NSF has made an award in support of travel for undergraduate students to attend the AEMB (Alpha Eta Mu Beta, the National Biomedical Engineering Honor Society) Annual Meeting and MINDS (Mentoring for INnovation Design Solutions) Workshop being held in Minneapolis, MN, Oct. 5-8, 2016, at the same time as the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) 2016 Annual Meeting. Students, preferably junior undergraduates, will be recruited through over 40 AEMB chapters. Students applying for the workshop will identify an unmet need for a biomedical device or technology (innovation) and its potential impact. Awardees will be selected based on the quality and novelty of the design idea and their potential impact. Workshop participants will be assigned to teams consisting of approximately 4 students and a team mentor. The teams will work together while at the workshop to identify design considerations, use online sources and upload ideas and considerations to their own collaboration site. The teams will be encouraged to meet virtually for up to 6 months after the workshop ends to further refine their innovation. This highly innovative workshop format will build necessary engineering design skills including 5 key considerations that are not usually stressed in coursework projects: i) market considerations for commercialization, 2) establishing methods for testing the product, 3) quality control requirements for production, 4) regulatory strategy, and 5) evaluating prospects for intellectual property protection. Students will learn how to effectively communicate with teammates and mentors who are from other schools and organizations using collaborative online tools. The proposal also includes detailed assessment plans, including surveys at the end of the workshop and at the end of the projects. Videos and written promotions will be evaluated to determine level of understanding of the 5 key design considerations. The program is expected to develop a core group of engineers who will better understand the importance of considering human needs before attempting design devices and who will be better equipped to work in the increasingly virtual environment that requires communication between distant facilities and customers. Key elements of the workshop are expected to be adopted by BME programs. A white paper describing the workshop organization and outcomes will be produced.
