As a 6-year-old accompanying his physician parents in their volunteer work in rural areas of Iran, Massoud Amin remembers meeting farmers who couldn’t water their crops and mothers who lost their babies in childbirth—all because they lacked electricity. “As soon as they got electricity, they could dig much deeper wells and bring water up. Access to electricity meant a jump in the quality of life and the economic well-being of the society,” says Amin, director of the U of M’s Technological Leadership Institute and Honeywell/H.W. Sweatt Chair in Technological Leadership. (Pictured here: the ancient city of Palangan, in Iranian Kurdistan, lit with electric street lights at dusk.)