Many changes have occurred here at the OEDK the last few weeks. The technology team has gone through a large turnover, and we now have 3 new members (not including myself). Becky, Erica, and Mary Kate are taking over for the Breath Alert, AutoSyP, and IncuBaby, respectively. In fact, of the 5 other team members, only 2 will be the same when I leave as when I arrived. Former technology team members are going to medical school or beginning work abroad, and Fall is often the start of such ventures.
All of this coming and going means a few things. First, it means a lot of goodbye lunches (yum!), but, more importantly, it means that there has been a great deal of knowledge transfer lately. It’s so important that each of the new tech team members fully understand the technology they are working on, including the device’s history, how to build it, its most common malfunctions, and what future work must be completed on the device.
On Monday, the whole technology team sat in on a presentation of an overview of Rice360. We discussed the history of the organization, key members at Rice and at QECH in Malawi, past technologies, and current projects. Though I already knew about many of the projects (and even presented about IncuBaby), I learned a great deal about the history of the organization and about QECH. It was a really good opportunity to understand the full scope of Rice360 and the work we do. I’m experienced with the technology team, but there is so much work beyond the technologies that must be done to actually implement the devices. I gained an even greater appreciation for this organization and how far it has come.
On a smaller scale, Mary Kate and I have also been working a great deal on knowledge transfer. I’ll be leaving Houston at the end of July, and before I leave, it is important that Mary Kate fully understands the incubator and its quirks. She and I have perused the CAD files for the device, we’ve discussed various design decisions that led to the current device, we explored the code and the circuit (with help from my senior design teammate, Caleb), and we’ve made a thorough to-do list that will guide the next few months of work on the incubator.
I’ve done my best to provide Mary Kate with a number of resources so that she will be fully equipped to take on the incubator project, and I’m confident that she’ll do a great job in these coming months!