My internship at 3SD is complete. I’m not sure that I can even express how valuable my experience this summer was. I can only hope that my posts have given you an idea of what these 8 weeks have been like. I’ve gotten a view into the product engineering industry that I could have never gotten from my courses thus far (not to knock the value of classes; they give an equally valuable, but different perspective). Not only was I able to be an active member of the team here in designing and revising for the Pumani unit, I was also able to witness and work with the manufacturing end of development with Pride. I also even got to do some design work on my own, beginning all the way from research to prototyping. Though my work 3SD’s own projects is confidential, I can vouch that learning/being involved with those projects was just as exciting and very educational.

I remember coming into this program, not exactly knowing what to expect. This was the pilot year of sending a student to w0rk with 3SD for the BTB program, so I did not have any alumni for reference. I entered with high hopes: being able to work in a product engineering setting would be the perfect way to utilize my design and engineering education. I’ve left with an experience that far exceeded anything I could have hoped for prior to arriving in California. Within the first couple days, I found myself thrown into the work. Honestly, this was a little terrifying at first. Trial by fire, learning by doing. I’m sure there were many things that I had done early on that should not have been nearly as tedious as I made them. This was made especially apparent when retrofitting the 3 units recently sent from Rice: what used to take me hours and hours was done in just a couple. However, without going through the discovery and trial-and-error process on my own, I wouldn’t have learned nearly as much. I’ve left with knowledge of quality procedures, improved CAD and physical modeling ability, understanding of PDMworks, and a lot of experience operating and debugging test fixtures, LabView, and rapid prototyping machines. I doubt that is a truly comprehensive list, since many of the experiences/skills I gained are not as easy to put into words. The best I can do to describe it is: “learning how to learn”.

I’m so thankful to Robert and the entire 3SD team, along with the directors of the BTB program for providing this opportunity. I can only hope that my work this summer was able to contribute to the efforts of the Rice360 program in a way that is just as meaningful as that of my colleagues currently stationed abroad. I’ve read their blogs, and they are all doing some truly extraordinary things. I hope we have all been able to provide positive impact in the vast field of global health, because really, that’s the ultimate goal.