Highly Commended

Third year, BEng Electrical & Mechanical Engineering

In Germany, I was raised in a half-Indian, half-German family. Starting with timber construction and moving on to electronics later, I was fascinated by planning projects from complete scratch, to then pursuing them from beginning to end. 

In order to customise my results in more and more detail, I needed to develop a more thorough understanding of all the steps involved. However, every answer I obtained led to only more questions. Here at the University of Edinburgh, having facilities like the uCreate studio and staff that share my enthusiasm has helped me to rapidly acquire the knowledge and experience I was looking for.

My image shows the two halves of my split mechanical keyboard which allows you to type with your hands separated. This supports an open instead of crouched posture. The little orange knob can be used to scroll through papers or videos without moving hands away from the keyboard. As a violinist, I have always had a strong interest in the mechanics of the human body, and therefore have been seeking ways of improving ergonomics in daily life. Although custom mechanical keyboards initially caught my interest for aesthetic reasons, I soon realised the significant impact that computer input devices have on posture . 

Custom-designed ergonomic keyboards bring the keyboard to the user instead of the other way around. I quickly got involved into the art of designing, building and programming these devices which lead me to acquire skills, ranging from CAD design and manufacturing techniques to integrated circuits and microcontroller programming.