Amy Janel Pickering

Amy’s motivation for multidisciplinary study at Stanford stems from the goal to identify, demonstrate, and evaluate sustainable solutions to reduce the global health burden associated with inadequate hygiene practices and the lack of access to safe water and sanitation. Following this research path, she aims to assess the degree to which various communication and marketing methods, product features, and financing options are able to stimulate behaviour change and household demand for products designed to effectively improve health.

Amy’s previous academic training in environmental engineering inspired and gave her the skills to contribute to the design and performance assessment of the UV Tube, a low-cost household water disinfection technology that employs UV light to inactivate pathogens. Implementing the UV Tube technology has provided Amy with many valuable experiences, including performing Tsunami relief work in Sri Lanka and serving as the Director of Project Development for the non-profit organization, Fundación Cántaro Azul in La Paz, Mexico. In this position, Amy helped develop and implement a viable dissemination model for the UV Tube that emphasizes health education and the promotion of effective hygiene practices.

Amy’s exposure to environmental policy comes from her stint as an environmental engineer in the Office of Water for the US Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC. As a member of both regulatory development and rule implementation workgroups, she gained some insight into the complexity of domestic environmental policy development and enforcement. Despite her poorly hidden lack of patience for the appalling inefficiencies that prevail in government agencies, she appreciatively received a Bronze Medal for her commendable service and promptly escaped to South East Asia on a William J. Fulbright Scholarship to wander around with her camera conducting a documentary photography project focused on the interaction between people and water. View Photos >>

Most recently Amy has coordinated an Initiative on Safe Water and Sanitation supported by the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley. She facilitated collaboration among an interdisciplinary group of faculty researchers and provided support and advice to students conducting projects to promote health, hygiene, and point-of-use water treatment methods in Mexico, Sri Lanka, India, Madagascar, and Ecuador.

Amy holds a BS in Biological Engineering from Cornell University and an MS in Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. At Stanford, she is a William C. and Jeanne M. Landreth Fellow. Amy also claims to be an avid photographer, runner, hiker, and rock climber, with a strong passion for preventing children from dying from diarrhea around the world.