2024 Halfway-ish Reflection

Being that I am somehow already at the end of the first week of semester two for the year, and haven't taken the time to use LinkedIn as my public diary in about six months, it feels like a good time to pause and reflect on 2024 so far.

It should certainly come as no surprise that UQ Mechatronics and Robotics Society (UQ MARS) has been a significant part of my year so far. We have continued to see further growth and strides made as we keep developing and improving the organisation and what we can offer. We've continued running many of the same types of opportunities that have proven successful last year, including a launch party, workshops, academic talks, networking events, and some miscellaneous social events, as well as complementing these with the return of projects sessions. A big props to my fellow T3, Slater Sammut and Mac Rogers , as well as the rest of our team for helping to bring it all together.

Our flagship event of the first semester, the Microcontroller Hackathon, also demonstrated marked growth and improvement. This year saw attendance up by about 35% on 2023, whilst also serving as an opportunity to revisit the event's roots, exploring the theme of education, and bringing in past executives of each of the clubs involved as our judging panel. A massive thanks goes to our event sponsors 乐鑫科技 , Micromelon Robotics , and MakerHero Australia who provided many of the tools and components that were used by teams throughout the event, and of course to our collaborators QUT Robotics Club and Robogals Brisbane for helping to bring the event to life and keep things running throughout the weekend.

As may have been seen in the past week, we have also managed to get ourselves to the position where this year we can begin to offer larger, more involved engineering project opportunities, namely by founding a team to compete in RoboWars, an event format similar to what motivated many to get into mechatronics / robotics in the first place. Still in its early days, we are expecting that this will continue to provide more opportunities to our members to develop and hone their skills alongside their education journey.

This year I have also had the opportunity to work on a student-staff partnership in the EAIT faculty exploring and understanding the current perspectives held by the undergraduate engineering cohort at UQ regarding Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) as it relates to gender. Throughout this experience, I was able to both realise and expand my understanding of the barriers that gender can cause in entering (and remaining in) the field, as well as represent and relay the male student perspective that would otherwise be overlooked as it relates to the implementation of potential results and solutions. This opportunity served to be particularly helpful in ensuring that I understand the role I can play in trying to help bridge the gap that exists, and better understand the perspectives on all sides that may be held.

Despite stepping away from my executive role with Engineers Without Borders UQ at the end of last year, I have yet to fully step away from being involved with the group in general in my capacity as a member and volunteer. The first of these that stuck with me was getting asked to attend the partnership launch between Engineers Without Borders Australia and 嘉科工程 to discuss and reflect on my experiences within the youth outreach space ranging from workshops in Brisbane metro through to regional areas I've been able to visit in Toowoomba, Cairns (and surrounding regions), and the Torres Strait, as well as getting to be involved in bringing the Innovation Challenge up to Queensland for the first time.

At about this same time, I was invited to take part again in this year's winter regioneering trip back up to Far North Queensland. Not two months later, alongside Shina Chen , Emily Krueger , and Mateo Oliveira Munro , I was once again back getting to meet and engage with the many of the students around Cairns and surrounding regions from Ravenshoe up to Dimbulah in grades 3 through to 12. Being a return trip this year, I got to visit schools that EWB had not visited before, ones that other volunteers had previously been to, and even one that I visited last year - whiched proved so impactful getting to see and appreciate the brief exchanges with students who recognised either myself or the EWB branding and were excited to share what they might have learnt last time, or even how they were excited to see us again next year.

To tie it off, just a few days ago, less than a week after returning from the trip, I had the pleasure of attending the 20th anniversary celebration for the UQ Chapter, getting to meet members from right at the beginning and learn about the foundations of much of what are now regular features of the chapter.

To complement all of this, were some of the more standard pairings, from my own studies (all three courses in or related to control systems last semester), to my duties as teaching staff, and various other one-offs like volunteering to help out for some of this year's RoboRAVE Australia , and various meetings (so many meetings).

All in all, the start of the year has been filled with so many new highs (even in spite of the lack of sleep that came with them). I continue to look forward to all of the new opportunities and experiences that I will manage to find myself in throughout the coming semester and the years to come. Whether it be continuing to set up and build up MARS, help contribute to the education and inspiration of future engineers, or the multitude of things that I wouldn't even be aware exist yet, I look forward to what is to come.