Lemelson-MIT Program honors inventors bringing life-saving health solutions to the developing world
Our partners at the Lemelson-MIT Program today announced Rebecca Richards-Kortum and Maria Oden as the joint recipients of the 2013 $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Global Innovation in recognition of their work in developing inventions — in collaboration with their university students at Rice University — that improve access to health innovations for the world’s poorest communities.
Drs. Richards-Kortum and Oden established the Beyond Traditional Borders (BTB) engineering design initiative at Rice in 2006. Through that program the professors of bioengineering have guided more than 3,000 students through the invention process, resulting in 58 health technologies that are helping 45,000 people in 24 countries.
“It’s exciting for us to see how Drs. Richards-Kortum and Oden are changing the landscape of invention education through their courses. BTB offers an inventive model that helps students understand that technical knowledge isn’t the only thing needed to create great inventions and technologies. Through their experiences, the students see it’s just as important to understand user-needs and how their invention might have a commercial application,” said Carol Dahl, executive director of The Lemelson Foundation, which sponsors the Lemelson-MIT Program.
