Research Projects
Here are my research projects. To show the trajectory of my career and research interests, some of these go back to my undergraduate years. Use the table of contents below to navigate to each project, or scroll down for full titles and links to more information.
Table of Contents
Themes: Renewable Energy | Archival Research | Electrical Utilities | Puerto Rican Economic History | Electricity Access | Grassroots electrification initiatives
Dates: May 2022 - October 2022
Finding Another Way Out of the Darkness; Looking to Alternate Electrical Systems and Their Role in Puerto Rican Disaster Mitigation and Decolonization
This project sought to compare the history, development, and motivations behind the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and grassroots and university projects like Casa Pueblo and OASIS (UPRM). Through reviewing a century of archival records and conducting interviews, I argue that the very different aims in approaches to electrifying Puerto Rico speak to a larger issue of who is being literally and metaphorically empowered in the nation - profits or people.
Presented October 2022 at the Deconstructing Disaster/Reconsidering Relief conference through the School of Advanced Study, University of London.
Avemaría; Hurricane Maria in the Puerto Rican Economic Context
Themes: Hurricane Maria | Disaster Capitalism | Puerto Rican Economic History | Puerto Rican Political History | Global Warming and Natural Disasters
Dates: April 2019 - September 2019
Masters of Research (MRes) Dissertation
For my MRes dissertation, I looked at the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico to get a broader understanding of the island’s current political status. Using Maria as a lens into a much larger, systemic issue, I broke this report into three sections: analyzing and understanding the storm’s aftermath and humanitarian crises; reviewing the evolution of the island’s political status in tandem with changes in its economy; and unifying these two chapters to reflect how Puerto Rico’s history and territorial status create disaster in the event of super-storms and other symptoms of climate change.
Prototyping a Portable, Affordable SignLanguage Glove
Themes: Assistive Technology | Robotics | American Sign Language (ASL) | Sign Language Communication
Dates: April 2015 - May 2016
Bachelor of Science (BS) Major Capstone Qualifying Project
This capstone project was conducted in a team with two other students over the course of a year. The goal of this project was to design a portable ASL interpreting glove that could be used in settings like doctor’s offices. The glove was intended as a means of communicating between hearing and non-hearing individuals, as translators are not always available and can sometimes be costly. After conducting market research, interviewing Children of Deaf Adults (CODAs), and investigating the components of ASL, we prototyped a glove that would register sign gestures and output their translation via Bluetooth to a smartphone app.
Themes: Assistive Technology | Robotics | Autism Therapy | Non-verbal communication
Dates: May 2015 - August 2015
It's All in the Eyes; Designing Facial Expressions for an Interactive Robot Therapy Coach for Children
Research conducted at the Human-Automation Systems (HumAnS) Lab under Dr. Ayanna Howard at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This work focused on creating simplistic facial expressions for therapeutic robots intended to help teach communication to child patients on the autism spectrum.
Published in the 2016 issue of Designing Around People.
Themes: Climate Change | Pedagogy | Middle-school Curriculum Development | Environmentalism in Puerto Rico | US Forest Service
Dates: August 2014 - December 2014
Developing an Educational Module on the Impacts of Climate Change on Puerto Rico and its Inhabitants
Bachelor of Science (BS) Third-year Qualifying Project
This half-year capstone project was conducted in a team with two other students, and intended to demonstrate the central role that social sciences play in engineering. For our project, we traveled to Puerto Rico and worked with the US Forest Service based out of El Yunque National Forest to develop a middle-school curriculum about the local and global impacts of climate change.
Themes: Latin American Diaspora | Dominican History | Dominican-American Art & Literature | Afro-latinid
Dates: February 2016 - May 2016
Nueva Quisqueya; Un Análisis de la Identidad Dominicana en los Estados Unidos
Undergraduate Minor Thesis
This research project sought to define the Dominican-American identity by examining the history and relationships between the two countries, patterns of “upward” and “downward” assimilation in accordance with perceived race, and artistic and literary expressions of identity through famous Dominican-Americans like Junot Diaz and Julia Alvarez.