BME students patent senior design invention and launch company.
A four-person biomedical engineering senior design team laid the groundwork for commercializing a novel prosthetic device for the lower leg that can adjust as children grow. The adaptable below-the-knee pediatric prosthesis showed enough promise that the students filed for a provisional patent and formed a limited liability company, GroLimb, LLC.
“We are trying to keep the kids out of the clinic and reduce the cost out of pocket for parents,” Claire Catlett said.
The design was accepted into a competition at the 2024 Design of Medical Device Conference, hosted at the University of Minnesota in April. It won the grand prize, beating out competition from Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, and Duke University, among others.
“We’d been working on this project for a year and didn’t realize how big of a deal it was,” said Clàudia Archer, who has been passionate about prostheses since the fifth grade.
The team consists of Catlett and Archer, as well as Tushar Mitra and Madelyn Timm. Archer and Mitra plan to pursue graduate degrees after graduation, while Catlett and Timm plan to begin their professional careers.
Ashley Hulshizer of the Limb Lab in Iowa City served as mentor on the project, along with Colleen Bringman and Kristan Worthington, associate professors of biomedical engineering.