Hello my name is Melanie Rodger! I am extremely honoured to have been selected as one of the ProGRES students this summer. In the fall I will be entering my grade 12 year at Three Oaks and I plan on taking mostly math and science related courses. My interest in these types of courses has made engineering very appealing to me and possibly the topic of my future studies after high school.

During my spare time I enjoy playing sports. I am a member of the Three Oaks cross-country team, field hockey team, basketball team, track and field team and rugby team. Outside of school I also play hockey for the midget girls Summerside team.

When I arrived on the first day of this program I was told that I would spend the next five weeks finding a biomedical problem and then designing something to fix it. Biomedical engineering was not a subject I was too familiar with prior to this experience however, as soon as I started my research I fell in love with the subject quickly. It was difficult to choose a medical problem to tackle as there are so many, and I wish I could fix them all. In the end, I decided that I would spend my time here designing a device to help with discomfort involving the use of an ocular prosthesis (fake eye).

Week 1 (July 17th-July 21st): I spent my first week of the ProGRES program researching and trying to decide what biomedical problem I would attempt to solve. Once I decided on a problem (ocular prosthesis discomfort), I did more in depth research on the problem. I prepared a little presentation to present to my supervisors on what problem I wanted to solve and a general idea on how I would do it: by creating a layer between the prosthetic eye and the eye socket to eliminate irritation.

Week 2 (July 24th-July 28th): This week consisted of more research. I now have a more detailed idea on how I'm going to solve my biomedical problem. On Wednesday I presented my project definition report with a slide show and a timeline that shows how I will spend my remaining four weeks at ProGRES. This week I also 3D printed my first design. It was a phone holder attached to a cylinder like structure and pencil holder. The design turned out well, my phone fits in it and it looks good!

Week 3 (July 31st-August 4th): Over the course of the third week of ProGRES I sketched and planned my designs to solve the ocular prosthesis discomfort. After coming up with three different possible solutions I analyzed them all then finally picked one that I felt was best. This week, I also took pieces of acrylic and curved them in order to make them in the same shape as a prosthetic eye (this was completed with the help of Wyatt). I also place orders for materials I needed this week and they should be in by early next week. I hope to spend next week building my prototype!

Week 4 (August 7th- August 11th): The fourth week of this program was a busy one! The material that I ordered came in early this week, permitting me to begin the construction of my prototype. This week I also made my own biodegradable glue that I will be using to glue the absorbent material to the back of the eye shaped acrylic.The past couple days have consisted of me testing out the glue and deciding how many layers of the material works best. By Monday I hope to be ready to do my real testing to see if my prototype is capable of absorbing the volume of tears produced in a day. I also had the opportunity to print out a second one of my designs this week. This time I made a key chain that says ProGRES on it.

Week 5 (August 14th- August 17th): This week I am writing my weekly update a bit early as the program finishes on Thursday. I spent this week working really hard to finish my project. This week has also been full of testing my prototype to see how absorbent it is and creating my final presentation which is a poster of my research, results and prototype. These five weeks have been such an amazing experience and I am so thankful for all of it.