NIH Issues $10,000 Challenge to Biomedical Engineering Students

The National Institutes of Health, the primary medical research agency in the United States, is sponsoring a new competition for undergraduate students to design and develop innovative solutions to unmet health and clinical problems. This program, called The Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) challenge, is being organized by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) section of the NIH. At stake are $10,000 prizes in three categories – diagnostic devices, therapeutic devices, and technology to aid underserved populations and individuals with disabilities. Competitors must be full time undergraduate students and permanent residents of the US in order to qualify. Dr. Zeynep Erim, the architect of the challenge, said that the NIBIB’s objective for the participants is “to force the boundaries of their design skills and knowledge to develop innovative biomedical technology for health care.” Hopefully the spirit of this competition inspires them to create more efficient medical procedures and equipment to meet our ever-growing health care needs. You can visit the official DEBUT page to enter the challenge or follow along with the entries. It will be interesting to follow along with the proposals to see what new ideas these young biomedical engineers come up with. The submission deadline is May 26th, 2012, and winners will be announced on July 31st, 2012. Read the full announcement here.