Fellows Program

The Medical Devices Fellows Program is a full immersion educational and product development program for medical device creation. It is led by MDC Director Professor Are Erdman and Program Director Dr. Marie Johnson, who both have a successful history in creating medical devices - including prototyping, testing, applying for patents, leading and managing interdisciplinary teams, interfacing with medical professionals, and working with business and regulatory issues.

September 2008 is the beginning of the inaugural year of the MDC Fellows Program. Initially, the University will bring four fellows to the U of M following a national search process. This cross-functional team will have a combination of degrees in engineering, medicine, and/or biosciences with demonstrated evidence of innovation and product development. Fellows will be immersed in an intense training program with access to first-class facilities in engineering and medicine research labs across campus. The fellows will interface daily with faculty, medical professionals and industry collaborators to develop and test new medical devices with the goal to improve health care worldwide.

The Fellows Program curriculum indicates formal instruction in product development processes and regulatory issues. Fellows will observe surgery, attend medical rotations, and participate in organized medical device company visits. In addition, the fellows will teach, share and learn by mentoring undergraduate and graduate student design teams from across the Institute of Technology, support the Design of Medical Devices conference, and interact with the new College of Design's Product Design Program.

MDC Fellows will work with faculty collaborators from both engineering and medicine. They will identify, develop, prototype, and test medical devices and interface with University technology transfer and licensing groups. They will take full advantage of the new MDC core prototyping facilities and connections to the surrounding med-tech industry. The program seeks to generate a minimum of 20 provisional patent applications for advanced novel devices in its first year. These applications will be based on a full understanding of medical needs and multiple sets of prototype/testing cycles. Our MDC Fellow sponsors will be offered preferred access to both the new facilities and to novel new intellectual property.

The nation needs our major research universities to use their abundant knowledge in the basic sciences and new engineering/materials technologies to expand their teaching and research efforts in emerging areas such a medical devices. The University of Minnesota is uniquely positioned to focus on the complex and urgent questions in the biomedical devices arena, an arena that is attracting the attention of national and industry research funding. It is also a field that will continue to grow - demanding highly trained and imaginative researchers. The MDC Fellows is a novel program focused on responding to this need. The next generation of medical devices processes will be based in part by the knowledge gained by the MDC fellows.

The MDC Fellows Program will:

o Produce the next generation of medical device entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders;
o Foster interdisciplinary networks of high-level engineering and health science professionals;
o Be a source of mentoring and design projects for graduate and undergraduate design classes;
o Identify fundamental technology needs and technical barriers to the next generation of medical devices that will result in new research in the basic, biological, and biomedical sciences. Funding for these emerging fundamental studies will be sought from agencies such as NSF or NIH;
o Develop innovative devices and new medical procedures that will contribute to improving quality of life while reducing health care costs;
o Focus on more non-invasive health care, which will translate into less pain, shorter, less frequent hospital stays, and quicker recovery; and
o Offer our sponsors information about developing technologies created in the program, through time spent with the fellow team as well as across to the new core labs.

Leadership in this new century demands talent and resources. In keeping with our history as a leading center for education, research and innovation, we invite you to invest in the Medical Devices Fellows program. This programs only the second of its kind, after Stanford University, and will be a highly visible biomedical devices effort-both in the state and the nation.
Recognizing the power and promise of a biomedical device interdisciplinary initiative, the University of Minnesota has committed to a five-year, $10 million investment in the Institute for Engineering in Medicine and the Medial Devices Center.
Please join us by investing in our effort as we lead the way in creating new approaches and solutions to the critical health and wellness challenges of the 21st century.