Since 1987, the senior capstone design course in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tulane University has been focused on designing technologies for persons in the community with disabilities. Over 700 students and 180 clients have benefited from this design experience. This proposal requests support for team project supply costs that will enable the continuation of this course. In conjunction with their coursework in the sequence BMEN 4030-4040 Team Design Projects, biomedical engineering undergraduate students will form multidisciplinary teams to address the needs of individuals with disabilities in their therapeutic, work, home, or school environments. The teams, working with their client directly or working with their client's institution will design, construct, evaluate, and deliver a technology or device that solves an immediate client need. The primary objectives of our senior design course are to provide a meaningful design experience for biomedical engineering students, enhance the professional development of Tulane biomedical engineering students and provide assistive technologies or devices that are not otherwise available to individuals with disabilities or institutions serving them.
The intellectual merit of the program includes facilitation of the transition of biomedical students from school to practice and the development and dissemination of new knowledge. Students will apply formal knowledge learned in courses to real engineering problems that require the ethical perspective and conduct required of the engineering profession. Throughout the year long course and related design process, student teams will communicate their progress via formal reports, presentation of prototypes at a design show, design contest entries, potential patents and publication of abstracts and papers.
The broader impacts resulting from this work include the enhancement of education infrastructure, providing a benefit to the society, and advancing discovery and understanding while at the same time promoting teaching, training, and learning. The student design projects will directly enhance the lives of individual clients. Clients will receive technologies that solve real problems limiting their daily function. In addition, design projects will be disseminated to enable a wide audience to use these solutions. The guided interactions between students, instructors, therapists, and clients will permit the sharing of knowledge from multiple perspectives and areas of expertise. The student participants will also gain greater awareness of the problems of individuals with disabilities and the ability to communicate with and about people who have disabilities.
