My name is Anyssa Castorina and I am a sophomore from Duncan College. I am currently studying Electrical Engineering and pursuing a minor in Design. During my time at Rice, I have participated in Vertically Integrated Projects in the Electrical Engineering Department, where I worked on trying to optimize microcontrollers. For extra-curricular activities, the main one I participate in is Eclipse, Rice’s rocketry team, where I spend time working on electrical hardware for rocket operation and testing.

In Rice’s engineering classes, I’ve been a part of a project where we developed a device to measure the pH and temperature of fermenting beverages, and a team that developed an engaging soap dispense to encourage children to wash their hands, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the past, I have designed pieces of electrical hardware I am proud of including a printed circuit board that handled wifi and Bluetooth technology as a layer of a configurable computer system.

Additionally, when I was in high school I spent the majority of my time outside of school working on robots for the robotics team. I’m very proud of the hands-on technical skills I developed to manufacture and assemble the robots.

From the projects planned for this class, I’m really excited for the aprons (I hope we can customize them, so I can make the pockets more toolbelt-like) and the moving sculpture. I’m already thinking about how I would like to make the sculpture have a celestial theme to match my NASA room decor.

In completing the class projects, I am really excited to learn how to use the milling machines at the OEDK, gain experience with 3D printers, and create cool functional and artistic pieces.