June 21, 2002

Biomedical-Engineering Students Design Devices to Help Disabled People

College engineering departments may produce more useless and ultimately unrealized designs and concepts than any other course of study. But David A. Rice, a professor of biomedical engineering at Tulane University, decided it didn't have to be that way. In his department's capstone course, "Team Design Projects I and II," he pairs teams of students with disabled people from the area in an effort to give his students experience with actual clients, as well as to allow them to follow a project