These past weeks we have been working on developing the website which is going to be used by Clinical staff, Researchers and Manufactures to access information from medical devices via Wi-Fi. So far we have finished designing the interface of the website and the backend programming (logic coding) of the website is almost done as well. Programming the Arduino so that it should send data to our website is the next thing we are doing this week.

In a student’s life, there are technical skills which are acquired in classes but beyond these skills are other skills which can only be acquired by living. Throughout my internship I have also acquired some of these skills which include;

• Flexibility, Houston being an international city there are people having different cultures and beliefs. For one to interact well with the people and to adapt to the environment you need to be flexible all cultures.
• Interpersonal abilities, in the course of my internship I have been able to build relationships with people who are around me
• Time management is a skill that is so crucial, in Houston everybody just seems to be in a rush and everything always goes according to schedule. Talk of the Metro bus, just being late by a minute you will miss it.
• Self-confidence is also another skill that I have acquired. Throughout my internship I have discovered that if you do not believe in yourself, your skills and abilities then no one else will believe in you.
• Public speaking
• Ability to accept and learn from criticism.
• Global curiosity, interacting with different people has made me to become interested in new cultures from all around the world, learning new languages and trying out new food.

The development of these skills will help me in my next semester to find new ways of thinking and problem solving, build confidence both in spoken skills and for group collaboration, to analyze options and make decisions, to develop a greater sense of self-awareness and appreciation for others. To plan, organize and prioritize my school work in a more efficient way than I used to do before. Adaptive thinking will help me to easily learn new software or programs. Having undergone an Engineering design process before, it will be easy for me to implement my final year project since all engineering projects follow the same design process.

 

 

This is the final week to work on our project before we start preparations for the final presentation to take place on November 16, 2018. I am glad to mention that the website we designed is now coming into reality though with some few modifications to our initial design. In our initial design we did not include a database because with time constraints we thought we wouldn’t finish the project by the schedule. After doing a thorough research we have come to realize the need of a database in our website that will keep the record of the users and their credentials. We now have to learn database development with MSQL and then develop it. As a result, we take most of the work home so that by Friday November 6, 2018, we should be done with the project. We have also started doing our website development with Visual studio because it is easier to incorporate a database than working with notepad.

Through this internship, I have been equipped with the right technical and non-technical skills. These skills will help me in my studies when I get back to Poly and also in future after I graduate and continue pursuing my carrier. Let me take this advantage to share some of non-technical skills I have acquired. The presentations we have had with the tech team and Dr. Leautaud and the questions posed to us during presentations and also the talks on the meetings with the people who occasionally visit our lab to learn about the projects done in it, have helped me to learn and polish my communication skills. With the knowledge of my audience I am able to use the right words in my presentations so that everyone understands what I am communicating.Working on this project has taught me that every design may attract alterations before and after you start implementing it, as such I have to be ready to accept such changes but without compromising the project specifications.Working on a team has also helped me learn to accept ideas from others, contribute my ideals, ask questions where I do not understand and discuss the best way to tackle a problem. Through the help of our project supervisors and Dr. Leautaud I have learnt to plan every single day, as in what I want to achieve by the end of that particular day and then work by the plan. This is an effective way that helps in tasks completion in time, with this skill, I will be able to complete my assignment and my personal work in time than panicking with the due dates.

 

Time seems to have just flew by at this point in Houston, but at the same relentless speed of time so did our project run. We moved on to do some calculations that would help us come up with a design that would remove dust particles of at least 10 microns in side with the best achievable efficiency but with minimal pressure drop losses. After some days of pondering and doing the calculations we went back to SOLIDWORKS software with design dimensions that proved to produce better results from the calculations. The insight of our supervisors has kept us going this far, we had another meeting with the supervisors and Dr Leautaud on which we delivered an account on the project progress. These meeting have been of a significant help to us as it helps us get more ideas from all the supervisors that contributed positively to the progress of the projects. Moving from there, in the fifth week we started to 3-D print the prototype. It was quite an exciting feeling for me and my partner to finally see the prototype in its physical form. Back at our home university we do not at present have a 3-D printer and so I am grateful for this programme as it is introducing us to many technologies that are currently not available in Malawi. It took about three days to print and assemble the prototype and it came out as we had designed it, thanks to our supervisors Grant and Jack who helped us in doing the printing.

The few weeks that I have spent working with Rice 360 have been of significance for my personal career development such that as each day passes by, I see myself developing into a better problem solver through all the challenges that we’ve faced and the brilliant solutions that we have witnessed throughout the project progress so far. In additional to that, getting to work in the same room with the fellows that are working on very big projects that will certainly impact the world and learning from their ideas, insights and skills has just been a joy to me, I am just humbled to be part of this great team and to contribute toward the improvement of global health. With all the knowledge that I have acquired through this programme so far it will definitely give me a better approach in my final year project at school, and it has already changed my attitude toward school in general as I’ve learnt through the programme that there are people out there whose lives can be saved through the knowledge that I’ve acquired through this internship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In week four we finalized our decisions on the dimensions of the cyclone separator we have been working on. We wrote an excel sheet to do all the complex calculations automatically to make it easier for us. With the help of this Excel sheet we managed to come up with the dimensions that would theoretically give us the required values of pressure drop and efficiency. Then from the dimensions, we proceeded to making the adjustments in our previous Solid works model. After the adjustments were done, we moved to 3-D printing the Alpha models for practical testing adjustments started on Friday of week 4 up to Friday of week 5. We wouldn’t test directly using an expensive oxygen concentrator so we had to tune a vacuum cleaner to have parameters like those of an oxygen concentrator for testing. Most of our time was spent doing research on other ways of reducing pressure drop as we were waiting for the 3-D printing to finish.

 

First model 3-D printing

 

At the Bioscience Research Collaborative, we are working with professional engineers every week day, this has made us aware of the real ground scenarios other than the theory we learn in school. The people working at this institute are from different areas and countries and I have learnt from them some of their cultural habits, styles of dressing, and how they interact with others, and also some phrases and words in there languages. Apart from this, the project has challenged us to come up with creative ideas on how to deal with the problems faced. For example, we were not comfortable with using an oxygen concentrator to do the testing because it is an expensive piece of equipment. We had to find an alternative means, we settled with using a vacuum cleaner but vacuum cleaners gave a very high pressure as compared to an oxygen concentrator. We therefore had to come up with a way of reducing the pressure to the required one but we had no pressure regulator, we there came up with the idea of connecting a pipe to the hose of the vacuum cleaner and drill holes until we had the pressure and floe rate we wanted.

The daily huddles with our mentors and frequent presentations happening every two weeks relived some of the nerves I used to get when speaking in a meeting prior to working here. It has been an eye opening experience seeing how professional engineers do their work and see their work flow and problem solving techniques. It has also taught me not to be narrow minded in terms of profession. Just because I am a Civil Engineering student, it doesn’t mean I should just focus on construction, I can also help in other fields and also even pursue education in them in the future not limiting myself to one field of study. I have also become more acquainted with the process of designing and fabrication in engineering and also how to present and make pitches, this will definitely help in my final year project.