Members of the Bison Microventure student innovation team will give presentations on their work to develop novel dental and bone implants on Thursday, May 2, from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., in Dunbar Hall 152.
The team includes 23 students from different disciplines who are interested in innovation and entrepreneurship. They work together to apply micro-technologies to medical and dental devices, translate laboratory research into commercial products or processes, and create and maintain intellectual property as part of a one-credit elective course that can be repeated.
“The goal of Bison Microventure is to provide an opportunity for students to learn innovation and entrepreneurial skills in an environment that pursues learning on the cutting edges of technology,” said David Wells, professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering and founder of the group. “It also encourages the development and launch of student-led enterprises.”
The first Bison Microventure team was formed six years ago with six students from engineering, university studies and business, with the goal of applying micro-technologies to biomedical devices. After hearing from different surgeons and exploring medical device manufacturers, the team chose to work on a new kind of dental implant.
“It didn’t take us long to realize that if we were going to be active in biomedical devices, we needed some help from bioscience students,” Wells said. He recruited two microbiology majors for the next semester. Since then, the team has continued to develop the dental implant and increase membership through word of mouth.
Many team members are engineering or bioscience majors, but Hannah Green, a junior majoring in music, found a place on the team. Before she joined, her plan was to attend medical school and specialize in women’s health. Bison Microventure, however, has shown her she could have a research career. “I had never considered myself a researcher, but once you get hooked on a topic that interests you, it’s easy to get caught up in it.”
Bison Microventure team members took first place in NDSU’s inaugural Innovation Challenge, a student innovation competition, in 2012. Two Bison Microventure task groups were finalists in Innovation Challenge ’13, with one of the task groups winning first place in its category. The team also has filed two provisional patents.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.