Concluding Thoughts and Thank You!
Hello everybody, and welcome back to my blog one last time!
I want to start by giving a big thank you to all of you readers for following along on my senior project journey. I hope it has been fun to see the experiments I have performed, and I hope my research has been informative in the realm of water conservation.
Next, I would like to thank Ms. Sandor, my faculty advisor. Ms. Sandor has been a huge help in getting me started with the senior project process early in the year. As a student in her Capstone: Environmental Science class, I was able to further my interest in water through several lectures and labs. She taught our class how to properly cite in the APA format, and our final project was to write a literature review, which gave me a head start on my senior project. Thank you Ms. Sandor for all the support and advice you have provided and for ensuring I am on top of deadlines throughout this journey!
Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Sinha, my on-site mentor through the ASU SCENE program. Dr. Sinha originally introduced me to the topic of Atmospheric Water Capture. He provided me access to articles on past experiments and truly sparked my interest in this specific water harvesting method. From my first day in the lab, Dr. Sinha ensured I was comfortable and familiar with all the equipment. Any time there were issues with the dehumidifier setup or things needed to be adjusted, Dr. Sinha immediately came to help whether it was brainstorming solutions with me or using tools to construct new parts. Also, a big thank you to his master’s student, Mona, for being with me in the lab every day, answering any questions I had, and helping me come up with plans for experiments. Thank you Dr. Sinha and Mona for all the encouragement you have provided and lessons you have taught me, especially the importance of always maintaining a problem-solving mindset!
I am super grateful for these past couple of months. Coming into this project, I desired to have a hands-on lab experience that worked towards solving an issue I cared about. This internship gave me exactly that. I am so lucky to have been able to use all the equipment in the ASU lab and perform experiments with desiccant materials. This experience has taught me how to properly conduct research. I learned that research is trial and error; not everything will work out on the first go, and calibration tests are needed to ensure everything works properly before even starting experiments. I learned the importance of patience and how to stay positive. Most of my experiments took several hours and many of my beginning trials were failures, so I learned how to overcome these frustrating periods and realize that even “bad” experiments are important to the research process. I learned the importance of not cutting corners and ensuring that all variables are controlled to avoid skews in data.
In terms of my future direction in this project, I am finalizing my paper this week and will work with Dr. Sinha on edits for potential publication in a scientific journal. I also plan to continue with Dr. Sinha over the summer, specifically starting the next phase of AWC: desorption experiments. I am excited to continue this research beyond the timeframe of the senior project, and I cannot wait to dive deeper into water conservation in college as well!
Thank you all for reading! I cannot wait to present my project next week on May 8th!