Inspiring Biomechanical Engineers through Collaborative Clinically-Immersive Design - Project Summary
Adults and children with disabilities often struggle to perform activities associated with daily living, leisure,
school and/or work, and rehabilitation. Inability to perform activities such as these limit these individuals from
full community participation, reduce quality of life and self-esteem, and require dependence on caregivers.
Occupational therapists (OTs) work with individuals with disabilities to regain the ability to perform these
activities. However, often individuals have limited function and need the assistance of a device or technology to
achieve tasks. Assistive devices and technology allow individuals with disabilities to compensate for their
functional limitations and participate in activities at home, work, school, in the community, or in the therapy
environment. Many assistive devices are available commercially, but are challenging for individuals with
disabilities to adopt because the devices are very expensive to purchase, not specific to individual needs, and
are difficult to adjust for size. OTs often have an idea of a device or a modification to a commercially available
device that would meet the needs of an individual but OTs do not have the time, expertise in design, or
resources for manufacturing to bring the ideas to product realization. There is a need to establish a
collaborative environment for design of assistive devices that can leverage the design experience of engineers
with the vast clinical experience of therapists and the feedback of individuals with disabilities. To meet this
need, the proposed program will provide collaborative clinically-immersive design experiences for
undergraduate biomechanical engineering students. The program’s overall goal is to inspire the students to
apply their engineering background and skills in combination with a newly acquired understanding of clinical
needs and interactions with individuals with disabilities. The proposed program will revise existing courses in
the undergraduate Human Movement Biomechanics curriculum at the University of Dayton to include clinically-
immersive design experiences and challenge students to work in teams to design solutions for assistive
devices that meet the needs of individuals with disabilities. The program will focus on sophomore students in
an Introduction to Biomechanics course and senior students in a year-long Engineering Senior Design
Capstone course. The program objectives are to: 1) mentor undergraduate biomechanical engineering
students through team-based design projects of assistive devices to meet the needs of individuals with
disabilities, and 2) revise existing courses to include collaborative clinically-immersive design experiences that
will allow students to receive clinical input from OTs and individuals with disabilities within the engineering
design process. The program expects to enrich the team-based engineering design experiences available for
students in the Human Movement Biomechanics program, provide students with inspiring clinical interactions
to stimulate opportunity and need recognition of clinically-relevant problems, and motivate students to leverage
their educational experiences as they embark on careers as engineers in the biomedical field.
