Hi! My name is Sarah Luan and I’m currently a sophomore at Jones College. I’m currently undecided about my major, but I’m choosing between Computer Science and Cognitive Sciences. However, I am set on completing the Engineering Design minor. In fact, over the summer, I studied abroad over the summer in Costa Rica to get credit for ENGI 200 and ENGI 350. You can see my blog posts from that here: http://iseed.blogs.rice.edu/, and you can watch a video about the prototype we created here: ParkinSIMS Video. It was a really fun experience, and I was able to get two courses out of the way which was a plus. Outside of courses at Rice, I’m a captain of the Rice Women’s Club Volleyball Team and am on the merchandise committee for Jones. Last semester I was also a writing mentor for ENGI 120! I also enjoy attending club meetings for Rice Design and learning more about UI/UX.

 An image of the prototype my team made during my time in Costa Rica. 

One thing that I made that I’m proud of was my freshman ENGI 120 project. Our team was tasked with improving upon an existing prototype called the UVisor. The UVisor is a face shield device that uses UV light to sanitize inhaled air for the user. However, the flaw with the design was that it could not sanitize exhaled air. Our team altered the airflow design of the prototype so that both inhaled and exhaled air could be sanitized by the UV light. We definitely spent countless hours in the OEDK that semester and probably used up most of the filament in the 3D printers, but it was very worth it because we ended up getting awarded with the Best Freshman Engineering Design Project at the spring showcase.

A photo of our final prototype from our project in ENGI 120.

I’m not sure if there is something specific I want to make in this course, however I am interested in learning how to design or code web applications. I recently have been learning more about UI/UX design, and I think a lot of the prototyping and design processes we learn about in the engineering design minor overlaps with the UI/UX field.

Something that I hope to learn more about in ENGI 210 is how to use 3D printing software. In ENGI 120, we had to use 3D printers a lot and I never fully understood how to use platforms like SOLIDWORKS. I hope to gain more exposure to it in this course and design something myself. I am also excited to learn how to use more tools like laser cutters, because I’ve never used one before. Overall, I’m just excited to create more projects this semester!