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Home-Based Monitoring Inventions Win Forbes Entrepreneurial Award
Two health-monitoring inventions and an identity confirmation system designed by senior engineering students at the University of Rochester have won the University's Charles and Janet Forbes Entrepreneurial Awards this year. The award comes with a prize of $3,600 for the first-place winner, and $1,500 for each of the second-place teams.
The first-place winners were biomedical engineering students James Bai, Sarah Hotaling, Huy Le, and Nathan Ross, who were supervised by Nick Kuzma, assistant professor of biomedical engineering. Their design, the "sAMY Monitor," is a small device that can track a patient's daily stress levels while being simple and non-invasive enough that it doesn't add to that stress. As part of a person's regular morning routine, a patient can simply place a small straw-like device in her mouth, and the device quickly measures the amount of amylase in the saliva. Amylase is released into the saliva during stress, so the device can make a reasonably accurate measurement fairly quickly, and can relay that information to a doctor or a computer where the data is stored. This can give doctors vital information about a patient's stress levels when the patient herself may not be aware she is stressed.
One of the devices that tied for second place was designed by biomedical engineering students Ashley Cronin, Nick Mikolenko, Brad Ochocki, and Brandon Smoller, who were supervised by Axel Wismueller, associate professor of biomedical engineering. Their invention, the "ToiletMD," also provides a method to help elderly patients monitor their health from home. The device is designed to help the elderly to manage their own health and to alleviate the strain that an increasingly aging population will place on the healthcare system. Once fully integrated with a substance-identification system developed by Andrew Berger, associate professor of optics, the toilet will be able to detect many kinds of medication that pass through the body and into urine, and thus the device can tell if a patient has taken his proper doses. This form of monitoring prescription drug use could provide a simple way for elderly patients, especially those with some cognitive impairment, to remain living independently and safely at home, rather than under the constant supervision of a doctor or nurse.
Also tied for second place was the rKEY project by electronic and computer engineering students Kyle Aures, Scott Warren, Aaron Wescott, and Adam Williamson, and supervised by Gaurav Sharma, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. The team adapted wireless technology to function as a keyless entry system that can identify different people approaching a door. A person simply holds a keycard with embedded radio frequency identification (RFID) technology near the door, and a detector reads the card and either unlocks the door, or if the card holder is a guest, the device provides a customized ring or "dingtone" to alert the owner of the house that a specific guest is at the door. This would allow the owner to know if the person at the door was a trusted friend. The system is readily re-programmed to disable lost or stolen RFIDs--a feature that offers improved security and convenience over conventional physical key-based systems.
The Charles and Janet Forbes Entrepreneurial Award was established in 1989 to encourage University undergraduate engineering students to consider the commercial potential of their design projects or research. Students, individually or in teams, compete by submitting a business plan for a manufacturing or a technical business, often based on their senior design projects.
About the University of Rochester
The University of Rochester (www.rochester.edu) is one of the nation's leading private universities. Located in Rochester, N.Y., the University gives students exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering is complemented by the Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, Schools of Medicine and Nursing, and the Memorial Art Gallery.
Professor Richard Aslin named President of International Society on Infant Studies
Richard N. Aslin, the William R. Kenan Professor of Brain & Cognitive Sciences and director of the Rochester Center for Brain Imaging, has been named president-elect of the International Society on Infant Studies, a not-for-profit professional organization devoted to the promotion of research on the development of infants. Aslin is finishing a five-year term as editor of the Society's journal.
Aslin is director of the Rochester Center for Brain Imaging, which uses one of the world's most powerful magnetic resonance imaging systems to plumb the physiology of the brain. Among his many honors, he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1988, received the University's Robert and Pamela Goergen Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Learning in 2001, and was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006. He also has held the posts of dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and vice provost and dean of the College.
Before joining the Rochester faculty, Aslin was a faculty member at Indiana University at Bloomington, taught at the University of Minnesota, and was a visiting scientist at the University of Washington's Regional Primate Research Center.
He holds a bachelor's degree from Michigan State University and a doctorate in child psychology from the University of Minnesota.
Read more at the University of Rochester News site
News 10 Now: Head Injuries should be checked out
About a million people each year hit their heads hard enough that they have to go to the emergency room. But many others don't seek help until they've suffered chronic headaches, memory loss or other thinking troubles.
These are problems that stem from a concussion. "There is a lot of evidence that head injury, even concussion, can be a risk factor for the development of Alzheimer's later in life," said Dr. Jeff Bazarian of the University of Rochester Medical Center Department of Neurology.
Read more and watch the video on news10now.com
13Wham: UR Doctors Research Brain Injury
A concussion is the most common head injury, but there is no reliable test to detect it and there is no effective treatment.
Researchers at the University of Rochester are now working on an easier, cheaper, and faster way to detect even minor head injuries. They have received a $1.5 million grant from the NIH to see if a simple blood test could determine how serious a concussion is.
Read more at the 13Wham Website.
Doctors will be performing their research by studying patients at the Strong Hospital emergency room and comparing blood test results with advanced digital imaging performed at the RCBI.
'NORMAL' CT SCAN DOESN'T RULE OUT BRAIN DAMAGE FROM CONCUSSIONS
Concussion patients with a normal head CT scan may believe they are free of brain injury, but CT scans often miss damage at the molecular level, warns a new study. In fact, when doctors examine the nerve cells of concussion patients, the pattern of brain injury is identical for mild and severe concussions, says lead author Jeffrey J. Bazarian, a brain injury expert and an attending physician in the emergency department at Strong Memorial Hospital. In an article in the February Academic Emergency Medicine journal, Bazarian and colleagues say that a more accurate and rapid diagnostic test for concussion could lead to better treatment in the short term and might also prevent long-term neurological problems. "Unfortunately, the widespread use of the CT scan as the primary tool for diagnosing head injuries has biased the way we think about concussions," he says. "For many people, a more significant axonal injury has occurred, and this underlies the problems they have with motor skills and memory, and may also be a risk factor for later development of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases." Of more than 1.2 million Americans who seek emergency room care annually for mild head injuries, one of four patients continues to suffer from symptoms such as forgetfulness, headaches, and other cognitive defects that persist beyond one year.
Read more at the URMC News site