Date: Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Category: Conference News

Now celebrating its 40^th year, RESNA, the premier professional organization dedicated to increasing access to technology solutions for people with disabilities, is pleased to announce this year’s finalists for the Student Design Challenge.

This annual, international competition recognizes innovative and creative design of assistive technology by undergraduate and graduate students at major universities. The prototypes and designs represent a wide variety of disciplines. Entries are judged on originality, quality of design, and usefulness to persons with disabilities. Winners have frequently moved on to become leaders in assistive technology.

The 6 finalist teams will travel to RESNA’s 2019 annual conference (June 24-28, 2019 as part of RehabWeek in Toronto Canada), to present their working prototypes to a panel of industry judges. The top three prizewinners will receive a cash award. In addition, one design, judged as the “Technology Most Likely to Become Commercially Available”, which includes a cash prize (RESNA will provide the cash prize directly to the award recipient) and product development consultation. Winners will be announced during the conference plenary session on June 27, 2019 at the Toronto Conference Centre. This years’ finalists are, in alphabetical order by title:

• "ATOM: Adaptive Tongue Operated Mouse"
  • Author(s): Michael Laffin, Kyle Cleven, Dexter Rausch
  • University: University of Wisconsin - Stout
• "Emospace: A mobile game for emotion recognition training in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder"
  • Author(s): Sheng-Chieh Chiu, I-Jou Chi, Yun Lee, Kuo-Hsuan Hsu, Szu-Hua Chen, Sung-Jung Hsieh
  • University: National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan)
• "Reka: Vocabulary suggestions for Augmentative and Alternative Communication devices"
  • Author(s): Hannah Sennik
  • University: University of Waterloo (Canada)
• "SmartHub: an activity monitoring device for manual wheelchair users"
  • Author(s): Noah Einstein, Julie Faieta, Jack Reifenberg, Sandra Metzler, Carmen DiGiovine
  • University: The Ohio State University
• "SipClip: An assistive dental device for people with bulbar dysfunction"
  • Author(s): Ashley N Myers, Yoo Bin Shin, Anish Karpurapu, Meena Gudapati, Frank Marinello
  • University: Duke University Pratt School of Engineering
• "ToeTronics: a portable device measuring the toe extensor strength"
  • Author(s): Lewis Baumgardner, Hongwu Wang, Mustafa Ghazi, Sarah Brown
  • University: University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
• "TOUCH MUG"
  • Author(s): ​Qiushi Lin;
  • University: New York University

This year, RESNA received 39 submissions. All submissions are available on the Student Design Challenge website.  Interested developers and investors may visit the website to review the submissions, and leave messages for the student designers.

RESNA's Student Design Challenge (SDC) is funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation, and is sponsored by TREAT (Center for Translation of Rehabilitation Engineering Advances and Technology).

About RESNA

RESNA, the Rehabilitation Engineering & Assistive Technology Society of North America, is the premier professional organization dedicated to promoting the health and well-being of people with disabilities through increasing access to technology solutions.

For more information on RESNA membership, visit www.resna.org.