Wei - My Experience at UBC's PIEE Lab

Wei Xie - Oct 28, 2020

High school volunteering can take on many forms. We can combine our passions with our volunteering to explore careers and develop our career planning.

Last August, I had the honour of working under UBC postdoc Dr. Quentin Geissmann's guidance in helping develop a smart insect trap that can automatically monitor insects, from idea to prototype.

By monitoring insect enterings, our traps can be used for studying insect biodiversity and behaviour, as well as for organic farming.
For example, the traps could be used to compare the performance/effectiveness of different natural agri-chemicals.

Over the course of a month, I learned about and got my hands dirty with various technologies, including...

• 3D CAD design, 3D printing

• using an Arduino microcontroller

  • basic circuit prototyping

  • signal smoothing algorithms

Other than the skills above were my interactions with the people at PIEE, through which I experienced the importance of teamwork and leadership.
I am grateful to Quentin for his mentorship to me, and to the rest of the lab group for their support.

Read a more detailed description of my volunteering here.