TMC PULSE

t m c » p u l s e | o c t o b e r 2 0 1 6 30 Engineering Answers from the Ground Up Rice University students seek solutions that can't be found in the back of a book B y A l e x a n d r a B e c k e r T he first thing Leah Sherman noticed was how tiny the babies were. "Smaller than any infants I would ever expect to see," she said. Scanning the room, her mind shifted to the poten- tial design flaws associated with the wooden "hot boxes" being used as neo- natal incubators. With four incandes- cent lightbulbs serving as the heating source, temperature control would be tricky. But compared to many hospitals in Africa, where babies are wrapped in blankets and positioned close together on cots to keep warm, these boxes were innovative. Sherman is a bioengineering undergraduate at Rice University and part of a group of student interns and advisors from the Rice 360° Institute for Global Health who traveled to Blantyre, Malawi, this past summer to work alongside local physicians, nurses and engineers. When she visited the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital's Gogo Chatinkha maternity wing, Sherman observed skilled surgeons, caring and knowledgeable nurses and an unrivaled work ethic. She also witnessed how eas- ily cutting-edge technologies could fail. "We would see these equipment graveyards," Sherman said. "Millions of dollars of broken equipment just sitting there, unused. Most of the time they knew exactly what was wrong, but they didn't have the parts to fix it." Imagine the frustration of working in a ward where babies die each day, and the machines to prevent those deaths sit broken beyond repair in the hallway, a constant reminder to every passing health care worker of the lives they could be saving if only they had the right equipment. "Sometimes people think that what you need to do is take existing technology from the developed world and just pull out features until it gets cheap enough to put in the developing world," said Maria Oden, co-director of Rice 360°. "I believe that's the wrong approach. I strongly believe that we need to be designing a technology from the ground up that is designed to meet the particular needs of that environment." What this means for a NICU in Malawi is creating devices that can per- form the same function as those in, say, the Texas Medical Center, but that are more durable—built to withstand heat and humidity and power outages—and, in some cases, made of parts that can be sourced locally. Oden directs the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK), a working space for Rice engineering majors to collaborate on solutions to problems exactly like this. Housed in what used to be the main kitchen for the entire campus, the OEDK provides access to the tools, facilities and work- ing space necessary to be creative. It is a hub of activity, with nearly 100 projects in process at any given time—not all related to global health. Topics range from energy and sustainability to robotics. "This is not just an academic exer- cise where students get a grade and move on," Oden said. "We want to pair a student's interest with a real-world proj- ect they're passionate about. What this means for students is that the stakes just got a little bit higher." The projects come from commu- nity partners, or "clients," who have a tangible need for the inventive minds of engineers. Physicians from the Texas Medical Center, the energy industry, NASA and biomedical startups have all presented projects to the OEDK. Considering that Rice's mission is to provide a solid and robust education for its students, the model is brilliant. Not only are students more motivated, but they are also gaining real-world experience that will prepare them for their careers. They work in teams across disciplines and learn lessons in leader- ship and project management. They're searching for answers that can't be found in the back of the book, discover- ing what it means to be good engineers, not just good students. "Nobody builds their first prototype and has it work perfectly, even though on paper and in theory they do the cal- culations and everything should work great," Oden said. "Usually when they build it, something goes wrong; they made an assumption somewhere along the way, and then they have to figure out how to fix it." Each spring, the students pres- ent their projects in the Engineering Design Showcase. The competition fea- tures design prototypes and provides an opportunity for students to practice their pitches with more than 80 judges as well as Rice faculty and students, This is not just an academic exercise where students get a grade and move on. — MARIA ODEN, PH.D. Co-director of the Rice 360° Institute for Global Health and Director of the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen at Rice University Oden sits in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen next to projects designed for real-world global health issues. Credit: Nick de la Torre

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