Reflection A: Applying Principles of Sustainability to Create Viable Systems

In the final-year engineering project I worked on developing a high precision long range infrared monitoring system I came across a decisive decision: perceiving two systems providing either maximal detection accuracy at high consumption, or with the slightly less accurate but low energy consumption. The broader sustainability challenge was to balance performance and resource responsibility, and this choice expressed that duality.  For a time, I let myself be pulled to the more powerful system since it was technical ambition. Yet, as I deployed myself in exam of deployment environments (wildlife reserves and rural monitoring sites) power constraints and long term operational feasibility were deemed as important. Properly incorporated low power AI accelerators and edge processing optimization reduce the energy footprint of the full system by more than 30% without impacting enough accuracy to prevent practical use.  It changed my thinking about design of the systems. In my realization, sustainability is neither a limitation but a creative constraint to innovate. It made me think from life cycle impacts, not from a short-term outcome. In the future, I plan to apply my focus of mind such as an ability to combine technological capability with an understanding of social and environmental aspects in the context of projects such as those involving embedded systems or AI at the edge where engineering solutions must be not only effective but also environmentally and socially viable. 

Reflection F: Professional Practice within Intercultural and Global Contexts

During a collaborative project in the UTS-Northeastern University joint program, I worked closely with peers from diverse cultural backgrounds, including Australia, China, and India. The aim of the task was to develop a real time of people flow monitoring system for our public infrastructure based on an AI. While the technical collaboration was positive, early misinterpretation in task responsibility indicated a difference in the way that people communicate and were expecting.  The first time I felt frustrated was because I thought a teammate had omitted their role as assigned. However, after an open conversation, I understood that our misalignment was caused by our different norms: I was good with task ownership, they cared more about group consensus and flexibility. Thus, I changed my perspective, and started noticing cultural nuances of teamwork like indirect feedback styles or collective decisions styles, which are most common in some cultures.  This helped me grow from being more empathetic and adaptive on the team, I started to have clearer facilitative check ins and mutual understanding in meetings. It has helped in my professional life to remind me that technical competence is under no circumstances enough, especially when we collaborate with people from other parts of the world or are working remotely. In the future, I will strive to create inclusive environments where working in teams with diversity is not a challenge, but instead, is an asset, and will apply this intercultural analysis in both academic research and industry roles. This experience made me more empathetic and adaptive as a team member, and I started to facilitate clearer check-ins and mutual understanding in meetings. Professionally, it emphasized that technical competence must be accompanied by cultural intelligence, especially in global or remote collaborations. In the future, I aim to cultivate inclusive environments where team diversity is an asset, not a challenge, and apply this intercultural awareness in both academic research and industry roles.