Hi everyone!

My name is Shreya, and I am a rising junior from Baker majoring in Bioengineering with a minor in Neuroscience. Growing up in India, I’ve seen firsthand the health disparities in developing countries and the need for low-cost yet high-quality medical devices (it’s part of what inspired me to major in bioengineering), so I’m really excited for this chance to make a meaningful contribution to global health technologies.

The 2 projects that we brought over from Rice are the gastroschisis bag and the tourniquet trainer. The gastroschisis bag (pictured below) was developed by the interns in Tanzania last summer as a low-cost and easily manufacturable solution to gastroschisis – a congenital birth defect where the baby’s intestines protrude outside of the body through a hole in the abdominal wall. Our main goal for this summer is to get feedback on how we can further improve the device and make sure that all the materials are easily available in Tanzania. The tourniquet trainer was developed by a team at Rice this year, which included my fellow intern Andy, to help with first aid training for the life-saving skill.

Aside from those, I’m excited to learn more about our host projects that we’ll be working on at DIT (Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology). We’ve already met some people there, like the director general of DIT – Dr. Msumba, the head of the design studio – Joel, the assistant manager – Cleria, and some of their friends who have been the sweetest and have already shown us around Dar es Salaam. Below are pictures of us at lunch and the ocean (which is just a short walk away!)

I’m grateful for this opportunity to not only contribute to the healthcare system, in whatever way I can, but also to explore this beautiful country, immerse myself in the culture, eat some delicious food, and hopefully pick up some Swahili. I can’t wait to see what the next 2 months have in store for us and I hope you’ll follow along through these blogs!

Until next time (or in Swahili – hadi wakati mwingine),
Shreya ♡