Quench and Connect: Providing clean water and educational tools to ensure student success in Uganda

Dr. Kathryn Ely is an internationally-recognized structural biologist whose work focused on determining the 3-dimensional structures of proteins involved in cell death signaling and maintaining cellular architecture. As a researcher, she authored nearly 100 papers and served on scientific review panels for the National Cancer Institute.  She also trained more than 30 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from across the world.

Through interactions with international scientists and students Dr. Ely developed a greater awareness of the disparities in the quality of life in developing nations.  She recognized how the lack of access to basic services, primarily clean water, echoed across all aspects of life in developing nations. Without clean water, health standards suffer, as do educational activities.  In 2010, Dr. Ely turned her focus to humanitarian outreach and established Quench and Connect to provide clean water sources as well as health and education services in developing nations such as Uganda.