As an engineer I guess it’s in my nature to quantify things. Over the past summer I have waited 26 hours in an airport, been on 3 continents, and spent 47 nights under a mosquito net. I have traveled to 5 different hospitals, worked around 180 hours on my project, and have unsuccessfully pitched over 20 alternative names for the PneumaShoe. I’ve have been to both the highest point at 3002 meters and the lowest point at 37 meters in Malawi. But most importantly I have met 15 amazing, intelligent, and dedicated individuals (14 engineers and 1 economist) who have made this internship better than I could have ever expected over the course of 7 fulfilling weeks.

I am really grateful to have been able to work with my fellow peers to have been given an opportunity to work on something with potential for real world impact. When I first became interested in global health technologies my primary focus was unsurprisingly on designing point of care medical devices. But being able to observe firsthand on different challenges faced in developing nations designing applicable devices may be important, matters of public policy, community adoption, and continued support and maintenance are in some cases more important than the idea or the device itself. As someone interested in both medicine and engineering, these experiences have really come to change my perspective on how problems can be solved. In order to tackle such a complicated problem, say how to prevent oxygen concentrators from breaking, it takes a team to come up with an applicable answer. And I am glad I was able to work with such a great team this summer.