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.

Project Narrative The proposed program will offer undergraduate biomechanical engineering students clinically-immersive design experiences that challenge student teams to design assistive devices for individuals with disabilities. Students in the program will participate in team-based design projects that will combine both technical engineering design education and clinical interactions with therapists and individuals with disabilities. The program’s goal is to inspire students to apply their combined engineering education and clinical experience in future careers in biomedical industry and research.