I am Tiwonge Yebo Nyirenda, a fourth year student at the Malawi Polytechnic majoring Electrical and Electronic Engineering. I arrived in Houston on June 11 for a six weeks SEED internship.

It feels great to be at Rice – Houston. The people are super good (both professors and peers), this makes me confirm that i will surely achieve my goal for coming here.

Just in this first week, in the OEDK, i have kind of advanced myself  in critical thinking and analysis . The boot camping, the Zoo visits for research, the class assignments  and all interactions i have had in the OEDK have made me prepared for next assignments. However, I am a bit challenged in getting in line with my US peers – (these peers) are so quick in analysis and critic as a matter of exposure, I am however, so certain that I will go back home an improved person in terms of critiquing situations in my Engineering career. And I am so grateful SEED allowed me such an exposure.

We have a task to design a devise for Okapi enrichment. This far, in teams we had the first talk with the client – Houston Zoo (on Wednesday, June 14) to establish the problem context. Yesterday, i worked a lot with Team Hippo (Christina, Mauel, Bruno and I) established the project design criteria, evaluated them in a Pairwise Comparison Chart and brainstormed a great deal of possible solutions.

 

Today we are to choose the winning solution using Pugh Screening and Scoring Matrices, after which we will plan our project, prototype and finally test the prototype.

The OEDK, is at far much more advanced compared to the design studio we have back home