Hello! I’m Robert Sanchez, a sophomore from McMurtry, ancestral home of pandas, conchs, and pizza.

For the last two years I’ve been working hard for NEWT (the nanotechnology enabled water treatment) group at Rice. I’ve been able to meet and work with an eclectic group of other engineering students, professors, and the occasional hordes of highschool teachers to bring clean water to needy nations and new deionization methods to industry.

More practically, I’ve gotten to make some great friends and learn just a bit from a really remarkable group of scientists and engineers. Looking forward to another year of fixing leaky pipes and folded membranes!

The thing I am most proud of making has to be my part of Redbird-20, a semi successful hybrid rocket launched a few years back.

We managed to launch at White Sands Missile Range in my senior year of highschool, unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the whole rocket! Something I will definitely have to fix soon. None the less my baby, the test-stand I managed and fixed that year, I do have.

In the near future (ie. whenever I get a roof I can put it on), I’d love to build a satellite tracking antenna.

Specifically, I want to try and pull weather data (and the imaging within it) off of US or Russian satellites that freely broadcast it. At this point we have all probably seen or heard of someone pulling it off to some extent, but I would love to try and do it myself or with a few friends! (Maybe put it on McMurtry’s roof?)

I hope in this class to pickup some practical skills, I love to dream up projects and ideas, but rarely can I actually make then in real life. Plasma cutting, 3D printing, or even using a sewing machine could help greatly in that regard.