I took two semesters of EPICS to fulfill this competency.

To fulfill Social Consciousness Competency, I took EPICS or Engineering Projects in Community Service. We work with Community Partners(from ASU or outside) to work on a semester-long engineering project that creates a product to help those in need.

EPICS: Semester 1 (Pic on the Left)

I joined EPICS: Online Database (SQL) for Study Abroad Projects in Fall 2023.  I served as the documentation lead.

The aim of our this project was to gather soil and rainwater data from Vietnam so that others could analyze and monitor  content of the soil used for shrimp farming. The project's Community Partner, ASU's Jared Schpoef found this project through the various Study Abroads in Vietnam and created a new project involving helping the shrimp farmers record data.  We were given a basic working idea through him, and we did research for our technical stack through documentation and research. Our technical pipeline involved capturing soil and rainwater data via IoT sensors, processing JSON payloads through NodeJS, and utilizing InfluxDB and Grafana for time-series visualization. To ensure our technical work aligned with the community's actual needs, we prioritized User-Centric Design. We recognized that providing raw pH data was insufficient. The interface had to be comprehensive to the farmers to inform real-time decisions regarding crop health and soil preservation.

I learned a lot about documentation through this project. It helped me work with various interdisciplinary topics. As documentation lead, I was responsible for making our team's technical decisions comprehensive to both our community partner and future contributors, which forced me to think each architectural choice. Working with a pipeline of NodeJS, InfluxDB, and Grafana introduced me to time-series data and the challenge of designing systems where the end user might not have technical experience. This human-centric constraint shaped how I approach software engineering more comprehensible. The project also deepened my appreciation for engineering and community impact.

EPICS 2: Hydration Station (On the Right)

In my second semester of EPICS, Spring 2024, I joined Hydration Station, a team focused on building a device that cleans and refills water bottles for those walking about in the Arizona heat. Although I am a Computer Science major, I was involved in various Electrical Engineering roles on the team through coding the weight and the distance sensors, as well has helping the team build circuits.

Hydration Station had been around a few years when I joined. So my main job was to build upon work that others in previous semesters had already done, including developing and testing our prototype; we learned that using the wood framing for the outside was not ideal. Using that we learned about how to put the sensors in a better place to avoid water damage. We got invited to the EPICS Generator Awards, where we won the Most Innovative Award and the Popular Choice award by the Judges.

Hydration Station was a very rewarding experience for me. They perfectly aligned with my theme of Sustainability as it encouraged the reuse of water bottles, we aimed to reduce plastic waste, which is a critical issue in our global fight against pollution. I may not have done a lot of Computer Science work on the project, but it really gave me a chance to work on a cross-functional team with various other majors, which is an extremely valuable experience to have. I am planning to work on EDA (Electronic Design Automation) roles in the future, which involves plenty of optimizing. I'll focus on creating functions that last longer, writing more efficient code, and focus on saving energy and power in the future.