon with the Centre for Industrial Sustainability at University of Cambridge, UK, on the topics of dietary changes and climate crisis.

The event, held for 5 days on October 30 and from November 3 to 6, was centered on the theme “How to link climate crisis with our daily food choices?” as a response to climate crisis through dietary changes. The MAKEathon, held both on- and offline, was conducted as part of a collaborative project with the Office of the Graduate School. Participants included the Business School BK21 R&E Center, the BK FOUR Future Education Project, the School of Mechanical Engineering, the BK21 Socialware IT R&E Center, the R&E Center for Precision Public Health and the R&E Center for Environmental Science and Ecological Engineering.

The first day began with the greeting from Lee Kwan-young, the Executive Vice President for Research. After that, webinars were conducted by Professor Chung Hae-kyung from Hoseo University with the theme “Healthy and Sustainable Table Settings for Korean Food” and by Dr. Robert Beyer from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research with the theme “Emissions & Extinctions: Global Food Production and Climate Change.” The participating teams started to realize their ideas through brainstorming, sketching and prototyping, and they were helped through mentoring. The mentors included sustainability, food security and carbon neutrality experts from the University of Cambridge, Korean food industry experts from E-Mart and start-up-centered professors from the Crimson Start-up Support Foundation.

Anna-Marie Greenaway (Center for Technology Management, Institute for Manufacturing at Cambridge), a Carbon Zero management expert with a 30-year career, was one of the mentors. She said, “It was an honor to meet many students through the MAKEathon. Although the mentoring was provided online, I was able to feel the energy that the students emitted on the site to develop their ideas. Sharing ideas with each other and thinking about how to maximize their effects in terms of speed and scale, we can accelerate our response to the climate crisis.” She also expressed her zeal for the MAKEathon, saying, “The communication via the online participation was very effective, but if an opportunity is given, I would like to participate in person next time to add impetus to the important international cooperation between KU and Cambridge.”

The event was conducted as a blended MAKEathon, both on- and offline, at the MakerSpace site, as well as through online platforms such as Zoom, Slack and Miro. The participants included graduate, undergraduate and exchange students from KU as well as international participants from Thailand, UK and other countries.
The team memorEAT, which won the grand prize in the finals on November 6, developed a mobile scale called Scale EAT, which displays carbon emissions in weight. The second prize went to the team eco-lution, which developed a food garbage can that visualizes and compares the amount of good garbage from individual kindergarten classes to motivate children to minimize their leftovers. The two prize-winning teams will be given opportunities to further develop their ideas, with services for prototyping and expert mentoring provided by the Crimson Start-up Support Foundation.

The Sustainable MAKEathon Series is a platform prepared by introducing to Korea the open innovation process that has been developed for 2 years in 10 European countries and is designed to help Korean students to produce serious and creative ideas on the issues of sustainability from new points of view. Beginning this year, global and domestic MAKEathons will be continuously held each year on various topics, such as housing, fashion and education. Many students are expected to participate in the MAKEathon series, lending their efforts to create significant change concerning the issues of sustainability and climate crisis through novel ideas and start-ups.