Hello! My name is Rima Rebei and I am a current Junior (undergrad) studying Mechanical Engineering and Product Design at MIT.
This class has been extensively recommended to me by friends and my research supervisors at the Media Lab.
My love for building started when I was a kid, and more specifically, truly started with the local Fab Lab.
I remember going to the Champaign-Urbana Fab Lab when I was younger and would be mesmerized by all of the projects
that were underway and extatic every time I was able to make something of my own. Whether it was a cloud lamp I put
in my room to lighten things up in a unique way to building a little terrarium that I could give my mother for her birthday,
using my hands to make something special always invigorated me. It would be amazing to continue that excitement that I had
in the Fab Lab when I was younger through this class to build even more unique and complex projects. Looking through the
portfolios of students from previous years, I have truly not felt more excited for any other class so far at MIT. This is
exactly the type of class that I came to MIT for and I hope to take this class to give me the tools to build machines that
are currently just a figment of my imagination.
I came to MIT largely because I was a visual learner and I wanted to take advantage of the hands on classes to learn engineering
and prototyping concepts in addition to just taking technical classes. To my surprise, this is one of the only classes at MIT
where we are really taught all of the necessary skills needed to build a diverse set of interdisciplinary projects.
In terms of my fabrication background at MIT, last semester I took a class called Design and Manufacturing:
Autonomous Machines (2.s007) where I solely designed and built an autonomous robot (pictured below). Last fall,
I also took Intro to Design (2.00). There I worked with a team to create iCane which is an assistive technology
for the visually impaired that is an attachment for white canes that alerts users of head-level hazardous objects
by vibrating the cane handle. Those two classes have been my favorite classes at MIT so far which is why I know I
would absolutely love this class as well. Outside of the classroom, I worked at the Object Oriented Lab at the MIT
Media Lab. There, I designed and built a turbidity sensor to add to a remote controlled boat that measures and displays
water quality in real time.
