At MIT, Low-Tech Inventions with a High Impact

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Amy Smith is not an easy person to track down. Even during the school year, this inventor and instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hops over to remote African towns and Latin American villages.

When she is on campus, the best bet for finding Ms. Smith is in her basement laboratory - a cluttered workshop with a long whiteboard, exotic souvenirs, and basic tools - known as D-Lab.

Unlike most of MIT, Smith's workshop is far from cutting-edge. There are no next-gen computers, no vials of polysyllabic chemicals, no fancy equipment. The space is decidedly low-tech - and that's the point. D-Lab students pinpoint practical problems in the …