October 31, 2011

Two Johns Hopkins teams in Collegiate Inventors Competition finals

Two student teams from Johns Hopkins—one each in the undergraduate and graduate categories—have made it to the finals in the Collegiate Inventors Competition. The program, now in its 21st year, is run by Invent Now, a nonprofit organization that recognizes and encourages invention in people of all ages. This year’s 11 finalists are in the biomedical engineering, cancer research and IT fields.

The undergraduate team—Ryan Chang, Steven Dalvin, Akshay Krishnaswamy and James Lin, advised by Gerard E. Mullin—developed QuanTube, a replacement gastric feeding tube designed for nonspecialist use.

The graduate team—Deok-Ho Kim and Kshitiz Gupta, advised by Andre Levchenko—created a nanopatterned cardiac stem cell graft, a specially designed biodegradable tool to improve heart repair after tissue death.

On Nov. 14, the finalists will present their inventions to a panel of judges that includes National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees, science and intellectual property experts from Abbott Laboratories and representatives of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Kaufmann Foundation, the presenting sponsors of the competition.

The winners will be announced Nov. 15 at the Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C.