Global Engineer

In my work I try to cover the full gamut of "technology", from working with villages in developing countries to advising multi-nationals on how to lay out their far flung factories for optimal efficiency. If you have a need for "lean six sigma" and things like statistical process control, plant layout (large or small), factory physics, metallurgy/materials science, new business development and product introduction, cutting edge R&D, technical documentation of the best kind, and similar - now you know where to find me. I have a technical bent, and I try to exercise it in both my vocation and avocations - finding  solutions that provide clean water, smoke free kitchens, stronger alloys, cheaper consumer goods, and better medical devices is what I do, but change engineering better describes what is important to me. It often turns out that the technology part is easy, but getting it adopted in a way so that its potential is realized is the challenge. I tend to spend a lot of time sitting and absorbing the present situation, while pondering how to get to the one envisioned - language and cultural barriers are common on my projects, so rushing things rarely helps. Solutions tend to involve more people than was originally expected, and more kinds of skills. I thrive on excellent reporting, so that experiences are not lost.

I live in Geneva, Switzerland now, arriving here from the San Francisco area where I worked in medical device development and learned to help the world through Engineers Without Borders and Catapult Design.  Through them I have been fortunate enough to work with communities all over the world, advising in such areas as biomass powered electricity microgrids (India), ruggedized wheelchair manufacturing (Indonesia and Vietnam), improved cooking stoves (Peru, Guatemala, Darfur, and more), sustainable energy for hospitals (Rwanda), better agricultural practices (Africa), improved latrines (Cambodia), and financing mechanisms for renewable energy projects (Costa Rica).  I particularly specialize in working with organizations to scale up their new products, so that they can deliver the maximum impact by delivering the best quality at the lowest cost.  

Before that, I worked in China for 2 years manufacturing rare earth permanent magnets for Magnequench International - a fascinating experience, that gave me invaluable experiences in every aspect of manufacturing, from supply chain development to quality assurance.  I came to love hands on factory physics via an unusual path, having started my career at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, where I conducted both basic and applied research for 10 years.  Along the way we invented new ways of making advanced materials  by rapid solidification, and I jumped at the chance to migrate to the private sector and commercialize these.

You can request more information by emailing me at csellers42 (at) yahoo.com.

Travel - Stories and Photos

Sometimes I feel like I have traveled a lifetime, but outside of a few business trips (Greek islands and Australia) and North America (Canada, Mexico, Alaska) much of it has actually only been in the last 6 years or so. When you live in China for 2 years (manufacturing magnets) there is a tendency to see the rest of that end of the other side of the globe while you are there - if only because you are constantly making visa runs to surrounding countries. So its almost natural to accumulate them... Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and so on over those years (plus another year staggering from Bali to Kathmandu, the slow way). Since the digital camera and crude methods for distributing digital photos had just become available I got in the habit of spending the evenings weaving mine into travelogues - to tell distant friends what I was up to, and create a bit of a record (and it was a break from writing technical reports on the wonders of molten metal processing).

Many travelogues are in Word format only, since crude internet cafes were not appropriate for real time reports, but things that have made it to the web so far are here:
http://travelswithcharlie2.blogspot.com/
http://travelswithcharlie.blogspot.com/
The one listed first is the original one, explaining travelogues and such, and the one listed second continues once blogger seemed to restrict my total length. Posts in these start at the bottom so that the most recent ones are shown first. I highly recommend the ones on trekking in Nepal!

Just photos (only the best ones!) have migrated to flickr and tend to be organized by trips/countries:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zen_traveler/sets/

Appropriate Technology

One avocation these days is finding ways to "travel with a purpose" and apply my technical skills toward improving the quality of life in developing countries around the world - you could say that my work in high tech fields (e.g. permanent magnets for consumer electronics, etc.) and disposable (single use) medical devices also helps folks... but only where they can be afforded.

I am not much of an organization joiner any more, after years of belonging to almost everything imaginable and it it didn't exist I tried to start something new to meet the need, but these days I am a card carrying member of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) and ETHOS (Engineers in Technical and Humanitarian Opportunities of Service). The first is involved in the widest possible range of aid opportunities, while the second tends to focus on cooking technologies, particularly ones using biomass as a fuel.

I helped start the Appropriate Technology Design Team (ATDT) of the local chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB-SFP) in late 2005 as a way to deploy locally sustainable "technologies" in a rapid fashion when called upon - whether theses needs relate to clean water, disaster relief, cooking stoves, shelter, energy generation, or whatever. The first project that came to me was known simply as the Darfur stove, for cooking in Sudanese refugee camps - there is plenty to read on the web about its present progress, and the key part to me is that it can be made from sheet metal and somewhat simple tools, right in the camps, by the residents. Because of my R&D and industrial background I have peculiar interests and hopefully potential contributions - manufacturing, quality control, efficiency and process optimization, simple statistics for such aspects, technical documentation, integration of somewhat redundant global efforts, effective dissemination of technology (treating new, to the geographic area at least, innovations as "new products" and using commercial models for such), technical troubleshooting/problem solving and root cause analysis, metallurgy and materials science, global sourcing of innovation and resources, research and development efforts and design of experiments, data mining and global sharing of AT, historical uses of similar lower technologies, and so forth. I advise as a consultant, but usually volunteer my help for the appropriate ability to participate in programs.

Some key links for these include:
EWB-USA is the national organization - http://www.ewb-usa.org/
EWB-SFP is our San Francisco Professional chapter - http://www.ewb-sfp.org/
My general site and posts just for the ATDT - http://ewbappropriatetechnology4.blogspot.com/
My site/posts on improved stoves in particular (ETHOS oriented) - http://improvedstoves.blogspot.com/
My site/posts just on the subset of stoves which address IAP is here - http://iapstoves.blogspot.com/
And a Tom Miles miracle site/forum used for many ETHOS members when posting global stoving articles about their experiences and developments (and I post here - see the Contributors tab for a list; related forums an discussion groups on gasification and terra preta are near here too) is here:
http://www.bioenergylists.org/
The conference proceedings of past ETHOS conferences are here:
http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/ethos/proceedings.php. You can always find out more about my most recent activities by Googling on "Charlie Sellers" plus some key word such as "stove", "biomass", "appropriate technology" or similar.

Some of my work is done through established organizations such as these and many similar technical NGOs, and my general interest in bottom up change also leads me to solo, self funded, efforts where I try to increase my knowledge of the field or situation - before I represent myself as a potential adviser.  I travel easily, very basically, and often.
I work on topics such as clean water, shelter, disaster relief, alternative energy, metallurgical and small factory operations problem solving, biofuel gasification, new "technology" introduction and social change from a community's point of view, and a focus of mine tends to be cooking stoves - for household, commercial use, or institutions (orphanages, hospitals, prisons, etc.). This tends to be a technology and manufacturing oriented field so my technical skills can be put to good use - 3 billion people depend on biomass for their cooking needs every day, a few billion have limited electricity, and a billion have no electrical power. It turns out that the field of appropriate technology (and even improved cooking stoves) is huge, and the number of different different technically oriented groups working on technical approaches to poverty alleviation is substantial. A relatively new organization for advising on these things is Catapult Design (http://catapultdesign.org/), a veritable SWAT team of experienced engineers striving for social change in the developing world via careful introduction of locally sustainable technologies.

An Introduction to My Interests

Charlie Sellers presently (2015) lives in Geneva, Switzerland.  My training is in Physics (B.S. from the College of William and Mary) and Materials Science (Ph.D., Northwestern University) but by now that is a small slice of my experiences - it ignores the restaurant and goats and such in Idaho, fixing factories around the world, finding satisfaction in delivering new products and processes, 2 years working in China and then another one traveling the hard way from Bali to Kathmandu and beyond, and all the trips as I try to contribute to the field of "development engineering".