LEARN Science & Math Club, a nonprofit, all volunteer program that offers science and math enrichment programs to Kansas City kids, was recently awarded a Lemelson-MIT grant in the amount of approximately $10,000 to create a biomedical engineering product called Script Alert. LEARN Science & Math Club is one of sixteen organizations nationwide to receive an InvenTeam grant this year.
InvenTeams are teams of high school students, teachers and mentors that receive grants up to $10,000 each to invent technological solutions to real-world problems. This initiative of the Lemelson-MIT Program aims to inspire a new generation of inventors.
Rebecca Kidwell, President of LEARN Science & Math Club initiated the InvenTeam application process last spring and attended training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in June to help prepare the final proposal. A prestigious panel of judges composed of educators, researchers, staff and alumni from MIT, as well as representatives from the industry and former Lemelson-MIT Award winners, assembled this fall and selected LEARN Science & Math Club as one of this year’s InvenTeam grantees.
The team’s project, called Script Alert, will help millions of people on complex drug regimens avoid serious injury and death due to medication dosing errors. Script Alert uses sophisticated hardware and software technologies to help people remember to take the right medicines at the right time and in the right amounts; if the user desires, Script Alert can notify designated caregivers of the patient’s compliance.
Over the next nine months, the Learn Science & Math Club InvenTeam will develop Script Alert. They will build hardware, write desktop and mobile apps and design a robust database to create a commercially viable prototype. The team invites local technology companies, business experts and universities to get involved as mentors and advisors.
In June, the students will showcase a prototype of their invention at EurekaFest at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. EurekaFest, presented by the Lemelson-MIT Program, is a multi-day celebration designed to empower a legacy of inventors through activities that inspire youth, honor role models and encourage creativity and problem solving.
About the Lemelson-MIT Program
The Lemelson-MIT Program celebrates outstanding innovators and inspires young people to pursue creative lives and careers through invention.
Jerome H. Lemelson, one of U.S. history’s most prolific inventors, and his wife Dorothy founded the Lemelson-MIT Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. It is funded by The Lemelson Foundation and administered by the School of Engineering. The Foundation sparks, sustains and celebrates innovation and the inventive spirit. It supports projects in the U.S. and developing countries that nurture innovators and unleash invention to advance economic, social and environmentally sustainable development. To date The Lemelson Foundation has donated or committed more than U.S. $150 million in support of its mission.