A team of University of Wisconsin students who designed a system that helps people with insufficient control over bladder and bowel movements won $10,000 at an annual UW invention competition Tuesday.
The ?ActiveCath,? aimed at curbing incontinence, monitors bladder pressure and controls urine flow through the use of a catheter. It was created by a team of five senior biomedical engineering students.
Arin Ellingson, Marty Grasse, Ben Schoepke, Dave Schurter and Jon Sass won the highest honor of the day, the Schoofs Prize for Creativity at UW?s Innovation Days, a competition for undergrads held by the School of Engineering.
?We had great competition,? Schoepke said. ?We?re surprised we won.?
According to Schoepke, the group had been working on the project since the beginning of the fall semester. He added they had a working prototype by the end of the semester and have been refining it ever since.
He said the group put in a few all-nighters and worked 18-hour days as the competition approached.
The winner of the $2,500 Tong Prize for best prototype went to UW sophomore Kyle Hanson. Hanson?s entry was a portable dispensing, cooling and transporting unit for kegs of beer. The unit eliminates the need for ice to cool kegs.
Jim Beal, director of Innovation Days, said Hanson?s prototype was ?highly crafted? and ?resourceful.?
UW senior Danielle McIntosh won the $1,000 Younkle award for best presentation with her device for transporting hula hoops via bicycle. The Younkle award is endorsed by Matt Younkle, who won the Schoofs prize in 1996 for his Turbo Tap device that dispenses carbonated beverages quickly and effectively.
Winner of the 2000 Schoofs prize, Chad Sorenson, awarded his $1,000 Design Notebook award to Matthew Kuhns for his inflatable sled for evacuating people with physical disabilities from aircrafts during emergencies.
Another big winner for the day was a device that removes aircrafts with flat tires from runways called the ?Runway Rescuer.? The design won $7,000 for earning second place for the Schoofs prize.
McIntosh?s ?Hoopla Rack? also won third place in the Schoofs prize category and third place for the Tong Prototype prize. Adding these winnings to the Younkle prize, McIntosh earned $5,700 total from her design.
Beal said the designs can lead to more financial gain for students, but creating entrepreneurs out of the participants is not the goal of the competition.
?It?s about having this experience,? Beal said. ?It will serve you really well no matter where you work, and it?s a huge r?sum? boost.?
Schoepke said his team learned a lot from the competition because they had to be involved in the entire process of creating and presenting an invention.
?We?re all engineers,? he said. ?We don?t really think about the marketing side of things so much.?
After going out and ?drinking top shelf? to celebrate the victory, Schoepke added members of his team have plans to use their shares of the prize money to pay for things like a plasma television, grad school and rent.
