Esther Asikhia
Electronic & Electrical Engineering (BEng) Hons
2nd Year, Nottingham Trent University
University
NTU Futures Award (2025/26)
1st Year Average: First Class
Developed skills in MATLAB, Autodesk Fusion 360, LTSpice, TinkerCAD, KiCAD, AnSys
Extra-curriculars
Mathematics Tutoring (A-Level, GCSE)
Electronics projects & Seminars
Taekwondo Society (Yellow Belt)
Sixth Form (4 courses)
Student of the Year (2024/25, female)
A*AB in Mathematics, Further Mathematics, and Physics
Distinction * (Distinction Star) in Computing BTEC
Completed Further Mathematics in personal time
Developed Video Game in Khan Academy
Programming
Python (IDLE, Visual Studio, Jupyter)
JavaScript (JsNode)
C++ (Arduino IDE)
MATLAB
University
Headphone Stand
Designed with an additional phone stand for high functionality and versatility for a personal display.
SensoBin: Smart Bin
A smart bin designed to tackle waste disposal across East Africa.
Completed as part of Grand Challenge 2026
Analysis of Honda GP160 Engine
CAD models: air filter, air filter cover, pull starter, oil level sensor, spark plug, exhaust silencer, air intake
Created the Bill of Materials
Completed for Rev Eng (Reverse Engineering) project
Additional projects
40+ CAD models in 1st year (Fusion 360)
Soldered LED matrix & melody generator
Personal Projects
Robot Arm
Programmed using Arduino IDE, Visual Studio Code
Data Handling
IEUK 2026 (Internship Experience UK), VIP Top 50, Summer of 1st Year
Identifying anomalous flight log data
GUI (Graphical User Interface) via Screens
Programmed using Arduino IDE, Squareline Studio
Using ESP32S2 LCD Touch 1.46" Round Screen
Additional projects
Traffic System using LEDs
Game on an LCD screen
Sixth Form
Platformer Game
Developed game targeted towards youths ages 11+
Level-based platformer
Created using Khan Academy
Contrail Prediction Algorithm
CREST Gold Award (70+ hours of research)
At Cranfield University, via the Nuffield Research Placement Scheme, Year 12
Additional
Mathematics Tutor for A-Level & GCSE Students
Silver Award, Senior Mathematical Challenge
Best in Further Mathematics, Mathematics & Computing
Host for Robotics Enrichment Week Workshop
Headphone stand
| Feature | Restriction |
|---|---|
| Materials & Quantity Restrictions | Poplar Wood: 400 x 300 x 3.8 mm, PLA: 100g |
| Load | 1kg load (headphones), 250g load (phone holder) |
| Factor of Safety (FoS) | 5.792 (aimed for 2-3) |
| Ergonomic Considerations | Modularity, stand angle, height |
| Manufacturing Techniques & Time | 7 hours (laser cut, 3d print, assembly) |
| Fasteners Used | 2x6mm bolts, 4x6mm nuts, 2x3mm bolts, 4x3mm nuts |
| Portability | Can be deconstructed; moving hinges for phone stand |

At least 10 iterations were conducted as the design evolved to reduce material costs and match the practical scenario as closely as possible.

Flexible
Holes on the stand for ease when routing cables
Lightweight for portability
No glue required for assembly
Incorporates poplar wood for sustainability
Reduces the likelihood of collecting dust over time


I executed my design under the given constraints for poplar wood and PLA and challenged myself to create a design that is efficient and includes additional functionality.
Analysis of Honda GP160 Engine
The Honda GP160 Engine is a four-stroke engine, typically utilised in light-duty applications such as aerators, pressure washers and water pumps. Lior, N. & Rudy, G. J. (1988) identify the functions of a four-stroke engine to involve:
Intake of the mixture of fuel and air by the cylinder
Compression of the mixture using the piston
Immediate combustion of the mixture
Expansion of the products of ignition, moving the piston
Escape of trapped gases via the exhaust valve
There were several assumptions made when researching information to appropriately estimate the materials and costs for each part name.
Genuine parts were prioritised, unless the parts could not be found; non-genuine parts may have been used otherwise.
GP160 parts were prioritised, unless the parts could not be found; similar parts from the improved GP200 engine or the Honda GX Series were included otherwise.
The price estimations for each part were sourced from L & S engineers, Garden Hire Spares, HTS Spares, eBay, AliExpress & Amazon.
Note: The heat shield for the governor arm/cylinder head could not be found, so the cost was estimated based on the cost of aluminium sheets (on Amazon) with typical costs for welding services.
SensoBin: Smart Bin
This project initially aimed to develop an innovative solution that would encourage Tourism in East Africa.
After analysis and research on the pre-existing facilities at many hotels and nature reserves, the scope evolved to tackle a major issue that is prevalent across East Africa and in many places in the world: poor waste management.
Many locations still rely on the use of disposing all waste in landfills, which leads to overflows that pollute the environment and can cause significant damage or even death.
Smart waste classification system (prototype used yolov5)
Compactor system to maximise usage of space and mitigate overflows
Loyalty system (for demos in nature reserves)
Through this, I developed skills in:
AnSys quality assurance through material analysis
deploying, testing, and refining models
Data Handling
This page is a work in progress.
Platformer Game
This page is a work in progress.
Contrail Prediction Algorithm
Temperature, humidity and pressure can be related to each other to aid the use of this theory: partial pressure is the measure of water particles present in air/vapour, and represents the tendency of a material to change into a gaseous state; saturation vapour pressure, specifically, is the partial pressure exerted by a vapour when in a state of equilibrium, where neither evaporation nor condensation occurs and the material stays in its current state. Humidity (φ) is the ratio of partial pressure (p) to the saturation vapour pressure.
φ = 100% ⋅ p / ps
To obtain the saturation vapour pressure over water and ice, the Goff-Gratch model equation was used to derive these values, based on experimental use of the SAC, which these researchers regard as reliable formulae for calculating saturation vapour pressure.
D. P. Duda and P. Minnis (2009), as well as U. Schumann, use the Schmidt-Appleman Criterion (SAC) as one of the conditions required for contrail cirrus. The SAC computes a theoretical temperature threshold at which the mixture of the aircraft engine exhaust and the ambient air reaches saturation with respect to water.

The dataset originally used an interpreter algorithm to export and save each sample of data to an Excel file (Fig. 5). The original algorithm was improved by including functionality to loop over all files in a folder, thus fully automating the data acquisition phase etc. The refinement of the original algorithm required debugging and tracing, as many iterative functions were required for each column of the dataset.
© Esther Asikhia.


































