Hie!! I’m Abubakr Hassan, one of the the SEED 2023 interns and a student from Malawi University of Science And Technology (MUST), studying Metallurgy and Materials Engineering.

First let me share a little about by journey to Texas, it was a smooth flight but so tiring. We flew for  24+ hours to get to Houston, Texas. When we first landed I would not believe how hot it was here, I’ve always imagined America as some place that is mostly cold and doesn’t really get that hot, but as I write this is summer and is so hot and humid.

The first week has been amazing, thanks to Mina and Nothando I’m starting to get familiar with the campus and can almost walk to many areas around without having to use the map haha!!.

On the first day at the OEDK I got to finally meet my team members in person for the first time, they are such amazing people to work and communicate with…SHELMET!!!

The OEDK is equipped with a lot of machines, I’m looking forward to learning how to operate as many of them by the end of the program, it is a nice place to learn lots of skills.

Our team, SHELMET!, is working on a  wearable communication device which allows for communication between soldiers using the smart helmet

After working on some proxies and making scores for  our partial ideas we came up with a final design for our device. Currently  we are working on a first prototype of the device from which we will be able to iterate from and add on to more operations if necessary.

I aim and hope to have acquired lots of skills by the end of this program.

Meet you in the next blog!