Christina Holman | Design Blog

iOS app Last weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in Boston's largest all-female and non-binary hackathon! A group of friends and I wanted to digest as much tech and nerd information as possible, and we basically made it our mission to go to nearly every workshop session offered for two days straight. I don't know how we managed this but we did. From 5p on Friday and all day on Saturday, it seemed I bounced from one room to the next with a nap here and there. There was a workshop on rapid prototyping with AdobeXD -- which I am in love with. Then, I was able to create my first phone application during a workshop on iOS app development with Swift  (it's much easier than I had imagined), followed by a workshop at 2am on Android app developmen t. For my very first hackathon-conference, I wanted to focus on skill development and learning, rather than the competition. However, seeing everyone so wrapped up in their individual designs and programming ...

Recently, I've been asked (by a few people) how it feels to go through graduate school as a woman of color. And, to be completely honest, it's incredibly exciting and exhausting all at the same time. Being a woman of color -- specifically a black woman, particularly in STEM -- has a lot of challenges. If you simply search the phrase "black in graduate school," you will get statistics that are very humbling; articles and think-pieces on how different the Black or person-of-color experience is from students who are not minorities; and other outlets detailing how little support many Black and non-Black students of color feel that they have. In fact, the Council on Graduate Schools recently reported that, in 2017, Black students made up just 11.9% of all first-time graduate students in the United States. (That said, 68% of them were women! So, we are making p r o g r e s s.) I'm not sure what the numbers are at Boston University, but it doesn't seem that far o...

One of the cool perks of my job is the ability to go to conferences. I haven't used it very often, but that perk allows me to stay abreast of all the cool technological and business innovations happening in the field. It's a win-win since (1) it helps me conduct better research for the team and (2) it allows me to nerd out in ways that I probably would not be able to afford on my own. Last weekend, I checked out the 2019 Social Enterprise Conference  (SECON19) at the Harvard Business School, featuring Anand Giridharadas. You might recognize him as the author of  Winners Take All, The True American, and India Calling . (It was my first time hearing him speak, and I was absolutely amazed -- and somewhat stunned -- at all of the facts he regularly dropped about the system behind American wealth.) The conference was filled with all types of relevant topics, from workshops on entrepreneurship, capital building, and impact to several panels on creating innovative c...

The anticipation I had on the plane was  unbearable ; I could not even sleep with all of my excitement but the trip was absolutely worth it. When I exited the plan, at first, my body went into absolute panic because the air is so dry - while my homes in Boston and the Virginia/DC area is incredibly humid. Eventually, your body gets used to it, however.  I was met with a very warm hug from Paulo despite it being way too early in the morning. And, though I'm sure he needed sleep, he wanted to drive through the city and towns on the hour-long drive to Assomada so I could see some of Santiago Island.  The land is just as beautiful at night as it is during the day: with many, outstretching and rocky mountain ranges and gorgeous vegetation, how could anyone not fall in love? I settled in with my host family, organized my phone service and explored my new hometown, Assomada. For the first two days, my times was enjoyable as I tried foods for the first time, like papa...

Long time, no talk! I have finally wrapped up my junior year of college: I am officially a rising senior - and it is still  unreal to think about entering my final year of college. (To those entering or still in college: take advantage of every moment you have.) Fortunately, I will enter the fall semester with a  bang!  as I will have just ended an amazing summer internship in Praia, Cape Verde. Cape Verde is an archipelago composed of ten islands in the Atlantic Ocean, sitting right off of North-West Africa. I was accepted as an intern for the Uni-CV Technical Investigation Internship through the Albright Institute (into which I have also been fortunately accepted for the 2017 program!) and funded by the Anchor Point Fellowship Fund . (A huge shout-out to them both.) There, I am pursuing TWO projects: Dam Poilao management: Working with the government to understand the technical and maintenance issues of the recently established dams on Santiago Island. UNI...

About a week or so ago, Professor Amy Banzaert - director of the  Wellesley Engineering Laboratory  - sent out an invite to enter an international competition and several students (we) answered the call. We're building a robot to make art! The  2016 1st Annual International RobotArt Competition  aims to foster innovation in artificial intelligence, processing and robotics. Considering that Wellesley is  not  an engineering school (and doesn't have an engineering department), we definitely have our work cut out for us and must be resourceful in our project. We had our first meeting on the Sunday before March and covered quite a bit for an intro into the area: What is robotics?  Have robots been built for painting, decorating, etc? What are our backgrounds?  How can we divide the project into parts? What to do for next time? With all of those questions in mind, we are absolutely seeking to grab more teammates and seek out help in ar...

From " Making Things Making a Difference. " Photo Credit: Amos Chan Hello, again! It has been quite a while since I posted a new entry, primarily because I was abroad all fall and am settling back at Wellesley ( Check out my travels! ). The returning 'culture shock' was much worse than I thought: I don't think anyone prepares for it. Regardless, it's good to be home. A few updates from this Spring semester so far: I am still (and forever will be) interested in engineering and technology. BUT I am taking no STEM classes for the first time in my college career so that I can focus on my Wellesley majors. I am, however, involved in several things: Design for America (BOW Chapter) Wellesley team for the Robot Art Competition ( website is coming ) Wellesley Engineering Society Also, if you didn't see my interview in the Wellesley magazine , check the photo to the right! All in all, I will be posting much more updates to the site but  not as ma...

Director Raji Patel, who also invited me to speak at the Regional Meeting, also asked me to speak at the 2014 Massachusetts STEM Summit during the MASGC breakout session with NASA astronaut and icon Sunita Williams. The talk presented a bit of a challenged as I was asked to condense the presentation of my research on "A Multiplexed Digitizer for Dark Matter Detection" to a holistic, non-technical presentation. I had to re-route the order of my presentation and focus on the "big picture" to my audience. I emphasized my own personal development during the summer, explained major decisions on the overall design of the readout circuit, and featured the importance of such research in the physics and current news arena. (See below.) I was ecstatic to be there alongside Sunita Williams and another student presenting her work. As big of an icon she is, Williams was very cordial and eager to share her experience leading up to her record for "longest single space fli...

When Professor Battat asked if I would be willing to present for the Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium, there was no hesitation in my reply. I could barely contain my excitement as he replied to the director about my response. Not only was the director Raji Patel asking me to present at their regional meeting but also the MA Stem Summit the following week. In just a two-week time period, I would be in the presence of NASA officials, state consortia directors, the Massachusetts Governor, the MA STEM Council (headed by Congressman Kennedy) and other key stakeholders. As excited as I was, I was also nervous about these events: I knew I had to nail it. This morning, at the regional meeting at MIT -- with less than 4 hours of sleep -- I gave the presentation to floor a nation.... maybe that's a hyperbole but my presentation was no less wonderful. My mother -- my greatest supporter and critic -- flew in for this presentation and Wellesley's Family Weekend to place one more laye...

WeLab/WES ( Wellesley Engineering Society ) has gotten off to a great start with almost 100 students and counting . I really want to see the engineering department grow and getting students involved in the seminars, workshops, etc will hopefully retain all those bright-eyed first years interested in engineering. Lookout, World! Wellesley students are ready to show what it means to be An Engineer in Liberal Arts and it's time for people to know about the impact of that tie. As John Maeda says,  STEM + ART = STEAM. Take a look at all the steam these students are building and what's ahead for We-Lab: Can't view infographic? infogr.am/whos-with-me-5283

Since Prof. Banzaert has been away on maternity leave, I've been working a lot on expanding the presence of the Wellesley Engineering Laboratory and knowledge of the engineering options at Wellesley. I met two other students -- one of who was in my EXTD160 class last Spring (Sam Chin) and the other being a current certificate student (Elena Shaw) -- who are interested in expanding the engineering community here at Wellesley also. With the guidance of Dean Stephan, one of the few members of the engineering steering team, I am pushing forward on my many ideas -- especially the development of a organization for students' interested in engineering for  various levels and fields . This society will engage in field trips to seminars to outreach to conferences to workshops and professional development -- all in the good name of engineering! We have much more interest in the society than I expected and I cannot wait to get things started. My list of seminar topics and field trips i...

Welcome Back! After a few weeks of break, I am finally back at Wellesley College and ready to take on a new academic year and have just finished the first week of sophomore year. I'm looking forward to diving into Olin's Principles of Engineering, abbreviated to PoE,   (ENGR2210) and Wellesley's Mathematics for the Sciences  in addition to ECON102, ARTH259 and HIST205. What's more, I am helping manage the Wellesley Engineering Laboratory (We-Lab) while the department chair is on leave by organizing seminars, aiding set-up of events (e.g. Engineering Night) and implementing regular "open house" activities. I am now also the program coordinator for the Office of Sustainability's Bike Share Program and a peer tutor for the Physics Department (as well as an individual tutor for ECON101.) Feel free to see me in the Help Room on Thursdays! Since working under Prof. Battat this summer in creating a multiplexed digitizer for dark matter detection, the project...

People who know me have heard me constantly credit a high-school STEM program for my "Aha!' moment with electrical engineering and, yesterday, the program held its final presentations ceremony (and alum reunion) for its 39th year in a row. As a rising senior during MIT's Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science (MITES) ten-week summer program, I came in with my mind set on becoming a chemist but was placed in the Electronics design course (my second to last choice). I started the first day of class trying to calm my nerves: "Oh well. I'll make the best out of it." Before I knew it, I had run to call my parents, telling them "I know what I want to do with my life! I want to be an electrical engineer." And my course hasn't changed since. I really have to credit MIT Professor Joe Steinmeyer for developing my love for electronics and encouraging it (e.g. he photocopied his entire Getting Started in Electronics  by Forrest Mims for me)...

During my free time today, I sat beside the water under the shade and read peacefully while listening to jazz music from my phone. It was simply wonderful, but what made it was a great book: Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything  by Joshua Foer. When I first picked up this novel, I thought it to be a discussion of how the brain works and why -- or, in some capacity, dealing with Einstein's intellectual abilities. In fact, it is about Josh Foer's discovery of the mental elite or "Mental Athletes" -- those who have trained themselves in the art of memory. I honestly had to think for a while on the idea of memorization as an "art." Nonetheless, I kept reading. To be clear, Moonwalking with Einstein is not  a self-help guide to improving one's memory; the first four chapters are solely about his discovery of the possibility of "remember everything" and some of the scientific literature  and stories surroundin...

After reading through the papers that Prof. Battat handed to me in regards to his 2-bit counter, I finally understood how this design would connect to the overall 4 x (4:1) config and set out to design. However, the more I drew, the more I realized the less I actually understood. So, I put the schematic on hold and re-directed my attention until Prof. Battat returned. Eventually, I met with him and asked him about how A0 and A1 would connect in replacement of the 4 inputs planned for the 4-bit gray code counter. After a mini lesson in op-amps and gain control, I finally started drawing a more cohesive diagram that ended up like (upper-left) Machine Project: Plan B During my wait for Battat's help, it was just my luck that the machinist Mr. Knowles had sent me an email about not being able to make the Ships Wheel or  the Marine Desk Lamp. I went down to speak with him about potential projects, but neither a meat tenderizer nor a hammer seemed as exciting as before. I looked ...

electronics-tutorials.ws/combination/comb_2.html On to the second week of work! I believe I have finally started to cross the line from a state of first-time jitters to what I call the "honeymoon stage" -- when all seems hopefully bright and I am in love with my project -- or what others may call the "calm before the storm." Today, I began my work day very early to make-up for the time I lost yesterday, as I was well under the weather. I caught up on all the emails I missed from Prof. Battat and Dr. Phillips, making a list of to-do's before our telephone conference at 10 am. Whereas, in the last meeting, I leaned a bit backwards to make sure I understood the flow of the conversation, I came prepared to engage in this conversation and walk away from the table with a clearer vision of my mission. We discussed: the decision to daisy-chain (string together) four 4:1 multiplexers (mux) to generate what was equivalent to a 16:1, leading us to buy the evaluation ...

A few weeks ago, I received an email about the Science for Girls chapter hosting a science fair, and, though I was coordinating CommSci at the same time, I thought, " Oh, what's one more activity? " I decided to hold a booth at the event too and expose children/tweens to the "wonders of engineering" -- and the best way I thought I could do that was by hitting close to home: Legos. I have yet to meet a person who does not know about/like playing with Legos. From toddlers, we grow up with building blocks, puzzle toys or the actual Legos themselves, and having just finished the Gear activity, I thought it would be a good activity for a booth. I sent out my idea to several students I knew and few responded back to me. So with a group of four other students (two of which had no experience with Lego robotics), I planned out the activity; did a few lessons in how to build Lego cars, motion modules and PicoCricket programming; prepped for the weekend event; and then...

This year, I really dived into my passion for science and science education. I truly believe in strengthening connections between scientists and non-scientists -- and when the opportunity came to coordinate the  2014 Wellesley College Communicating Science Symposium ,  an event that celebrates that relationship, I jumped on it. The Wellesley Energy and Environmental Defense ( WEED ) has held the symposium -- or "CommSci" as we call it -- for four years now, and this year's event was the biggest yet. 150 people registered from Harvard, Boston College, Babson, Olin, Cornell, Swarthmore, Tufts, UMass and so many others. As the coordinator, I dreamt about everything that needed to happen before March 8th, delegated assignments to others and took on several hats and tasks myself. There were so many highlights of this stressful yet rewarding experience I cannot pick my favorite, though having the former director of the National Science Foundation, Dr. Rita Colwell, agree ...