Hello everyone! My name is Paige Rennie and I am a Freshman from Sid Richardson College. I am studying Mechanical Engineering with a Minor in Engineering Design. I am also part of the Rice Center for Engineering Leadership (RCEL) where I am a TA for RCEL 100.

So far during my time at Rice, I have only gotten to use the OEDK for ENGI 120. I learnt so much during my time in that class and although it was admittedly a challenging class I am excited to continue to pursue the Design Minor. Last semester, my team (Nemo’s Fixer-Uppers) and I made an aquarium tank system to aid Professor Michael Gustin and his team from the Rice BioSciences Department with their research into the coral bleaching process. They hope to find methods to reduce or eliminate coral bleaching in the natural environment. The part of the project that I am most proud of is the Arduino heating system as it has automated the heating system so that each tank can be independently raised from 25 to 29°C over the ten-day experiment window or held at 25°C within a 0.5°C accuracy range as the control.

Nemo’s Fixer-Uppers Coral Tanks

Coming from Zimbabwe where systems are often lacking, I have always desired to engineer solutions that take away the need of a high-functioning government to solve or prevent the problems. One of the issues that runs rampant in Zim is drunk driving and there are also other issues like traffic lights that don’t work due to a lack of electricity and roads that haven’t been maintained properly leading to them being riddled with potholes. I would love to engineer solutions to these problems and so many more that are issues that people deal with daily there.

During high school, I did not have much exposure to equipment like 3D printers and laser cutters and my parts of the ENGI 120 project involved a lot of coding and assembling Arduino and Raspberry Pi systems so I am excited to have this opportunity to get to work with this equipment in ENGI 210.