GMI Student Perspectives | Lamiya Sakarwala: Spring Into a New Semester

Reflections from Global Medical Innovation MBE students.

Genevieve Wahlert and Lamiya Sakarwala present their work.

My last semester at Rice started a month ago and there’s already so much to reflect on. With a new schedule of classes, meetings, competitions, birthday celebrations and social events - this month has been markedly eventful.

My classes this semester are twice as challenging but twice as fun. I continue to work with Genevieve and Luc on our pediatric radiotherapy project and not only build a visual distraction system for children but also take the project a step further and prototype a complimentary motion detection system to improve a radiotherapist’s monitoring capabilities. This semester, I have also joined team Bloodhound with Genevieve, Matthew, Ross, Secondra and Laura and I am excited to help develop an algorithm that helps surgeons identify bleeding vessels during minimally-invasive surgeries. As the team’s project manager, I aim to build strategic relationships with key stakeholders and ensure that the team is making consistent and timely progress towards our goals. And finally, I am taking three elective classes - Computer-Aided Design is helping me improve my 3D modelling and analysis skills, Career Prep for Industry is preparing me to better position myself for the job search and Medical Human Factors is helping me better understand why errors occur in medicine and how we can prevent them. This is undoubtedly one of the best classes I have taken in my entire academic career and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in human-centered design

Medical Human Factors is helping me better understand why errors occur in medicine and how we can prevent them. This is undoubtedly one of the best classes I have taken in my entire academic career and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in human-centered design.

Last month, I also turned 23 and spent my first birthday away from home. Birthdays are always a family affair and this year was no different. My GMI family took me out to a wholesome Indian dinner at Shiv Sagar and we shared all my favourite food: sada dosa, dahi puri, aloo tikki and mango lassi. Couldn’t have asked for anything more.

I may have mentioned this in my previous posts somewhere but I have to reiterate that Erik is an amazing cook - one of the best I have ever seen. He graciously hosted a Dumpling Making party at his house to celebrate Lunar New Year. Our dumpling station almost resembled an assembly line where one person was kneading the dough, the other rolling it flat, then adding the filling and finally folding and pleating it. Eating a hot, steaming dumpling directly from the pot was so gratifying.

GMI students at the 2020 Buckballl
GMI students at the 2020 Buckballl

I said there were a lot of social events and the Bucky Ball was a showstopper amongst them all. Every year, the Chemistry Graduate Student Association hosts a winter formal for all grad students at Rice and we thoroughly enjoyed the music, dancing and scrumptious hors d’oeuvres.

The last of the social events ended (for now) with the Super Bowl Party. No matter what team you’re rooting for (or if, like me, you’re only excited for the commercials and Shakira’s halftime performance) Super Bowl parties are a ton of fun. With pizza, beer and Matthew’s homemade guacamole - it was a perfect game-night at the BRC.

Finally, I saved the best for the last. Bloodhound won second place and was awarded the Edward H. Molter Memorial Prize at the Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) Qualifiers last week. We were very fortunate to pitch our innovation to an esteemed panel of 20+ judges and investors in Houston and are also very grateful to Egan Nelson for generously granting us the start of our company’s seed funding. This experience has catapulted our enthusiasm and we’re excited to see what the future has in store for us.

Team Bloodhound wins the Edward H. Molter Memorial Prize at the RBPC Qualifiers
Team Bloodhound wins the Edward H. Molter Memorial Prize at the RBPC Qualifiers

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Lamiya Sakarwala, 2019-20 Cohort, MBE in Global Medical Innovation