Past Collegiate Inventors Competition Winners
Learn about the student inventors who have excelled in the Collegiate Inventors Competition®. You can search our past competition winners by name, year or university.
The Application of Fullerenes to the Inhibition of the HIV-1 Protease
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Simon H. Friedman
The Chromyl Chloride Process
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Subbarao L. Guddati
The Curb Traversing Wheelchair
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Anthony DelNegro
The Dolognawmeter: An Instrument to Quantify Pain Induced Oral Dysfunction
John Dolan investigates the molecular mechanisms responsible for oral and facial pain. Dolan observes, "While in dental school I attended to patients with untreatable pain from disorders such as oral cancer." He realized that the most substantial obstacle to improved pain medication was the inability to measure oral and facial pain in experimental animals. Without an instrument to measure oral or facial pain in animals, it was impossible to test the efficacy of experimental painkillers. Dolan notes, "Diseases such as oral cancer or temporomandibular joint disorders are excruciatingly painful when patients chew or open their mouths. Therefore, the pain research community needs an instrument that measures pain in animals during the same behaviors that are producing pain in patients."
Dolan realized that gnawing in rodents uses the same muscles, joints, nerves and soft tissues of the oral cavity and face that are required for almost all oral functions in humans. He then created a device that could measure gnawing function in animals by taking advantage of an instinct observed in rodents. If a mouse is placed in a narrow tube with an obstacle at the end, it will instinctively gnaw at the obstacle to escape. Dolan"s device exploits this instinct. The device, termed a Dolognawmeter, (dolor, Latin for pain; gnawmeter referring to measurement of gnawing) automatically records the time required for a mouse to gnaw through a series of dowels obstructing exit from a tube. Upon severing the dowels, the mouse escapes from the tube. Slower gnawing indexes greater pain, providing Dolan with a way to study the effectiveness of painkillers.
The apparatus is inexpensive, compact and simple; multiple Dolognawmeters can be used in parallel to simultaneously evaluate many mice. Since mice are nocturnal, the device is employed inside a standard research cage at night since no operator observation is required. Dolan says the device has the potential to revolutionize the way that both analgesics and anxiolytics (anti-anxiety drugs) are tested. "Since confinement anxiety motivates the mouse to gnaw, a Dolognawmeter will also allow for a simple, cheap and objective method to test new anxiolytics in animals. That alone makes the device worth its weight in gold," says Dolan.
Dolan began his education in anthropology, earning a B.S. from Montana State University and an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. While working toward his Ph.D. in anthropology he was inspired by studies demonstrating that a person's creativity often peaks by the late twenties or early thirties. Upon learning this, he put aside his graduate work, purchased a used Tungsten Inert Gas welder from an Oakland shipyard and became an artist for five years. He says, "My greatest skill since childhood has been artistic mechanical design." In 2003 he combined his passion for material sciences and the application of mechanical principles to human problems and entered dental school. At the same time, he began research into the mechanisms of oral and facial pain. He earned his DDS in 2007 and is currently in a postgraduate program in oral and craniofacial sciences at UCSF.
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John Dolan
The Drop Point
Stephen Diebold presents an improved pointing stick for use by people with quadriplegia and other disabilities that prevent them from using their arms. Pointing sticks are used to type, operate cell phones, and otherwise manipulate objects. Existing pointing sticks are gripped in the user's teeth or mounted, helmet-like, on the user's head. Either approach presents problems: a mouth-held pointer prevents the user from speaking and a head-mounted pointer requires assistance to put on or take off.
Diebold's pointing stick is designed to be donned and doffed with a shrug of the user's chin. He came up with the approach after spending time with then law-student Jonathan Ko, who has quadriplegia. Diebold said, "I saw that to Jonathan, the pointing stick was his arms and hands, and he had to ask somebody every time he wanted to use his hands - that seemed absurd to me." By attaching the pointing stick to a cup which is in turn attached to a strap that loops around the user"s neck, the user is able to freely engage the pointer as he wishes.
A native of the Chicago suburb Rolling Meadows and a graduate of William Fremd High School, Diebold, 21, is now majoring in industrial design. He finds himself drawn to the field for its blend of research and art, since products must not just be functional but also able to instill enjoyment and pride in the user. Upon his graduation, if Diebold doesn"t find himself a part of the industrial design field, he will be pursuing computer animation to focus on rendering products or architecture interiors. For the moment, he"s proud of the fact that he has a U.S. patent pending for his design of The Drop Point.
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