University of Washington engineers recently acquired a grant of US$900,000 from the US Department of Energy to design a cookstove that addresses the challenge of inefficient cookstoves, a problem that kills an estimated 3.5 million people annually (according to The Lancet GBD study). About 500 million people, 42% of the world cooks using biomass in inefficient cookstoves. This grant will help the engineers build affordable stoves adhering to stringent emission and efficiency standards. Read more here.