Capstone Project Presentation Reflection

As of April 13th, I've finished my Capstone Project.

The final form that the project was in was an online panel, but it went through a lot of changes in the process. I'll detail my process here.

I started thinking about my Capstone Project in the second half of my junior year. At that point, I had no connections to organizations or concrete ideas about what the project would look like, and I was worried. I decided to focus on something related to my scientific interests, but the labs that I had worked with in the past were related to evolutionary and developmental biology and thus not well suited for a discussion of global health issues, a topic that I was interested in. I thought since Polytechnic is so close to Caltech, I might as well look into labs that tackle issues in global health and sustainability. After asking around, I was able to hone in on the Resnick Sustainability Institute, which supports labs doing research towards environmental sustainability. Talking with the director Neil Fromer led me closer to candidates for the presentation. By that point, I had determined that the form of the project would be some sort of panel discussion or interview that would put focus on a researcher and a technology. Reaching out to members of the institute led me to Clement Cid, an engineer that works with sanitation. I thought this was a perfect technology to cover since sanitation is an issue that gets less press than others when it comes to global health issues and the technology involved was so interesting. Cid's work had to do with a closed-loop toilet that doesn't need connection to any kind of sewage system or waste. It uses a pretty ingenious design that is conceptually interesting: the toilet extracts chloride ion and through a redox reaction, converts it into chlorinated species that sanitize the toilet. Additionally, it uses products from human waste to feed bacteria in fuel cells that transfer electrons to power outside systems. One other capability that this system has is to separate phosphorus from the mix of items to  be used for agricultural purposes.

The workings of the so-called "reinvented toilet" intrigued me and so, I scheduled an in-person meeting with Clement and found him to be as informed and well-spoken as he was in interviews and videos online. I had prepared to talk to him by reading through his publications and watching videos where he presented information and still walked away knowing more. During the meeting, I was also able to gain some insight into how I would restructure the panel and took into consideration the logistics of the event.

When COVID-19 hit and moved Polytechnic education to the online world, I had to change my approach to presenting and create a webinar. Instead of having a live interview that might have lag, I opted to create a film/video interview with Dr. Clement Cid where I asked him a series of questions about his work and sanitation. There was also a Q+A session afterwards to make the event more interactive.

There were about 60 people that came to the event in total. The whole thing was taped and is uploaded to Youtube on the link below.

Here's a still from the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZR_ofPJzqo&t=2007s

I enjoyed the process and ultimately learned a lot. I have to admit it was a stressful process because the objective hovered over me for more than a year, but I'm glad that I've gone through with it because I have learned much in the process. I would like to thank Mr. Prater and Ms. Diederich for their support for me through the process and of course, Dr. Clement Cid for his willingness to share his knowledge with the community around him.