Hello! I’m Emily Yao, a sophomore at Brown majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Engineering Design. Aside from engineering-related activities, I also really enjoy dancing and am involved in the BASYK dance club at Rice. 

During this past summer, I participated in the SEED internship and worked in a team to build a low-cost automatic wastewater sampler for surveillance of COVID-19 and potentially other viruses in low-resource communities. I’m really proud of the work we have done on analyzing the functions and limitations of the previous prototype, which was designed by a senior design team, and improving upon various aspects of the device to prepare it for future deployment in Ibadan, Nigeria. Essentially, we ruggedized and waterproofed the components, simplified the functionality and user interface, implemented security measures, and improved the replicability of the device through detailed documentation.

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In the future, I am interested in exploring and researching haptics, user interfaces, and more aspects of product design. I’m really excited to be taking ENGI 210 this semester, as I want to learn new prototyping techniques and enhance my existing skills to build a better foundation for my future engineering projects.