Perry Initiative: Inspiring future female engineers and orthopaedic surgeons

Seattle Children’s Hospital hosted the Perry Initiative this weekend to inspire women to pursue careers in engineering and orthopaedic surgery. Dr. Jacquelin Perry was one of the first ten women orthopaedic surgeons in the country and has been a mentor to countless women and men throughout her career. She is known for her work quantifying human movement using tools such as motion analysis, electromyography, and ultrasound. She developed new surgical procedures including methods to straighten spines and inventing the ‘halo’ to immobilize the spine, neck, and head.

Learning to fix bones with external fixation at the Perry Initiative.This weekend, 25 women from local high schools, joined surgeons and engineers at Seattle Children’s to learn about common medical tasks and cutting-edge medical technology. They tried their hand at casting, suturing, external/internal bone
fixation, and rotator cuff repair.

From the Perry Initiative: “Engineers and orthopaedic surgeons work hand-in-hand to develop safe and effective implants for repairing broken bones, torn ligaments, and worn-out joints. Strong partnerships between surgeons and engineers are essential for improving the performance of orthopaedic implants and creating solutions to unmet clinical needs.”

We agree! Here’s to many future collaborations with diverse teams of engineers and surgeons.

Engineering Innovation in Medicine: Fall 2015

The Engineering Innovations in Medicine 2015-2016 Class is underway! This year we have 70 students from mechanical engineering, material science, bioengineering, electrical engineering, and rehabilitation medicine pursuing 15 projects. We have an outstanding team of clinical and industry mentors who inspired these projects and will be working with the teams throughout the year.

In the first two weeks of classes students have completed a prototyping challenge, toured the Institute for Simulation in Surgery at UW hospital, dived into needs finding, and met with their mentors to launch each project. We are excited to see what everyone creates this year!

Prototyping challenge during the first day of class.

Lab featured in ME Video

Gaurav Mukherjee speaking in the ME Department's video.The Ability & Innovation Lab was featured in the College of Engineering’s Video on mechanical engineering. Hopefully we can help to get more future engineers interested in working with the ultimate machine! Sylvie and Gaurav did a fantastic job sharing their experiences and future ambitions working as mechanical engineers.

You can watch the full video here: You Tube

Capacity Building Institute

CBI participants.The proceedings from AccessEngineering’s first Capacity Building Institute have been published on-line.

This institute focused on bringing together faculty, staff, and students from engineering departments around the country to discuss how to support individuals with disabilities in pursuing careers in engineering.

There were many wonderful presentations and discussions. In particular check out:

These discussions helped to inform several new resources from AccessEngineering including:

The Capacity Building Institute was hosted at the University of Washington-Seattle April 7-9, 2015. Please let us know if you are interested in participating next year!