Intro
For my bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, I attended Oregon State University from 2014 to 2018. I was one of the few students from Kazakhstan selected out of 500 applicants to receive a scholarship to attend OSU. Over four years, I earned more than $100,000 in scholarships, as my family couldn’t fully cover the cost of international tuition.
During summer of freshman to Sophomore year I joined Ross Hatton Lab where we observed spiders. Due to their poor eyesight, orb-weaving spiders rely on web vibrations for situational awareness. Web-borne vibrations are used to determine the location of prey, predators, and potential mates. The influence of web geometry and composition on web vibrations is important for understanding spider’s behavior and ecology. At Ross Haton’s lab we were constructing artificial webs and computer models to better In order to understand the effect of web structure on vibration transmission.
2019 Guthman Competition Finalist Performance
My first experience with robotics was during Hardware Weekend at OSU in 2014, my freshman year. I joined the hackathon as a team of one, but I was fortunate to be supervised by a senior Electrical Engineering student who guided me in building a small robot designed to follow light. However, when it came time to present, the robot struggled due to the abundance of light in the room, causing it to spin in circles. Sadly, I didn’t win any prize.
WE got 2nd place
It would break apart but eventually it walked!
Inspired by working with Ross Hatton and determined to improve, I returned the following year with a plan, leading a fresh team of mechanical and electrical engineers to create a successful project using laser-cut, 3D-printed parts. When I walked into the competition I persuaded people I never knew before to join me and we won 2nd place out of 30 teams in a span of 32 hours. I chose Klann Linkage as mechanism for spider movement.
