As a supervisor at a group home, Habib Lawal (’16) sees residents experience agonizing seizures. As a student at the University of Rhode Island, he sees promise in treating seizures thanks to new sensor technology.
Lawal, studying electrical engineering, works closely with electrical engineering Associate Professor Walter Besio. Besio has developed a sensor to monitor changes in brainwaves that indicate an impending seizure. The sensors – each about the size of a dime – feature concentric rings of electrodes collecting streams of data.
The U.S. Patent Office considered the idea so novel it awarded Besio a patent. But the professor still needs to prove the sensors function as advertised. That’s where Lawal, 21, comes in.
The East Providence, R.I. resident designed a system to analyze the signals captured by the sensors. First, he applies three sensors to a glob of conductive paste. Different frequency waves, from a function generator, are applied to a penny in the middle of the paste. The signals travel by the sensors through the paste then return to the penny to generate a signal. A computer captures the waves among sensors. By putting the hundreds of thousands of resulting data points through a custom MatLab script, Lawal can check the clarity and strength of the signal.
“He persevered and kept working on the system learning how it worked until he got it right,” Besio says. “Many students give up but Habib did not.”
Lawal says he thinks about the residents at his group home when his motivation wavers. He sees the residents virtually every weekend and considers them part of his family. Each seizure brings another reason to redouble his efforts.
“I’m doing research for something that I see every day,” he says. “When you are really curious and really care about a topic, you just want to dig into it.”
During the summer of 2014 his project caught the attention of the URI Science and Engineering Fellows Program that pays students to conduct novel research. His resulting poster took second place during a competition among all the summer fellows.
Even though the fellowship ended, Lawal continues to volunteer for Besio, squeezing in the research between classes and his group home job. Besides helping his group home residents, Lawal wants to parlay the research into a foundation for the future.
“This is what’s going to differentiate me when I apply to graduate school or a job,” he says.
When he graduates, Lawal will already be unique in becoming the first member of his family to earn a college degree. Originally from Nigeria, Lawal arrived in the United States in 2009 looking for the American Dream.
After graduating North Providence High School, he attended the Community College of Rhode Island. Inspired by his uncles who work in information technology, he started the engineering curriculum and transferred to URI in spring 2013. His younger brother, Abdul, followed him to the University’s engineering program a year later encouraged by his big brother.
Now Lawal hopes to inspire others, including young adults in his native Nigeria. In a country where just half the adult population can read and write, Lawal wants to build a technology school that can train young people as engineers and set them on a path to earn college degrees.
“I feel that could be something that would improve lives in Nigeria,” he says. “That’s the dream.”