Mouhsine's Personal Statement .....

Enjoying life and tea in Tiwerdiwe, Ourika Valley, Morocco (2004)

While visiting poor rural and areas in Morocco, I often get asked by people how I can help them find jobs in the city. I am saddened by their desperation. These are proud people. They have unique skills that allowed them to live from limited land resources. They know that a life in the city is no luxury. As the singer Cheb Khaled says in his song "I left a place where I owned a tent and I was a master, to be a foreigner is a foreign land ...". Moving to the city often means joining the ranks of poor city dwellers. When the land around them can not sustain them anymore, the city is the only option. This is the situation that defines my desire to design and engineer solutions to make life in these areas more sustainable. In January 2004, I founded SunSmiles, a non-profit organization that develop technical solutions for poor rural areas. I am also contracted by various agencies to provide technical assistance to NGOs in developing countries.

Before my involvement in sustainable technologies, I had an industrial engineering career interest for many years. After graduating as a mechanical engineer in Morocco,  I pursued a Master of Sciences at École Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada, and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. After graduation, I worked in design and manufacturing of cellular phones for Motorola Inc. Later, I was a senior project engineer at ABAQUS Inc. where I worked on structural and thermal simulation (finite-element analysis) for customers in the automotive, medical, and electronic industries.

Mouhsine's Resume