Deborah Fashida is a second-year Mechatronics and Systems Engineering student at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) in Bauchi, Nigeria. She is interested in how technology can be adapted to solve practical problems in everyday communities. Her research focuses on energy harvesting using piezoelectric transducers, which convert mechanical energy from rainfall into small amounts of electrical power. Using rainfall data from Nigeria’s tropical climate, she developed an analytical model that explores how this type of micro-energy generation could provide basic electricity for off-grid rural communities. Deborah’s academic journey was also shaped by the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Program, through which she spent ten months in the United States. During this time, she worked on building a smart grid test bed that integrated sensors, microcontrollers, and fault detection algorithms to prevent cascading failures in electrical networks.

She believes lessons from this experience are highly relevant to Nigeria’s ongoing challenges with transformer reliability. Outside the classroom, Deborah is a RISE finalist and has been recognized for her community work introducing young people and persons with disabilities to basic digital skills and technology. She believes that access to technology plays an important role in expanding opportunity.

Deborah hopes to build a career designing engineering systems that are practical, resilient, and capable of working in environments where power is unstable and resources are limited.