2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Cultivate the Problem Exploration Skills for Biomedical Innovation

Presented at Multidisciplinary Engineering Division (MULTI) Technical Session 9

The majority of engineering students perceive themselves merely as problem solvers and are less concerned about finding a problem. However, the lack of ability to find a valuable problem from the real world is one of the major causes of invention failure. Problem finding is absent in most engineering curricula, even in design courses because most problems are still provided by a client or instructor. To address the need for training the next-generation of innovators, we developed an undergraduate elective, Biomedical Innovation, in which Industrial Engineering students teamed with medical students to identify authentic problems of clinical significance and propose engineering solutions. This course, which asks students to analyze the mechanism and scope of a problem—a skill highly desired for its potential in innovation and entrepreneurship—fills a unique curricular gap. The survey of learning experiences showed statistically significant differences between pre- and post-course scores in self-efficacies, which suggests that students saw improvement in the ratings of their learning in five target areas: (A) background research skills, (B) critical thinking and ideation, (C) project management and teamwork, (D) technical communication skills, and (E) interest in medical engineering.

Authors

Dr. George Tan Texas Tech University [biography]

Dr. George Tan is an Assistant Professor of the Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Department at Texas Tech University (TTU). He received his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2015. His research focuses on advanced manufacturing processes for biomedicine, including electrospinning of nanofibers, hybrid bioprinting of hydrogel-based composites, and direct-write photolithography of microfluidic devices. Dr. Tan has made multiple original contributions in developing hybrid 3D bioprinting process, antimicrobial implantable devices, lab-on-a-chip, and fouling-resistant water filtration systems. He is also leading a cross-institutional education project at TTU focusing on transformative pedagogical strategies for biomedical innovation to catalyze the interdisciplinary collaboration between engineering students and medical students. To date, Dr. Tan has published over 50 refereed research papers and 2 book chapters. He has secured over $1.2 million in federal grants including the NSF CAREER Award. He is the faculty advisor of the IISE student chapter at TTU.
Sampa Halder
Dr. Luke LeFebvre http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7578-1102 University of Kentucky [biography]

Luke LeFebvre (PhD, Wayne State University, 2010) is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Kentucky. He has taught public speaking for two decades and been a course director. His research explores classroom communication and instructional processes as well as the history of communication studies associated with the introductory public speaking course. Recent articles appear in Communication Education, Communication Quarterly, Communication Studies, Communication Teacher, Imagination, Cognition and Personality, Journal of the Association for Communication Administration, Journal of Educational Technology Systems, Review of Communication, and the Southern Communication Journal. He is the recipient of external funding from the National Science Foundation and National Leadership Grants for Libraries.

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