Conference: 2021 AHMB MINDS Conference Grant

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This award will fund the 7th annual MINDS (Mentoring for Innovative Design Solutions) Workshop organized by Alpha Eta Mu Beta National Biomedical Engineering Honors Society. The workshop will be held virtually from October 6-9 in parallel with the BMES 2021 Annual Meeting. This will allow the students selected for the MINDS Scholar Program to also participate in the BMES Annual Meeting. The MINDS Scholar Program is an innovative approach that provides students with the opportunity to collaborate and network with peers and mentors across the country for a 5-month period while building necessary engineering design skills including three key considerations that are not usually stressed in coursework projects. The three key considerations are (1) market considerations for commercialization (unmet need, size of market reimbursement potential, etc.), (2) regulatory strategy, and (3) evaluating prospects for intellectual property protection. The 7th MINDS Scholar Program will focus on the development of biomedical technologies that solve health care problems while considering end-user needs such as people with disabilities. The program begins with an initial workshop where students will virtually meet their team members, drawn from other universities across the US, and mentors. The team then selects a central design idea that will be developed over the subsequent 5 months. Students will then work with their teams and mentors to develop a design solution that considers issues such as market evaluation, intellectual property issues, and regulation. Teams will be encouraged to submit their designs to various design contests, investment opportunities, and grant programs. The collaborative and long-distance communication skills that the team will develop will better equip them to work in an environment that is increasingly dependent on communication between distant facilities and customers.The majority of design courses in the US, particularly in biomedical engineering programs, do not have sufficient time to provide students with a strong experience in the non-technical aspects that are key to design success: market potential, intellectual property, and regulation. This program will provide students, selected through a competitive process from across the US, with key experience related to real-world design processes for medical systems. It will also provide students with significant experience in working on a geographically separated team and with peers from varied backgrounds, both of which are strongly valued by industry.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.