PATHS-UP Digital Scholars Young Scholars 2024

 This week we worked on our group projects. Vani and I decided on using the SHIELD EKG-EMG sensor for our project to make a heart rate monitor that doesn’t use disposable electrode pads. We decided to make a collar and bracelets to hold the sensors against the skin to take readings. We did a 3d model on OnShape first, then prototyped the part of the collar that holds the sensor with a foldable plastic. After that, we took the measurements from the prototype to model the attachment in OnShape and printed that out as well. We found that with the collar, readings can be taken even without the electrode making direct contact with the skin, though it does provide a clearer reading when it does so. After that, we modeled the bracelet, which was initially too oblong, the second print/model came out much better though both worked.  We had an issue with making enough contact for the arm electrodes, so we decided to use a conductive metal plate to create more surface area. This worked p...

     1. What are your first thoughts on the research projects that you have been working on? My first thoughts on the research project that my partner, Sidd, and I are working on is that it will be very code-heavy. Both Sidd and I are more experienced with computer science than anything else, and we hope to combine our computer science knowledge to create a project that will hopefully make health surveillance for Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) patients and caretakers significantly cheaper. We have several ideas for this project, and I am hoping that we will be able to complete it all, or most of it, by next Thursday. Both Sidd and I are taking on challenges that we have never faced before in computer science. Sidd must figure out how to connect Arduino data, which is written in C, to Python, and I must write a fully functional program with data structures and various libraries in C, a language I have not worked with before. However, I am sure that we can...

  1. What are your first thoughts on the research projects that you have been assigned and your mentors? I think the research projects that have been assigned to me were super fun to work on, and they have a lot of potential for expansion in the future. So far, we have created a detection algorithm and been able to transfer captured data onto a file for future reference. This could become an affordable and accessible home diagnosis process. 2. What are you most looking forward to for week three? I am most looking forward to presenting our findings at our poster talk tomorrow. We have both put in a lot of effort, whether that be from coding, soldering over cardboard on the tile floor, or research about sleep apnea. I am excited to finalize our experience and draw on what we learned throughout these three weeks. 3. Would be great to add a picture from tour

      1. What are your final thoughts on the research project you have been working on? Going into the last day at PATHS-UP, I am nervous about how Sidd and I's project will be received, but largely proud of our progress and how much we have done in the past week. It took us a while to settle on an idea, and we modified it several times over the past few days, but our final product is something I am excited to present and improve in the future. As the PATHS-UP Cohort 1 ends, my biggest hopes for our project are that it is something we can further innovate, expand, and eventually have a working prototype for an audience. We have several future plans for our project, including making a mobile app, carrying case, and a program for long-term statistics, and with the devices and lessons we have learnt from PATHS-UP, I believe these are plans we can achieve.       2. What are you most looking forward to for the week three presentation? I am most looking forward t...

 1. I feel that our project could help many people when expanded upon, as they would allow for cheap and accurate testing of water for civilians. Currently it is not as accurate as it could be and mainly measures conductivity. However, perhaps with different enzymes (currently uses papain) or different settings it could test for other contaminants. 2. For week 3 I was mainly looking forward to getting presentation done since I am typically not very good with those. I am not particularly looking forward to the presentation itself but working on the poster and preparing for it has been nice. 3. The engineering kitchen was very nice, I liked the large variety of tools. In particular, I found the machining room and electrical rooms interesting. I would have liked to ask about how exactly the kitchen worked with who is allowed to access it but I did not come up with this question until after the tour.

Week 3 - Natasha M.  Week 3 was definitely stressful. After finalizing our presentations and making our Arduino functional, I'm nervous and excited about our presentation tomorrow. On the other hand, I found the engineering tour really exciting. We looked at the soldering, prototypes, and 3D printers. My favorite part of the tour was definitely the rocket (which I believe was 3D printed). Anyway, I don't have too many pictures this week, but I do have a picture of my final project (the hearing aid). Fun!  Here's a picture of my hearing aid. I hope my presentation goes well tomorrow with my dysfunctional hearing aid  🤪.  P.S. This will be my last blog!! Natasha M. 

 Week 3 - Asna      This week, me and my partner worked on the poster and the research project, which was a little more time taking, and required more efforts than I thought. Through out the whole process, we faced multiple issues and challenges like the code not working, the hardware components not working, finding relevant information and figuring out how to manage different topics on our research poster. But thankfully, it all worked out in the end (at least the important things) with the help from my partner and the professors.     I really liked the PATHS-UP Young Scholars Program! This summer camp was really helpful and fun. I got to learn new things and got to have an amazing learning experience with all the professors. 

1. What are your first thoughts on the research projects that you have been working on? My first thoughts are positive. This week we didn't do any new projects because we were working on our final projects. I am excited to present our final project.  2. Thoughts about final project I am excited to present our poster. We are measuring heart rate on the TinyWatch. You will be able to set a range where you want your heart rate to be. If the watch goes above or below the range you set then you will get a warning that you have gone above or below. Once that happens a timer will start and you will be able to see how long you have been at that heart rate. Many people are overworking and don't know that their heart rates are going high and high heart rates can lead to heart disease.  3. Tour and Mr. Guha lecture The OEDK tour was really cool. There were a lot of really interesting machines that we saw. The lecture about computer vision was also really cool because I learned so much ab...

1. What are your thoughts on the final project? I really enjoyed the problem solving aspect of the final project, as I was forced to truly use my intuition to solve various issues I faced involving sensor readings and making them show up on the display and making sure the data is trackable by the user. I am finally able to see the vision of how the technology could be life-changing for many in under-developed countries. Specific to our project, allowing users in impoverished nations see how their environment affects their health, specifically their BO, we can make sure they are notified and can get help when necessary. 2. What are your thoughts on the third week? I thought the third week was the best week of them all, because it truly allowed to explore the technology for myself and gave me a chance to program what I wanted. I also liked the tour of the mechanical engineering facility and it really showed the type of imagination many engineers have. Finally, I liked learning about neur...

   1. What are your final thoughts on the research projects that you have been working on? I really enjoyed creating something new that could help those in less developed countries that struggle to afford medical technology. Although we faced a lot of difficulties throughout the process, I think our outcome was good and we were still able to create heart monitors that help people regulate their heart beats per minute in a sufficient, affordable, and portable way.  2. Tour Pics! Overall I really enjoyed this program and everything I learned!! 

  .What are your thoughts on the final project? The final project has been super fun and I'm really impressed with what we have been able to accomplish. I wish I could have connected the Arduino to the tiny screen, but unfortunately that was not able to happen    What are your thoughts on the third week? Week 3 has been a lot of fun I had a lot of enjoying touring the OEDK and working on the final project. Hopefully the presentation goes well. Overall thoughts of the PATHS-UP Program. I think this program is great introduction to stem and the engineering fields. It also serves as a great way to start research and gain an idea of what you want to do with your life. OEDK pictures

 1. I loved working on the final project as we were independent. I feel like the best way to learn is keep on trying to do it yourself. For the final project I wish we had an ambient light sensor as it would make our project 10 times better. Also we had some problems trying to get the audio to work. Overall this project was a great learning expirence. 2. The third week was fun. I liked how we had most of the time to just work on our project. During week 2 I was a bit nervous on how much time we would have to complete it but it turned out we had more then enough time. Week 3 was one of the weeks where I learned the most just from expirence 3. The PATHS-UP program has been great. I have gained expirence in digtal health and learned so many diffrent things. We have took many diffrent tours of many diffrent rooms that I would have never been able to see before. I want to thank Dr. Young, Mr. Franklin, and Dr. Marlo for all the time and effort they put into us. I am grateful for these l...

  1. What are your thoughts on the final project? I enjoyed the final project as it allowed us to use majority of the parts provided, and was a good integration of multiple things.  2. What are your thoughts on the third week? The third and final week of the PATHS_UP Program was good, it was a nice third week where we got to go self-paced, and work on a project to solve an issue. 3. Overall thoughts of the PATHS-UP Program: The PATHS_UP Program was a good experience, although I do wish we would have used more machines, such as the 3D Printers in the OEDK Lab. Seems like an amazing place, and overall I enjoyed the program to the fullest, was a great experience. OEDK:

 Week 3 - Catherine Project My project is finally finished. On Monday, I finished wiring my project and the hardware components. I was able to calibrate our sensor and ensure that the components were functioning properly. Throughout the building of my project, I go to learn a lot about electrochemistry and chemistry in general. On Tuesday, I finished creating our poster and began rehearsing what I was going to say. Designing the poster took a bit as I need to fill out the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusion sections. I really liked working on the poster and practicing the presentation because I enjoy elevator pitches. Paths-UP Program I really enjoyed the program. My favorite parts were :the lectures covering machine learning and software in general; getting to play around with the Arduino; and touring various places at Rice. I feel like I got to learn a lot throughout the program. Most of what I learned was about hardware, something I had been extremely intimidated by. ...

 1. What are your thoughts on the final project? I enjoyed working on this final project. I found it gratifying seeing the project through to the very end on its design and on the collaboration aspect. I am most excited about seeing the final poster printed out, even if it is blurry. 2. What are your thoughts on the third week? I really enjoyed this third and final week of the PATHS-UP Program. It was extremely satisfying to complete our poster project and eventually present our work. Even the lectures about computer vision and the tour of the OEDK, I enjoyed learning new things and being in that environment this week. 3. Overall thoughts of the PATHS-UP Program: Overall, the program was very enlightening. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be surrounded by like-minded individuals and gain valuable experience in coding and its applications in medicine. Even if I didn't necessarily understand something, being able to work through my struggles was very rewarding.

 1. Thoughts on Final Project Overall the project was very satisfying. I was proud to see how I was able to stay focused and dedicate my time to research despite time constraints. I was also able to learn more about hemoglobin and it’s fascinating properties. Hopefully if we develop it more, we can contribute to uncovering more research on the globally prevalent OSA and inspiring others to work on higher quality and innovative treatments. 2. Thoughts on Third week The third week has been pretty exciting and busy. I am very excited to show off our poster that we have been working on for the past few days. I’m also trying excited to see the other’s posters 3. Overall thoughts on Paths Up My past few weeks have been very informative and enlightening. I’ve loved seeing all these fields of research and to see people so deeply passionate in their own field. It’s given me much more insight into my decisions for my own path in life. I’m very grateful for how much the PATHS-UP program has d...

 What are your thoughts on the projects that you have been working on? My thoughts on the projects we've been working on so far have been very positive. This week, we worked on connecting the Bluetooth for the Tiny Watch, and our own individual projects. For connecting Bluetooth, I encountered a few issues, including the following: The tiny watch initially wasn't connecting to my phone, and it wouldn't show up as something it could connect to. This had a quick fix, which was shutting down the watch, and my phone, and this made it able to connect. For the individual project, which was the Olimex EMG heart monitor, I encountered a lot more issues, which we were able to fix in the end. These issues include: not knowing how or what to code, not knowing which baud rate was ideal, and not knowing ideal sensor placement for accurate results. We solved all of these problems by trying new things to figure out what would work best. We got help from some of the instructors, which solv...

 Week 2 - Natasha This week at Rice University, we looked into computer vision, data science, GPS systems, and Bluetooth connections. We even went on another tour, touring the "clean lab". During our tour, we looked into the fabrication of nanoparticles. We saw technical equipment such as an atomic layer deposition system, e-beam evaporator, and rapid thermal process there. Pictures from the clean lab at Rice.  My favorite project so far is using computer vision. Through importing various libraries and openCV, we were able to turn our images gray. We also could trace the edges of the image. With these methods (with deep learning and ML), tesla, and EV vehicles can navigate without human interference.  Experimenting with CV & Computer vision. I also really enjoyed the Arduino projects that we did. We did multiple Arduino projects experimenting with GPS and Bluetooth. They were very simple, and I didn't encounter many issues with these project experiments. But while wor...

 1. I didn't come up with the idea so I am still kind of trying to grasp how it works. However, I feel like our project is a worthwhile one that can benefit those in need.  Our project is a device that is meant to check water oxygenation and contamination. This mainly benefits those in areas with low availability of clean water, as it allows them to check water before ingesting/using it and possibly contracting waterborne contaminants or bacteria. 2. Probably making the poster and finishing the project; I do not like to present very much.  Since I am mostly working on the physical aspects of its design rather than the coding aspect I believe it should be simple enough. 3. The Clean Room tour was very nice, I felt that it was well directed and I found myself very intrigues by the machinery used in their facilities. Particularly, I was interested in their use of photo films rather than digital photos or printed photos. I was not able to inquire at the time, however I would ...

 What are your first thoughts on the research projects that you have been working on? My first thoughts on the research projects that we have been working on are positive. We did the TinyWatch GPS and Bluetooth. I thought it was interesting that on the GPS we can see the coordinates of where we are. Although it might not be exactly accurate, it is around the correct coordinates. For the Bluetooth I thought that was really cool because you were able to get notifications from your phone. We also did Google Colab. We coded the heart rate and an edge detection. I thought the edge detection was really cool. What are you most looking forward to for week three? Include thoughts on what your final project will be. I am really excited to present my project and do some more research projects. I am also looking forward to interesting lectures. For our final project, we are designing a watch that can act as a regular watch but measure heart rate and blood pressure. It is affordable for low inc...

1. What are your first thoughts on the research project that you have been working on?     Initially, I am excited to start working on our final project. I believe that it will be a great at opportunity to combine all that I have learned thus far and apply it to our final presentation. I am a little nervous for the final presentations, but I'm confident that it will all go well. 2. What are you most looking forward to for week three? Include thoughts on what your final project will be.      Next week, I am most looking forward to designing the poster for our final project and having it printed out. My partner and I are planning to use the Pulse Ox and Bluetooth devices from the Tiny Watch to measure and track users' blood oxygen levels. We will then be able to take this data and compare it to levels that are at risk of hypoxemia and inform the user whether they are at low, medium, or a high risk of developing this condition.  3. Would be great to add a pict...

 1. What are your first thoughts on the research projects that you have been working on? My first thoughts on the research projects that me and my partner have been working on are that it will be very fun to be able to make our own device to help a third world country, however at the same time the difficulty of the task worries me as I am still not too sure how we will be able to program our tiny watch to make it do what we want it to do. 2. What are you most looking forward to for week three? Include thoughts on what your final project will be.  Something that I am looking forward to for week three is finishing up our project and having the time to do more coding in python and on our tiny watch. I believe that our final project will be able to detect a persons heart rate and help them out during emergencies where their heart goes over a certain number. Overall, we hope that this will help those with issue such as diabetes so that they can easily monitor their health.  3....

1. My initial thoughts on the research project that we have are pretty mixed, as I like the vision that  I have towards our project's impact but the actual execution of the goals is much harder than I expected. The sensors don't work to the precision to where I want them to work, so getting data and actually incorporating it into results is going to be much tougher than I thought. Speaking more positively, however, the actual problem that we're addressing, which is associated with blood oxygen levels and hypoxemia, is a problem that hasn't really been addressed on a global scale and does truly have a niche in many places across the developing world. 2.I'm most looking forward to the symposium and being able to present our work to the large group of rice faculty. I'm also excited to finish up work on our project, and slowly making progress on it makes me truly appreciate the problem solving process. Our final project is going to be a pulse ox tester that diagnose...

Week 2 - Asna      My first thought on the research project(s) that I have been working on is that this project is a really innovative idea that enabled me to think of distinct ideas and methods through which we can contribute to the betterment of the society.      For week three, I am looking forward to continue working on the project and poster with my partner. I am also looking forward to learn about what ideas others have decided for their projects and their opinions on how their innovation can be useful for our Global community.

 1. The research project we are working on seems fun. I like how we have creative control and can do anything related to healthcare for third world countries we like. The only thing I would like is more time to work on it during the day as we cant take the devices home to work on it. I also liked how it was a partner project because it takes off half the stress since we can work together now. 2. For week 3 Im excited to see our final product and poster. It will be cool to see if our research was actually worth it in the end. It will give a sense of accomplishment that I am looking forward too. Even though I am a bit nervous, I am extremly excited for our presentation next week. 3. The fab lab tour was facsincating to me as I have never seen anything close to it. I was amazed my the complextion in everything they do. I never knew colleges have these faccilites for this advanced research. They explained how clean the room was, and it was mindblowing.