When the pandemic hit, we all were affected in different ways. Students who remained on campus were forced into a more isolated existence. Preschoolers at the Child Development Lab were temporarily kept from learning together. And yet, green shoots emerge from this period of isolation. The Grow2Give program is an example of that.
Preschool students benefit from exposure to plants and the growth cycle. Sustainable education for pre-school children can also teach empathy via care for plants. Studies have shown that care for plants can increase mental health and well-being.
Inspired by the sustainability curriculum, “Nature Explore” offered by the Child Development Lab, Jon Moore, coordinator of OPIM Innovate, envisioned the Grow2Give program as a means to bring people together. Our “littlest Huskies” would grow plants to be given away as gifts to undergraduate students, and ideally, we all could learn about how caring for plants could benefit our mental health.
Once supplies were dropped off, the teachers at the CDL got the process started by helping the children individually paint the 2” pots that would hold each plant. Although a fun activity, the importance of creating empathy and the idea that the children were making these to give to others was focused on.
Meanwhile, advice on what to grow came from students in the Horticulture Club. Since many students have cats in the dorm (or at home) an
d because of its fast growing nature, we chose “catgrass” as one of the plants, but also picked lemongrass and a variety of mints for the first planting. Rosemary and lavender were also added to the list but with the knowledge that these had a much longer growing period.
With pots painted and seed, soil, and grow stations set up, again led by their teachers, the kids were ready to plant. Under the leadership of head teachers Debbie Muro and Kelly Aston, (most) of the plants germinated and have been growing just in time for distribution. Although this Spring was the first pilot for the logistic side of the project, we plan to continue creating a network of stakeholders who want to see
this project grow. In the past few months, Jon Moore has been meeting with other groups at the the University to coordinate distribution and hopefully, to enable the study and documentation of the beneficial effects on mental health that can be achieved by caring for plants. Colleen Atkinson and Karen McComb from Student Health and Wellness have been involved, along with Melissa Bray and Emily Winter from the Ed Psych department. Amy Crim from Residential Life Education has offered ideas on how we might distribute the plants that are currently being grown.
As Spring arrives, our plants are coming soon to a dorm near you! If you receive a plant and want some tips on your specific plants care, check out the embedded links below. If you would like to know more about the program or would like to be involved, please contact Jon Moore at the OPIM Innovate Lab to learn more. – jonathan.a.moore@uconn.edu
-Nick Brown, graduate assistant and MBA student ‘22
Over the past year, we have been presented with a unique set of challenges. Living, and working, from home has been a challenge for us all, but it has most effectively stunted research projects. However, this was the perfect opportunity to test a machine meant for such a scenario. Farmbot gives us a sneak peek into the future of farming; fully automated and sustainable. These are imperative steps towards increasing the availability of fresh produce, cutting the effects of climate change, plastic packaging, pesticide use, and carbon emissions that continue to pollute the earth and the food we eat. Even though setting up FarmBot itself proved an arduous task, the final result provides a sustainable farming method allowing for the automated data collection and maintenance of plants.
Wearable biometric technology is currently revolutionizing healthcare and consumer electronics. Internet-enabled pacemakers, smart watches with heart rate sensors and all manner of medical equipment now merge health with convenience. This is all a step in the right direction, but not quite the end goal. In fact, it seems that we’re past the point where technology can fix all the problems we’ve created. If this is the case then, at the very least, I think we can have a bit of fun while we’re still alive. Let us not mince words: We’re headed straight for a global environmental collapse, and I propose we go out in style.
The design of the device is relatively simple. I used the FLORA (a wearable, Arduino-compatible microcontroller) as the brain of the device, a Pulse Sensor to read heart rate data from the user’s ear lobe and several NeoPixel LED sequins for output. The speed at which the LEDs blink is determined by heart rate and the color is determined by heart rate variance. In the process of designing this, I learned how to work with conductive thread, how to program addressable LEDs and how to read and interpret heart rate and heart variance data from a sensor. As these are all important skills for wearable electronics prototyping, a similar project may be viable as an introduction to wearable product design. Going forward, I would like to explore other options for visualizing output from biometric sensors. I may work on outputting data from such a device to a computer via Bluetooth, incorporate additional sensors into the design and log the data to be used for analysis.
I was excited to find out that a Writing Center tutor was kind enough to donate a Keurig to the office, putting lifegiving caffeine in the hands of tutors without the cost of running down to Bookworms Cafe. Alas, it was disturbing to see that the K-Cups used by the machine were being stored in a small basket. Now, I’m not the Queen of England or anything, but I have my limits. The toll on my mental health taken by watching the cups lazily thrown into a pile in the woven container was enough to force me to take action. With less than half an hour of active work, I was able to turn the Writing Center logo, a stylized “W”, into a three-dimensional model complete with holes designed to hold K-Cups.
But there’s another reason I decided to turn my strange idea into a reality: I wanted to highlight the range of resources offered on campus to UConn students. The OPIM Innovate space and the Writing
Artificial Intelligence is an interesting field that has become more and more integral to our daily lives. Its applications can be seen from facial recognition, recommendation systems, and automated client services. Such tasks make life a lot simpler, but are quite complex in and of themselves. Nonetheless, these tasks rely on machine learning, which is how computers develop ways to recognize patterns. These patterns require loads of data however so that computers can be accurate. Luckily in this day and age, there is a variety of data to train from and a variety of problems to tackle.
When I first started working in the Innovate Lab, I saw the LCD plate in one of the cabinet drawers and wanted to know how it worked. I was fascinated with its potential an
I have been using CAD to make different models and designs since I was in high school. It’s so satisfying to make different parts in a program that you can then bring to life with 3D Printing. In the OPIM Innovation Space, several 3D printers have some really special capabilities and I wanted to put my skills as a designer, and the abilities of the printer, to the test.
Nowadays programs made by companies like Apple and Facebook are capable of making software that can unlock your phone or tag you in a photo automatically using facial recognition. Facial recognition first attracted me because of the incredible ability it had to translate a few lines of code into a recognition that mimics the human eye. How can this technology be helpful in the world of business? My first thought was in cyber security. Although I merely had one semester, I wanted to be able to use video to recognize faces. My first attempt used a raspberry pi as the central controller. Raspberry pis are portable, affordable, and familiar because they are used throughout the OPIM Innovation Space. There is also a camera attachment which I thought made it perfect for my project. After realizing that the program I attempted to develop used too much memory, I moved into using Python, a programming language, on my own laptop.
Before the introduction of Apple’s “Siri” in 2010, Artificial Intelligence voice assistants were no more than science fiction. Fast forward to today, and you will find them everywhere from in your phone helping you navigate your contacts and calendar, to in your home helping you around the house. Each smart assistant has its pros and cons, and everyone has their favorite assistant. Over the last few years I have really enjoyed working with Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant. I began working with Alexa during my summer internship at Travelers in 2016. I attended a “build night” after work where we learned how to start developing with Amazon Web Services and the Alexa platform. Since then, I’ve developed six different skills and received Amazon hoodies, t-shirts, and Echo Dots for my work.