10/01/2026
🎉 Cheers for alumnus Greg Bixler, the 2026 recipient of Ohio State's Alumni Medalist Award, the single highest honor bestowed by The Ohio State Alumni Association. It is presented to alumni who have gained national or international distinction as outstanding representatives of their chosen fields or professions, bringing extraordinary credit to the university and significant benefit to humankind.
Bixler is CEO of Design Outreach, a humanitarian engineering nonprofit he co-founded in 2013. He leads a team of engineers, development experts and volunteers who create practical technologies that save lives and strengthen communities. Design Outreach works in 17 countries, primarily in Africa, and has impacted more than one million people. He also has been a College of Engineering lecturer since 2013!
“We started with the biggest problem: contaminated water,” he says. “Billions of people suffer from it every day. The water pumps used in rural communities often break within months and force people back to disease-ridden ponds and streams.”
In response, Design Outreach developed the LifePump, a hand pump engineered to last for years instead of months. The organization has installed over 600 LifePumps, providing clean water to about 500,000 people.
“What people need isn’t just a water pump,” Bixler says. “They need the assurance they’ll have water tomorrow. That’s what creates hope.” More recently, his team created the MaxLife Centralizer, a replacement component that costs a few dollars and can extend a traditional water pump’s lifespan by years.
Design Outreach also is addressing medical-technology challenges. It developed a gravity-powered device to treat wounds in clinics without reliable electricity. Hospitals in Kenya and Malawi are evaluating the technology as Design Outreach works toward FDA approval.
Bixler says Ohio State guided his journey, with mentors supporting his interest in humanitarian engineering and connecting him with service-learning projects in Honduras, Guatemala and Ghana during his PhD. He has remained closely tied to the university, teaching a course for the past decade on appropriate technologies for developing countries and inspiring students to use engineering to improve lives worldwide.
