Take a look at the following link to watch the Awards Cermony for the 2008 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize!

mms://streamer.cen.uiuc.edu/var/lemelson2008.wmv

 

Michael Callahan possesses the ability to speak and share his thoughts and ideas with others. This ability to communicate serves as the motivation behind Callahan's latest innovation. The 24-year-old winner of the first $30,000 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize hopes to give disabled people back the ability to speak for themselves.

Callahan, a graduate student in Systems and Entrepreneurial Engineering at Illinois, received the prestigious award for a variety of innovative endeavors, including a device that turns unspoken thoughts into spoken words and a "mind-controlled" wheelchair.

"The goal of this award is to recognize the outstanding innovation and invention of the students at the University of Illinois," said Andrew Singer, director of the Technology Entrepreneur Center in the College of Engineering. "The University has an extensive history of innovation, and Michael Callahan is a great example of the type of student we wish to honor with this award."

Spoken Word

Callahan's most recent invention is a device called the Audeo, which translates neurological signals into spoken words or commands for other devices, such as a motorized wheelchair.

"Prior technologies that allowed the disabled to communicate required physical movements like pressing a button or tracking head movements," said Callahan. "The amount of movement required to use these devices makes them inaccessible to severely disabled people. Because our technology does not require physical movement it has created an opportunity to bypass the communicative behaviors imposed by physical disability."

Leading a team of students and researchers, Callahan has begun to realize the potential of this technology. After a recent breakthrough, he and his team has shown the ability to produce fluent speech with 70% accuracy from the neurological signals. It is his hope that this innovation will restore communication for millions of disabled people.

"Michael Callahan's project to help individuals without speech and mobility communicate through the application of neuroscience is truly innovative and deserving of the Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize," said Ray Almgren, National Instruments vice president of product marketing and academic relations. "Using our LabVIEW graphical system design platform, Michael was able to design an application that compares signals from the muscles in the neck and develop a fully functional wheelchair prototype that can be controlled by a person's thoughts. National Instruments is excited to be a part of this project, and we wish Michael continued success."

Ideas in Action

In December 2004, Callahan formed a partnership with the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC), which has been ranked "Best Rehabilitation Hospital in America" by U.S. News & World Report for the past 15 years. Support from RIC has given him access to their large client base and allowed him to begin human subject testing.

In October 2005, Callahan started a company, Ambient, to commercialize this communication technology.

To promote innovation at the University of Illinois, Callahan is also working to bring resources to students interested in pursuing their ideas. He has been instrumental in creating a laboratory for students involved with the Technology Entrepreneur Center to develop their product ideas. Callahan is also working with Motorola to develop technology innovation for the impoverished people of India.

In addition to winning the Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize, Callahan has won the V. Dale Cozad Business Plan Competition (Social Division, 2006), and was awarded the Ben Jay Rosenthal Award (2005) which is given to the most promising technology entrepreneurship student in the College of Engineering.

About the Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize

The $30,000 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize is awarded to a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has demonstrated remarkable inventiveness and innovation. A distinguished panel of Illinois alumni and friends including scientists, technologists, engineers and entrepreneurs chooses the winner.

The $30,000 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize is funded through a partnership with the Lemelson-MIT Program, which has awarded the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize to outstanding student inventors at MIT since 1995.

RPI and MIT Lemelson Student Prize Winners

Nathan Ball, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the 2007 winner of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize. Ball received the award for life-saving inventions including the ATLAS Powered Rope Ascender, a portable, battery-powered device that can lift a 250-pound load hundreds of feet into the air in a matter of seconds.

Brian Schulkin, a doctoral student in physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is the first recipient of the $30,000 Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize. Schulkin has invented an ultralight, handheld terahertz spectrometer--an advance that could help catapult T-ray technology from the lab bench to the marketplace.

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For information about Michael Callahan?s company and a demonstration of the technology, visit www.theaudeo.com.

For a streaming video of inaugural Lemelson-Illinois Award ceremony, click here.

Contact: Rhiannon Clifton, assistant director, Technology Entrepreneur Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244.4035, rclifton@uiuc.edu.

If you have any questions or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, College of Engineering, 217/244-7716, editor. (posted 21 Feb 2007)

URBANA, Ill. (January 18, 2007) - Eight finalists for the $30,000 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize were recently chosen by a panel of faculty members from across the Urbana campus on Wednesday. The new Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize is an extension of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, which has recognized outstanding student inventors at MIT since 1995.

A distinguished panel of scientists, technologists, engineers, and entrepreneurs will interview all finalists in the coming weeks, and will choose a winner in mid-February. The winner will be awarded the prize at a ceremony scheduled for 9:00 a.m. on February 21, 2007 in the auditorium of the National Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) building, on the University of Illinois campus. The awards ceremony is open to the public, and will be immediately followed by a brief reception for all attendees.

The finalists, like the selection committee, represent a variety of areas of expertise.

Michael Callahan - Graduate Student - Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, College of Engineering

Michael hopes to assist individuals without the use of speech and mobility communicate through the application of neuroscience. By interfacing near the source of vocal production, he has been able to translate unspoken thought of the mind from intercepted neuronal activity at the vocal cords. The method that Michael has developed produces complete fluent speech with 70% accuracy from neurological signals.

Shao Liu - Graduate Student - Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering

Shao is the principal inventor of TCP-Illinois, a transport control protocol that dramatically increases the amount of bandwidth that high speed networks can utilize. With the growing popularity of broadband usage by home user comes a greater demand to transmit bulk data very quickly on high speed networks, giving TCP-Illinois promising economic potential.

Matthew Meitl - Graduate Student - Materials Science and Engineering, College of Engineering

Matthew has developed an entirely new concept in the fields of micro- and nanofabrication and a new fabrication technique that uses kinetically switchable adhesion. Through his work he has created a pick-and-place manufacturing tool capable of incredible throughput and control without moving parts.

Zheng (Richard) Ni - Graduate Student - Chemistry, College of Engineering

Richard aims to use metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) in detection and analysis systems to improve homeland security. Through the guidance of Prof. Richard Masel, Richard has led an undergraduate team and discovered at least 15 new MOF polymers in the past three months and has successfully synthesized eight previously discovered MOFs with high yields.

Craig Robinson - Graduate Student - Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, College of Engineering

Craig has created the Message Dispatcher (MD), a flexible and extensible system architecture to be used on wireless-inter-vehicular communication for safety application. MD defines how a message is created and interpreted by any vehicle and would be used to have vehicles communicate in order to avoid collisions, warn of hazards, prepare for a collision, and in general enhance road safety.

Kumara Sastry - Graduate Student - Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, College of Engineering

Kumara has developed novel competent and efficient multi-scaling methods that enable accurate and rapid modeling of critical physical, chemical, biological, and materials phenomena that will dramatically accelerate both the science and synthesis of new pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and materials. These scientific innovations have led to six patent filings.

Behzad Sharif - Graduate Student - Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering

Behzad has been the main contributor to the creation of the Patient-Adaptive Reconstruction and Acquisition in Dynamic Imaging with Sensitivity Encoding (PARADISE). This invention provides unprecedented image quality and resolution for real time Cardiac MRIs and is expected to have considerable clinical impact in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases.

Renata Sheppard - Graduate Student - Department of Dance, College of Fine and Applied Arts

Renata possesses a distinguished resume of performance work and choreography. In addition to her stage work she is conduction a 9-month tele-immersion project with Klara Nahrstedt. Tele-immersion enables interaction between geographically separated participants through the transmission of multiple 3-D streams, creating a virtual stage. Tele-immersion technology would allow elementary students in Virginia to dance with a teacher in New York and a recovering hip replacement patient to have a physical therapy session without leaving home.

New $30,000 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize Available to Undergraduate and Graduate Students

URBANA, Ill. (June 21, 2006) – At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the spirit of invention lives and breathes within the research laboratories, classrooms, hallways, and dorm rooms. Now, the breakthrough ideas conceived by Illinois undergraduate and graduate students can get an additional financial boost with the new $30,000 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize that will be awarded beginning in 2007.

The award is being offered through a partnership between the University of Illinois and the Lemelson-MIT Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a non-profit organization that recognizes outstanding inventors, encourages sustainable new solutions to real world problems, and enables and inspires young people to pursue creative lives and careers through invention. The Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize will be awarded annually to an undergraduate or graduate student who has created or improved a product or process, applied a technology in a new way, redesigned a system, or demonstrated remarkable inventiveness in other ways.

“I think this award recognizes the excellence we have here,” explained Ilesanmi Adesida, dean of the College of Engineering at Illinois. “We have a long history of ‘delivering innovation,’ and this award demonstrates that our students are worthy of investment. We are proud to be part of this partnership.”

“The spirit of invention thrives at Illinois, but more can always be done to encourage and support young, creative minds,” said Merton Flemings, director of the Lemelson-MIT Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Our goal is to help give inventive individuals the recognition and additional resources they need to turn their visions into realities.”

The new Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize is an extension of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, which has recognized outstanding student inventors at MIT since 1995. Recent winners of the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize have invented a personal air vehicle (Carl Dietrich, 2006), new therapies for cancer and stroke (David Berry, 2005), a desktop printer-sized device to mold eyeglass lenses (Saul Griffith, 2004), swarm robots (James McLurkin, 2003), a low-cost rocket engine and aerial surveillance system (Andrew Heafitz, 2002), a “silicon-less” plastic memory chip (Brian Hubert, 2001) and a screenless grain hammermill (Amy Smith, 2000).

The winner of the $30,000 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize will be chosen by a distinguished panel of scientists, technologists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. Interested students may apply for the award, and the winner will be announced at a press conference in 2007.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY) joins Illinois as a new partner institution, and will begin offering the new student prizes.

About the Lemelson-MIT Program
The Lemelson-MIT Program recognizes outstanding inventors, encourages sustainable new solutions to real world problems, and enables and inspires young people to pursue creative lives and careers through invention. It accomplishes this mission through outreach activities and annual awards and grants, including the prestigious $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize and Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams, a non-competitive, team-based invention experience for high school students. Jerome H. Lemelson, one of the world’s most prolific inventors, and his wife, Dorothy, founded the non-profit Lemelson-MIT Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. More information is online at http://web.mit.edu/invent and http://www.inventeams.org.

About the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois has long ranked among the nation’s most distinguished teaching and research institutions. As the largest public university in the state, the U of I campus hosts 41,938 students—30,909 undergraduate and 11,029 graduate and professional—its diverse, world-class programs reflect the mission of a comprehensive, land-grant university. Eleven colleges, two institutes, and two schools offer 4,000 courses and 150 programs of study. More than 80 centers, laboratories and institutes perform research for federal and state agencies, private industry and other campus units. In 2003, The U of I spent $494 million on research and development in science and engineering and ranks 16th among U.S. universities for money spent on campus research.

Contact: Rhiannon Clifton, Technology Entrepreneur Center, College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 217/244-4035, rclifton@uiuc.edu.

Melissa Makofske, Lemelson-MIT Program, 617/452-2170, melm@mit.edu.