BME seniors place 2nd in National Competition
07/08/2008
A team of five Biomedical Engineering seniors have won second prize in the RERC-AMI 2007-8 Senior Design Competition for designing an Accessible Pill Cap Dispensing/Cutting Device. The group members, Kimberly Atiyeh, Pamela Bays, Charles Ekstein, Ashley Regazzi and Daniel Wong developed a device that could dispense, cut and keep track of pills, specifically for patients with visual, auditory or dexterity impairments. Their website can be found here: http://www.bme.columbia.edu/senior_design/08/iqueue/index.htm
The team competed against teams from Georgia Institute of Technology, Marquette University, Texas A&M, Trinity University (San Antonio, TX), University of Akron, University of California, Irvine, University of Connecticut, University of Iowa, University of Rochester, University of Toledo, University of Western Ontario, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Wyoming, Vanderbilt University. Ten judges from government, industry and academia participated in the competition, with three to four judges evaluating each entry. The team received $2000 in reimbursement for design costs, and won a prize of $750 to share. Details of the competition can be found here: http://www.rerc-ami.org/ami/projects/d/2/2/year5/index.aspx
The team participated in the competition as part of their ‘Senior Design' capstone course at Columbia University. The course, taught by Profs Elizabeth Hillman and Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic runs for two semesters and covers all aspects of design, from concept development, engineering design and prototype development, to aspects of entrepreneurship, intellectual property and regulatory issues related to biomedical device design. Prof Lance Kam and Keith Yeager also contributed to the project. Two teams from this year's class participated in the RERC-AMI 2007-8 competition, and three teams competed last year one of which also won the second-place prize for their "Accessible Home Vital Signs Monitoring System". Two other teams from this year's class won $500 competitive bursaries for the NCIIA BMES IDEA competition (http://www.nciia.org/bmeidea/ ).