Hi all! My name is Michelle Gachelin, and I am a rising junior at Rice majoring in Health Sciences and minoring in Global Health Technologies and Environmental Studies. I am originally from Dallas, Texas, but I’ve lived all over the world, including France, South Africa and California, most recently.

I’m very excited to be interning for Rice 360 this summer — I have been hoping to join the internship since I took the Introduction to Global Health Technologies course with Dr. Taylor last fall. This summer, my team will be working on NESTation, a low-cost solution capable of storing, charging and sanitizing handheld medical devices in low-resource settings. Currently, no functional solutions to this problem seem to exist, so nurses and other healthcare professionals store these devices haphazardly without clear monitors for their charging status and other important signals. 

The first few days of the internship have revolved around getting to know each other, being assigned our projects and delving into the problem’s historical and current context. Since we’re the first internship team to tackle this problem, we expect to invest a significant amount of time learning about its background. I’ve been reminding myself that our goal isn’t to create a perfect final prototype that will satisfy every criteria, but instead to thoroughly conduct needs-finding assessments and interviews to understand the scope of the problem. We can then lay a strong foundation for future groups who may take on the project after us. Right now, we’re preparing for our first interview with Ms. Jackie Foss, one of our amazing mentors. We’re excited to learn more about the project and hopefully get in touch with some additional contacts.

Beyond developing our design criteria and the scope of our project, I’m looking forward to getting to know the other interns this summer. I’m glad that I’ve been able to spend more time with my team through Coffeehouse runs and yesterday’s professional development lunch (still thinking about the mango cheesecake), and I can’t wait for us to become closer.

Here’s to the start of a great summer!