A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to present some of my Master's work at the Southern African Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC). The conference was hosted in the beautiful Drakensberg Mountains, which make up part of the border between the country of Lesotho and South Africa. You can see this area on the figure to the left, To get there, I first flew to Durban and then took a 3.5 hour car-ride to the destination.
If you are familiar with my Master's project, you may wonder why I was attending a telecommunications conference. While my work is based in biomedical engineering, the virtual clinic project I work on involves many different disciplines. One of the considerations that must be made for digital health solutions in countries like South Africa is network access. Many areas in South Africa do not have stable mobile or fiber internet connections, which limits the types of digital health solutions (like virtual clinics) they can use. In building my design, I had to adjust for these constraints and then test that my solution actually worked in the field. This is the work that I presented at the conference.
Not only was the conference a great place to share my work, but it also allowed me to network with professionals in Southern Africa and learn about other innovations happening. I got to see AI usage in telecommunication systems, cutting-edge virtual and augmented reality, and research in sustainability for power generation. Check out this video of me making my own smoothie with a bike-powered blender!
I was very grateful for the opportunity to travel and present my work at the conference. Look out for another post on my next conference presentation, coming soon!