Achievement

The IGERT program assisted in the development of a “Client-Centered Rehabilitation Design” course, intended for students with all engineering and rehabilitation science backgrounds. The students work on teams to design and evaluate assistive technologies for clients. This year’s client was the Teleton Pediatric Rehabilitation Clinic in Irapuato, Mexico. The students worked in 3 teams to design a pediatric wheelchair and traveled to MX to evaluate the chair with clinicians, families, and potential manufacturers and funders. In addition to the multidisciplinary benefits the students received from the course, they experienced rehabilitation in a global and less-resourced context and the full product development cycle including innovation practices and options for commercialization. We learned valuable lessons including how to balance teams and respective responsibilities, deliver content in novel ways, and mentor IGERT trainees to assume a leadership role in the course.