An elderly lady in Shevchenkove had been sleeping in her bathtub for two months, because the bathroom was the only warm place in her home, whose windows were all broken.

Cambridge University Ph.D. student Harry Blakiston Houston met her last winter when he travelled to Ukraine with a small team of engineers. And while there are millions of broken windows all over Ukraine, it was in her house that he installed the first one of his newly-invented windows.

“We were able to get her back to some kind of normality after the windows went in. The house was immediately warmer and lighter – she was able to rearrange everything and actually live in her home again. That was the start of it – the signal we needed, to go, ‘Right, ok, we’re on to something here’.”