‘Good things do not come easy. The road is lined with pitfalls’ Finally! we are in Houston despite having faced challenges to get our Visa, I would say it over and over again that the challenges and the wait was worthy it. As of now I am in my 3rd week and am so excited to share my experience for the past 2 weeks. Coming from a country where women in science and Innovation are a minority, I must say that I am motivated and impressed by the setting at Rice 360 where women are a majority. I believe that science is not only a boy’s game, its everyone’s game. Its about where we are and where we’re going.
Houston has a totally different setting from Malawi in terms of the weather, the transportation and many other aspects but am so glad to say we are adapting so well to our new environment. Challenges will always be there in adapting to a new environment but all thanks to Veronica and the last group of interns from Rice who went to Malawi, they have really helped us settle in well.
The past 2 weeks have mainly been for research on the project that I and Micah will be implementing. Currently, information from medical devices is extracted via a wired connection (USB), this process is time consuming and tiresome. Our project is to develop a system that will allow wireless access of data from the medical devices via Wifi. This system will assist with continuous nursing care and also important maintenance information or patients’ data for research will be downloaded securely. Last Thursday, on 10th October we presented the project plan to our supervisors. Analyzing the users of the system which includes; clinical staff, researchers and manufactures we saw that a website will be user friendly for all since it can be accessed on both mobile phones and Personal Computers. Many thanks to our supervisors; Meghan and Chloe who continue giving us an insight on how best we are to implement the project.
Fun activities cannot be excluded; we visited the Museum of Natural Science where I got to admire the Cockrell Butterfly center and Permanent Exhibits. The NASA trip was just one of a kind, it’s a dream come true! I got to see the Saturn V and the training place for astronauts. Last Saturday we had dinner with fellow Malawians in Houston, I had a good time interacting with them and the most exciting thing about it was that I ate ‘Nsima’ our staple food in Malawi. Looking forward to another great week!
