Since childhood, I have been passionate about wildlife. While other kids enjoyed watching Batman and Power Rangers, my Saturday morning TV time was devoted entirely to the Animal Planet channel and the latest scandal on its Meerkat Manor series.  

             

Then, during middle school, I discovered my love for engineering and further developed it throughout high school on a First Tech Challenge robotics team. When the time for college applications came, I faced a dilemma: should I pursue a career in engineering, which I found to be challenging, creative, and lucrative or follow a path of conservation and sustainability, which I found to be rewarding and impactful?    

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In EGR 101, my freshman design course, I worked alongside three other engineering students to create a feeding system for Florian, a skunk at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, that would better simulate conditions in the wild by delivering food at a mixture of set and random times in varying locations, encouraging him to forage. This project allowed me to acquire engineering skills, such as programming microcontrollers, but also gave me the opportunity to feed my hunger for conservation by researching skunk behavior and conditions in the wild. It was the perfect combination of my biggest passions: conservation and engineering.        

        

The summer following my freshman year, I served as a DukeEngage conservation intern at the Waipa Foundation in Kaua’i. I saw, firsthand, the threats plant and animal species endemic to the Hawaiian islands face from tourism and invasive species. I was incredibly grateful for the opportunity to contribute to Waipa’s conservation and restoration mission. Yet, in the back of my mind, I kept thinking of ways I could use my engineering ability at my worksite. During my lunch break, I would pull out my engineering notebook (kept in a Ziploc bag to protect it during stream crossings) and sketch designs of passive solar water heaters for the campgrounds or electromagnet controlled lockers for a bird conservation organization that would alert the organization’s members when an injured bird had been placed inside. I spent hours after work researching and budgeting a solar water pump for Waipa’s garden. Ultimately, I found myself without the time or resources to complete these projects. However, I learned a crucial lesson: I could not pick between conservation or engineering, I needed to do both.

 

Thus began my quest to unearth research opportunities, internships, and jobs that applied mechanical engineering to conservation. The results were disheartening. I was unable to find a single internship opportunity in this area and searches for “conservation engineer” resulted in energy efficiency websites. Then, over winter break, I stumbled upon an article on World Wildlife Fund’s website detailing a technology project that used drones to detect poachers. At the bottom of the article was contact information for the author. After some background research, I discovered that they were Duke Alumni, so I reached out through the alumni website expressing my interest in the project and asking if there was any way I could get involved. Weeks went by, and there was no response. But, I was determined to do everything I could in pursuit of this opportunity and reached out using an email on World Wildlife Fund’s website. To my shock and joy, I received a reply! After speaking with the alumni and World Wildlife Fund’s only conservation engineer in the United States, they offered me an internship position, which led me to the Brodhead Fellows program.