This past month, the NC State/UNC joint Rehabilitation Engineering Center hosted a research “speed dating” event…with a twist. Attendees were given a small amount of time to meet, greet, and discuss their backgrounds and research interests, and then were asked to develop a product idea or medically engineered solution with a small team of their choosing. Each team was given four minutes to pitch their idea and, at the end of the night, some were to go home with a Rehabilitation Center Seed Grant worth up to $25,00 to kick-start the physical application of their ideas. Three teams, each comprised of at least one BME faculty member, were awarded a Rehab Seed Grant. Congratulations to Karen McCulloch and Oleg Favorov, Team 3; Jason Franz and CS Nam, Team 2; and to Caterina Gallippi, Jason Franz, and Xiaogang Hu, who took home the top award for the night.
The Rehab Center Seed Grant was established to facilitate collaboration amongst UNC and NCSU faculty for attaining larger grants, and to foster collaboration between undergraduate engineers at NCSU/UNC and Health Sciences students at UNC. Congratulations again to the winners and thank you to all who participated!