Our Weekend Adventure

On Saturday, we visited Karura Forest for Cinema in Nature’s Sounds of Freedom, a guided tour and audio narration tracing the footsteps of the Mau Mau freedom fighters from Kenya’s 1960s independence movement. We hiked through the forest along paths and caves tied to the narration, and ended the journey by painting what “freedom” means to us in a quiet grove.

But here at KU, we had neither. So we improvised.

We used metal washers wrapped with wire as DIY electrodes. Then, we applied liquid soap to the skin, which contains salts that mimic conductive gel. It seemed a little crazy plugging myself into this makeshift electrical mess, but I had faith in our calculations (and safeguards).

After four days of testing different amplifier circuits, we managed to build a low-cost setup that reads real-time muscle contractions in my arm. Now, muscle strength is just a flick of a switch away.

(That’ll be us tomorrow →)

Can’t wait to share the stories in the next update.

Signing off,

Team Dinner
To celebrate the end of the program, our mentors took us all out for an all-you-can-eat carnivore dinner (with plenty of salad for our vegetarian teammate Saumya). It was certainly bittersweet.

Rice360 Still in Progress
While the MDI students are finishing up, us Rice360 interns will be here for another five weeks. That gives us more time to keep working on the project we started earlier this summer.

Our Device: Fetal Heart Rate Monitor
We’ve been working on a fetal heart rate monitor. During site visits, we noticed that many maternity wards avoid using ultrasounds because of cost. That led us to design a cheaper electronic alternative that can still record fetal heart rate.

Prototype Progress
After a week of research, circuit design, coding, and debugging, we put together a half-working prototype. Even though we weren’t eligible to compete in the MDI competition, we presented it to the faculty panel and got useful feedback for what’s next.

Next Phase of Work
Now, we’ll be working more closely with CDIE faculty as extra engineering support. We’ll also continue partnering with local hospitals to refine our prototype and get more feedback. It’s hard to see our peers go, but we’re excited to keep building. There’s still plenty of work ahead!

Wow, what a week!

We’ve been working with a group of 16 undergraduate and graduate students from Kenya and Uganda, spending all day sawing, hacking, welding, grinding, painting, CADing, and 3D printing.

It’s no wonder our hosts love a good tea break.

(use arrows to view other images in gallery)

Every good design starts with a sketch. On our first day, we explored what thoughtful, effective design looks like in the medical field, especially within Kenya’s six-tiered healthcare system. We focused on identifying gaps in care and learning how prototypes can help bridge them.

To practice this process, we spent our second day designing and 3D-printing our own models, putting our ideas into physical form.

Over the next few days, we took things a step further by building something more tangible: a footstool made of metal and wood, crafted entirely from scratch.

Our generous (and very patient) instructor, Mr. Eubrea Njer, challenged us to use only hand tools. In low-resource settings, after all, electricity isn’t always guaranteed. When we asked why he still got to use power tools, he laughed and said, “Because I like to see you suffer.” I’ve never felt more like the Karate Kid.

Two days and a lot of elbow grease later, our stool is nearly complete. Next week, we’ll sand and polish the wood, then shift gears into the medical and electrical domains. We’ll start with visits to local health clinics, followed by designing and building our own circuits.

I’m looking forward to catching up on sleep, and seeing what Nairobi has to offer over the weekend!

– Jacey Denny

Who am I?

My name is Jacey Denny, and I’m an aspiring bioengineer (rising senior Lovetteer) with a passion for making medicine. I’ve always loved tinkering, so naturally, I was drawn to fields like prosthetics and surgical robotics, which puts me under the bioengineering umbrella.

But after coming to Rice and doing work in the Medical Humanities program, I’ve developed a growing interest in the ethical and social dimensions of healthcare. As powerful as new technologies can be, they also carry real risks to us,  scientific, societal, and personal. I want to be part of steering these innovations in a direction that prioritizes equity and impact.

That’s why I’ve come to Kenya: to learn from those working on the front lines of medicine and bring their insights and perspectives back to Houston.

My goals:

to make full use of the three-week Summer Program by:

• learning all the technical skills by keeping a consistent journal
• connecting with the other students from Kenya, other parts of Africa, and the rest of the world (especially during tea breaks)
• keeping in mind the broader tasks of the summer internship (e.g. needs finding reports), since critical information learned here could be used later down the road

and also to grow as an adult person while living in Nairobi by:

• learning to cook with Kenyan ingredients and Kenyan recipes
• learning to live on my own
• keeping myself physically and mentally healthy (even if it’s not on the program schedule by going to the gym, planning fun outings, etc.)