This week went by so quickly! After meeting with our mentor Jackie last Friday, we got to work making a spreadsheet of questions for the Rice360 Fellows. With Jackie’s help, we were able to refine and rephrase our questions, and they were ready to be shared with some Fellows by mid-week. We met with Josh and Sonia to hear about their clinical experiences at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Blantyre, Malawi. Their insights have been extremely valuable, and have definitely helped us gain a clearer understanding of the existing issue and demand for a solution. Aside from conducting interviews, we continued compiling information by researching UVC sanitization, implementation of wireless charging, available power resources, and similar existing solutions. While we brainstormed broad form options, we outlined potential design criteria and considered how to rank them moving forward. 

In addition to our ongoing background research, it’s been a very workshop-intensive week. I’ve been able to learn many new skills, including breadboarding and 3D printing using Fusion. I particularly liked Lady Catherine’s workshops on microaggressions and having difficult conversations. Since the internship started, I’ve been looking forward to these workshops so that I can expand my skill set in engineering topics, and learn new concepts that I might not come across in my typical coursework for the Health Sciences major. 

Our main challenge this week has been balancing various components of the internship – with all the important workshops scheduled for this week, we had less time to work on our project. However, we were still able to make progress in our research. Next week, we hope to reach out to additional contacts to hear their insights, including previous Rice360 teams with similar designs regarding backup energy sources and UVC usage. I’m looking forward to our upcoming low-fidelity prototyping workshop, as well as our group social at Bayou Bend. Until next week!