We’re sitting on the runway at London’s Heathrow airport as we wait for Airbus engineers to sign off on some paperwork before take off. It’s kind of ironic – engineers (Airbus) holding up engineers (our team going to Malawi). Either way, sitting here on the tarmac gives me the perfect chance to kick off my blog posts. As an overview, I’ll be posting about twice a week for the next 8 weeks. I’m going to do my best to include pictures, videos (if I can make my GoPro work [Future interns take note: Photography skills can be an asset]), and any notable quotes I hear along the way.

We’ll be living at the Polytechnic University (Poly) in Blantyre, Malawi, alongside our counterparts from the Poly itself. The main hospital we’ll be working at, Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH), is just one of a few different sites we’ll be visiting within our first week of arriving in Malawi.

Our internship actually started three weeks ago. We’ve been running around assembling six different medical device prototypes, learning about how to use line voltage monitors, learning oxygen concentrator troubleshooting techniques all in preparation for the next two-months.

Aside from adjusting to a new culture, we’ll be spending our first week repairing oxygen concentrators, learning Chichewa, and really getting a handle on the ropes of our internship. The next seven weeks, we’ll be working on the medical device prototypes, improving them through collaboration with the Poly and through surveys conducted at QECH.  Altogether, we have about six medical device prototypes that we want to get feedback on. We have another three devices that we’ll be demonstrating at QECH, and each of us will be looking to find a need that hasn’t been met at the Poly or at QECH and work towards designing/implementing a solution for that need.

I’d like to thank Rice 360, the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, and my sponsors – Judy and Mike Koehl, for giving me the opportunity to learn more about engineering, global health, and the role that I can play in a global setting.