Three Biomedical Engineering Graduate Students Win Award

Brown biomedical engineering graduate students Gozde Durmus, Kim Kummer '11, and Erik Taylor were one of ten graduate student teams to win the Prize for Primary Healthcare Award (Phase I) from the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT). The title of their project is "Using Nano-material Science to Inhibit Medical Device Infections".

Each winning team received $10,000, and they will now be able to use these funds to develop a final proposal over the next few months as they compete for the top three spots and a total of $300,000 in additional funds against teams from other top schools such as MIT, Johns Hopkins, and Yale.

“This is an outstanding achievement,” said Associate Professor Thomas Webster, “and places Brown among the top biomedical programs in the country.” Webster serves as the advisor to the three students on the research.

The award is for innovative technology ideas to improve the quality and efficiency of primary care in medicine. The Brown team was selected out of 76 applicants from 38 of the top engineering programs in the country. The goal of the competition is to stimulate the development of innovative technology to serve the needs of the frontlines of healthcare.