Union College's ABET accredited Biomedical Engineering (BME) Program places an emphasis on close faculty-student interaction and hands-on learning in educating undergraduate students, culminating in an immersive Senior year Capstone Design experience. As the next generation of medical device designers, BME students need to meet the challenges of innovating and developing solutions to address shortcomings in current medical device technology while navigating a very complex pathway to commercialization of a new medical device. At the cornerstone of this proposal is an established collaboration with the Albany Medical College's Biomedical Acceleration and Commercialization Center (AMC/BACC), which enables high-impact learning in a clinical setting. In addition, Union is further enriching its BME curriculum with an expanded, two- term (20-week) Capstone Design Course Sequence. With these elements in place, the framework exists to support the development of an enhanced Capstone Design experience with three specific aims: (1) Create a sustainable Summer Clinical Immersion Program (SCIP); (2) Offer enhanced hands-on prototyping (HOP) opportunities for solution iteration in tandem with close faculty supervision and external mentorship throughout the Capstone Design Course Sequence; and (3) Jump-start (JUMP) design projects towards translation. The proposed educational activities will enable students to begin their Capstone Design experience earlier, during the Spring term of their Junior year, and extend the work on their designs through the Spring term of their Senior year. This full year experience coupled with mentorship by program faculty, physicians, industry experts, and entrepreneurs will significantly increase students' ability to traverse the path from initial problem identification to prototype solution development. The proposed enhanced Capstone Design experience will also give students more time for in-depth exploration of issues related to biomedical device translation before they graduate. One measure of success will be the commercialization potential of the solutions that have been prototyped by the student teams. AMC/BACC's technology transfer process will be employed to assess patentability of designs, and the expertise at AMC/BACC will help determine the viability of the team forming a company to advance their solution towards translation. A second measure of success will be obtained by surveying graduates to determine what career paths they have chosen, demonstrating that achievement of the three aims better prepares students and opens up new opportunities for them to succeed in a variety of career paths related to the development of biomedical technology. Assessment data will be used to inform new iterations of the Capstone Design experience elements, including course materials, instruction methods, mentors, topic areas, facilities, and equipment for prototyping that will improve students' success in developing solutions to medical problems and finding productive careers in biomedical device development.
Increasingly, students in four-year undergraduate Biomedical Engineering programs are expected to gain advanced knowledge and enhanced training for workforce preparedness by engaging in learning experiences outside fundamental engineering content taught in the classroom, such as: (1) immersion and observation in a clinical setting, and (2) understanding the process and pathways of translating biomedical innovation towards commercialization for clinical and patient use. This project seeks to design and deliver valuable hands-on, learner-centered content to Union College's Biomedical Engineering majors through an intensive Summer Clinical Immersion Program at Albany Medical College where students will identify unmet needs in the clinic, feeding directly into a sustained educational experience through an expanded Capstone Design Course Sequence that encourages exploration of the translation pathway while also providing the expertise, resources, and mentoring necessary for students to jump-start their solutions towards commercialization. Union's proposed Summer Clinical Immersion Program and enhanced Capstone Design Course Sequence will not only create solutions to meet current medical needs but will also better prepare undergraduates to contribute immediately to established or startup biomedical device companies, bolster students' understanding and expertise in biomedical device development, and empower them to confidently navigate the path from initial solution to final product.
