Here’s Lisa Zhu, a freshman at McMurtry. My intended major is Mechanical Engineering.
I am currently a member of Rice Eclipse, focusing on the structural design and prototyping of rocket’s airframe. In the club, I learnt knowledge related to high power rocketry, practiced using SolidWorks, and launched a small rocket (see Figure 1.) made from scratch (Apogee: 1600ft). In this semester, we will continue working on the competition rocket and preparing for the Spaceport Competition.
Figure 1. Lisa at launching site
In my junior year of high school, I founded a robotics team, in which I mainly took charge of the structural design of our robot and prototyping. In the first year, we participated FTC competition and entered the China national final. In the second year, we switched to a FRC team. To learn from the more experienced team, in 2019’s competition, our core members cooperated with team 5515, won the Hawaii Regional Competition and entered the Houston final. In these two years, I taught many fresh members using SolidWorks and hand tools, as well as management skills. This year, these members will independently attend the FRC competition and I currently work as their mentor. The things that I am proud of are not just robots; the team I built is the most precious thing for me.
Figure 2. 2019 FRC robot
Figure 3. Core members at China national final
In the future, I want to make more robotics related structures and machines, which can facilitate daily life and complete complicated missions. To achieve this goal, I want to learn more advanced prototyping techniques like using water jet and plasma cutter, and gain more experiences on making different things in ENGI 210.
