December Blog Entry

For December, we have been active in our design teams to progress in our  research and design with help from SUNY Ulster’s Genetics/Biology Professor and Chair, Ms. Espinasa. The progress that we are making in our smaller design groups has started to pick up. We have recreated some of our rapid prototypes into CAD format and 3D printed them, the varying designs from the different groups are all close contenders for the design of the final product. As time passes the designs get more and more similar and as they get more comparable, the groups merge and this process will repeat over and over until all groups converge into one big group and create the final product. In terms of money being spent, we have used our grant money to purchase different types of power sources for our Raspberry Pi's, infrared camera lenses, and a model dog to test on.

After receiving feedback on the designs, groups then tuned their designs to improve them. The design groups then printed the improved designs, some were printed to scale but some were not.

 Later this month an executive from IBM (Alex Jorge) came to visit our school to connect with us and see how he can help and provide mentors. Mentors are needed to guide and support our team.  We need mentors to provide guidance on how to work through an open-ended problem and help our team with our Tick Detector device.  Ultimately our goal is to develop our young scholars with the tools to be successful--that’s where mentors can help. We are looking for mentors to ask questions, teach new processes, provide feedback and support our team and school continuously through other STEM projects. We are hoping to benefit from IBM’s vast knowledge and resources. To wrap up December, we mainly ordered supplies, kept prototyping, and met with people who would be able to help us achieve our goal.