Hi everyone! It has been almost two weeks since we left Malawi. I am currently in Turkiye spending time with family.

Reflecting on my experience this summer, it was filled with ups and downs. From presenting our final projects to scuba diving in Lake Malawi, this summer has been filled with academic and physical adventures that have pushed me to grow as an individual. The friends I made from MUBAS and Kabula Lodge have fundamentally altered my outlook on this world.

It is easy to be interested in global health, but being on the ground and engaging with the communities is another thing. I am incredibly grateful to Rice360 for organizing this opportunity.

During my 8 weeks in Malawi, I worked on two main projects. The first was DigiScale, an app and digital scale system to help automate and improve clinical response during longitudinal child growth monitoring. This project was started when we first arrived and has come a long way! I am incredibly proud of our team for learning many different skills, ranging from CAD to database design to circuit design. Our second project, PneumoNate, focused more on receiving feedback. We gathered valuable feedback and evaluated certain limitations of the model. When I return to Houston, I hope to work with the team that created this project at Rice to develop their project further! In addition to our projects, we were also able to deliver 20 care packages to the kangaroo mothers at QECH and had the opportunity to shadow in the NICU. These experiences also helped cultivate our perspective beyond our engineering focus and allowed us to truly engage with the communities we were trying to help.

I am incredibly thankful to everyone I have met this summer and those involved in the journey.

Until next time!