The first conversation Colorado State University engineering student Samantha Preuss had with faculty member and political science alumnus Robert Serunjogi was about the importance of education.
Preuss was studying in the engineering building on campus where Serunjogi works when they met. After Serunjogi encouraged Preuss to keep working and studying, the two became friends — a friendship that evolved into a partnership built on their shared passions. Improving access to education by providing community-based solutions is one of these passions.
A senior design team made up of Preuss and fellow engineering students Kelli McGuire, Shelby Ardehali, Lauren Brainard and Monte Kalsbeek spent the past academic year developing a disposable menstrual pad made from agricultural waste, aiming to offer a sustainable solution for girls and women in low-resource communities who often lack access to menstrual hygiene products.
The idea was inspired by a conversation Pruess had with Serunjogi. They discussed Robert’s Village, a school and orphanage that he founded in his home country of Uganda to feed, house and educate hundreds of students.
Serunjogi said the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the work being done at his school and asked Preuss if she’d be interested in helping him.
“I was like, ‘I wonder if there’s an engineering project here that we can do,’” Preuss said. “I asked Robert to write down the biggest things at his school that were in need of help — what were the biggest issues that he was seeing?”
The first thing on Serunjogi’s list was sanitary pads. Without reliable menstrual products, many girls miss school during their periods or drop out entirely.
Sixty-four percent of female students are unable to attend school because they don’t have access to affordable menstrual care products in Uganda, ultimately limiting their educational opportunities.
“Education should be a human right,” Serunjogi said. “Education empowers people. So when I went back home, I said, ‘You know, we have to do this. I have to find some way I can do this.’”
The Kasooli senior design project was born out of Serunjogi’s answer to that initial question. Preuss spent the summer discussing the project with her peers. By August 2024, the project had been approved, and Preuss had a team of biomedical, chemical and biological and mechanical engineering students working alongside her.
During the research process, the team came across Days for Girls, a nonprofit that provides reusable pads to girls in developing countries who don’t have access to proper menstrual hygiene care.
“We first started with reusable products,” Preuss said. “And then as this project has evolved, we’ve transitioned it into locally sourced and locally manufactured disposable pads. … Our goal was to reduce the need for a washable insert.”
Recognizing that consistent access to clean water for washing posed a significant barrier, the team decided to develop a disposable insert for a reusable base in order to serve the needs of communities facing water scarcity.
“Engineering as a profession is really about service. That’s not how everybody sees it, but I think it’s about improving the world around you and asking how you do that using the science we have. I think it’s one of the most rewarding things I could do with my life.” –Samantha Preuss, CSU biomedical and mechanical engineering student
Taking inspiration from organizations like Sustainable Health Enterprises in Rwanda, which manufactures menstrual pads from banana fibers, the team focused on creating inserts using corn husks, which are the most commonly available agricultural byproduct in the area surrounding Robert’s Village.
Unlike many traditional senior design projects, which partner with established companies and industry clients, this project was venture funded. That meant the team wasn’t just solving an engineering problem; they were also building a model for economic sustainability.
“It was very important to try and figure out how we’re going to make it viable,” Preuss said. “We want this to be locally sustainable, so we look at how we can employ local labor and local materials to have a community solution.”
The creation of the insert began with chemical engineering students Brainard and Ardehali, who got to work washing and breaking down the corn husk, but the process wasn’t simple.
“We started with chemicals, but then we didn’t have the proper equipment for them because it’s a little hazardous,” Brainard said. “Then we realized, ‘Oh, people in developing countries aren’t going to be able to access hazardous waste properly and dispose of it properly.’”
So the team adapted and switched to a mechanical approach to breaking down the corn husk, but this wasn’t easy either.
To make the corn husk fibers absorbent, safe and nonirritating, they would have needed access to equipment more advanced than they would be able to feasibly reproduce for local manufacturing. Luckily, they discovered they would be able to source the fibers externally.
Once they had the proper fibers, the team began testing the absorbency of the material.
“We made this viscous liquid, just corn syrup and food dye, that is supposed to mimic the viscosity (of period blood),” Ardehali said. “We would titrate that for 15 minutes, and we would do that for two intervals to see how much it can absorb in total in that amount of time.”
Throughout the testing process, the students focused on accuracy, ensuring that the final product could actually work reliably in the real world.
With this in mind, they began calculating how long they would need to titrate the liquid in order to mimic average flow rates so they could test the absorbency and capacity for those amounts.
“We tried to make it more accurate because it’s not like when you’re on your period, you just suddenly dump a bunch of liquid on the pad and it just has to absorb,” McGuire said. “So we wanted to do the titration so it would be slower and a little more realistic.”
Throughout the development process, the team tested their design against comparable products to ensure the functionality of their product, and they were able to develop an insert with the same absorbency.
For the students behind Kasooli, their goals extend beyond the senior design project. They hope to continue testing on the product itself and establish a sustainable manufacturing site in Luweero, Uganda, in the next five years.
Two of the team’s members, Preuss and McGuire, will be traveling to Uganda through the President’s Leadership Program this summer to connect with students at Robert’s Village and the local community to get design feedback. They also plan on meeting with organizations to discuss workforce development and possible manufacturing collaborations in Uganda.
“Engineering as a profession is really about service,” Preuss said. “That’s not how everybody sees it, but I think it’s about improving the world around you and asking how you do that using the science we have. I think it’s one of the most rewarding things I could do with my life.”
Reach Hannah Parcells at science@collegian.com or on social media @hannahparcells.
