Introducing Alex Obatake
About Me
I’m the type of person who focuses on the fundamentals. My goal on learning is to get such a solid understanding of the basics that anything more complicated is just taking a bit of new information and translating it into what I know. This approach characterizes how I break down a problem, and the results of this process are apparent in how my technical skills are applied in the projects below.
Biomedical Device Prototyping
Design prototyping has been an important skill since it is mainly a culmination of my other skills. Through the Junior and Capstone design projects, I have gained the skills needed to determine the needs for a design, create and judge possible solutions, develop a solution to the point of being feasible, and creating a physical prototype of the solution. I have had invaluable help from my teammates through the design process and have honed my teamworking skills through them. The final designs for the Junior and Senior Capstone design demonstrate my skill in prototyping biomedical devices.
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The Capstone design project is represented by the three pictures on the left. The design allows for a type of pelvic surgery to proceed despite excess bone removal. Since the design was more of a procedure rather than a single device, there is no single picture that encapsulates the whole design succinctly. The leftmost picture shows the result of a mock-surgery in which the prototype design was used, and the result was a stable implant fastened to the bone. This shows that my skills in prototyping were able to lead to a functional design. The middle two images show steps in the process of the mock-surgery.
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The Junior design project is represented by a model of the device shown in the rightmost image, which is used to allow one handed use of a catheter syringe. Since this project was only conceptual design, there was no physical prototyping involved. However, this design still demonstrates my skill in conceptual prototyping.
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Solidworks Experience
Solidworks CAD modeling was one of my first new skills in college and I immediately took a liking to it. The way that complex models can be made with a just a good understanding of the basics and some creativity really fit with how I like to learn and became very comfortable with the software. This skill has been invaluable for visualizing 3D components in many different classes and the visualization skills that I have gained from this experience will be helpful in any scenario dealing with 3D parts.
The top left and top middle pictures show the model and printed versions of a design I made for a class in my first year of college. The design is a variation of Dragonflies by George Hart, and I was surprised to see that I could create something that looks so complex in the skills that I had gained in just a few months.
The top right, middle left, and bottom pictures are 3D models and drawings that were used in some part of design prototyping. These display a more practical use of my modeling skills. The final result of the part from the bottom row can be seen in use in the section above. The drawings demonstrate my ability to make dimensioned drawings from my designs.
The center and middle right images are of a design that was welded together out of flat sheets of metal. It was difficult to come up with an interesting design that could only use a few flat sheets, but with enough creativity I was able to make something unique. I also assisted in welding the final piece together.
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Solidworks Continued
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Some of the 3D models are shown here in a viewer that allows the parts to be rotated.
Presentation Skills
When I began college, public presentations were one of my greatest weaknesses. I was always nervous and couldn’t recover from small mistakes. As I’ve practiced and performed presentations throughout my time in college, I have gotten much better at controlling by posture and speech and am improving on my ability to move past mistakes gracefully. Many of these improvements are from the help of peers and just from having more experience under my belt. I now feel comfortable and confident giving public presentations, which is a skill that will be relevant at some point for almost any life path.
The video shows my team’s presentation for the Capstone design project discussed above. I am on the camera’s right side. While this presentation wasn’t perfect, I think it shows my confidence in presenting well and demonstrated that I can move past a few minor slip-ups.
Laboratory Skills
The main component of my laboratory skills is experience. Since I have been exposed to so many different types of labs, I have become better at adapting to new labs and their different protocols. This applies to the use of unfamiliar technology as well, which is often one of the most confusing parts of adapting to a new lab. This skill will be helpful in the future for any time that I may need to adapt to a new setting to work or learn in.
The leftmost image shows cell cultures on a scaffold that are being incubated. One of the most demanding labs that I have had was the tissue engineering lab in which my team was tasked with growing cells on a scaffold that we designed. The cells had to be check on every few days and passaged once they grew enough. Any contamination in the month that the experiment went for could compromise the whole test. From this, I have gained many technical skills in how to maintain a sterile environment and how to passage cells.
The middle left image shows compression testing of a bone graft substitute block, which was done for the Capstone design project. This shows that I am able to apply what I have learned in lab settings, notably biomechanics and material properties labs, to help solve a problem.
The middle right and far right images are spectroscopy outputs from HNMR and IR respectively. These are two of the most common methods of chemical identification in organic chemistry labs, so understanding these methods will be helpful for most jobs that may involve organic molecules.
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Prototype Visualization
Prototype visualization is a very important skill for being able to picture and compare different design ideas. While I had no experience in drawing before Capstone design and just happened to be the one with the correct tools, I was able to become the dedicated artist for the team during the design concept phase. While my art hasn’t improved much and is not great, my skill lies in being able to demonstrate what needs to be seen clearly and being able to adapt to changes quickly. This skill will definitely come in handy any time I need to compare ideas that have a visual component to them.
The image shown is one of the concept designs that I drew for the Capstone design project mentioned above. The pelvis may not look great artistically, but it is clearly a pelvis, it has the indicated portions missing, and it uses an implant that is screwed in through washers. While this design was ultimately not used, it was helpful in the decision process for finding the flaws in this design and others like it.
Biomechanical Analysis
Biomechanical analysis is an important skill for understanding how the human body acts and how devices should interface with it. I have experience in both kinematic and kinetic analyses as well as understanding how to use anthropometric tables to have a scale for sizes. Since movement is such an important part of daily life, understanding how and why the body moves the way it does is invaluable for understanding how to fix or improve the body.
The video shows me performing jump front kicks while using motion capture software to capture the movement. In this experiment, the motion of the toe was measured to find a correlation between motion and dominant/non-dominant foot usage during this motion. I have experience setting up motion capture and utilizing data from motion capture to draw conclusions about human movement.
Data Presentation
While data analysis is helpful for understanding what a set of data means for an experiment, data presentation is crucial for being able to convey this information to others. The skill of being able to present data well will make the conclusions to an experiment much more convincing and will lead to less confusion of the audience. There are many times that data seems unwieldy and impossible to show effectively, and much of the skill in data presentation is being able to use creativity to find a way to present data that is clear without requiring too much thought.
The left image shows the data output for the motion capture from the biomechanical analysis above. The data is presented in a way that is simple and allows the audience to understand what the lines mean with minimal effort. This helps the audience draw better conclusions about the data and helps them understand the claims made about the data better.
The right image shows a less conventional graph. In this case, the force direction in the femur is displayed over three different running gait types. The data from this set is one that initially looks impossible to condense this way since there are three coordinates for each time. However, by plotting the paths of the force over a unit sphere, this confusing data set was reduced to a simple and interpretable graph. This shows my skill in finding novel but effective ways to display data.
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Communication
Communication is ironically one of the most difficult skills to communicate since it is mostly based on interpersonal relations. However, communication is one of the most important skills to have when working with other people. As I worked in a team in both Junior and Capstone design, communication as handled well. There were no fights among team members and the work was completed at a high quality level. This success was mostly due to my and my team’s ability to communicate about issues before they became problems. Both teams were very open to constructive criticism and assigning work to be done, which prevented team dynamic problems from happening down the line.
My communication skills also extend to people outside of my immediate team to the client in capstone design. Our team wrote memos to the client and called them roughly weekly. Through this experience, I became more confident discussing the project to someone who I had never even met in person. Our client ended up being happy with our project, which is a product of my team’s strong communication skills with the client.