Since 2004, CIMIT has partnered with longtime MIT mechanical engineer and professor Alex Slocum to offer the MIT 2.75 fall-term class. With the goal of engaging graduate students and accelerating ideas into prototypes, teams of MIT graduate engineering students spend a semester collaborating with clinicians in CIMIT-affiliated hospitals to develop innovative medical devices. Clinicians (physicians, nurses, and scientists) present clinical problems and initial ideas. Students form teams to work with the clinicians to turn these ideas into reality. The goal is for the students to deliver a working prototype and a journal-quality article in one semester. The course has been a great opportunity for clinicians to test out new ideas and to stimulate new collaborations. Dr. Slocum loves teaching and tinkering, and teaching others how to tinker. And in this past year, he had the opportunity to present work from his lab to a campus-touring, President Barack Obama.
With the kickoff of the MIT fall-term and as we lead into CIMIT's upcoming $400k national prize competition for engineering students (The CIMIT Prize for Primary Healthcare), the CIMIT Blog has pulled Dr. Slocum's 2008 podcast to engineering students from the archives.
As previously posted from the 2008 CIMIT Podcast Archives:
The Innovators Advice Podcast - Engineering students hear from Alex Slocum
We called professor Alex Slocum of MIT the other day and caught him in his workshop building and inventing his way though a snowy day. We asked him about the CIMIT Prize for Primary Care and what suggestions he has for any innovator or inventor working to create disruptive innovations in systems and devices.
Alex is the guru of innovation and invention and in this brief podcast he gives tremendous insight:
1. Fiddle around, be playful
2. Have real personal passion and excitement for the area of interest
3. Never stop asking why
4. Careful thinking and careful research (be bimodal and objective!)
5. Think like the user - like a physician, clinician or patient. Not like an engineer or inventor.
And check out the podcast here...
