Lafayette, Ind. — Purdue University students are creating and patenting products while pursuing their degrees. Purdue is celebrating the inventiveness of five of those students: Julia Alspaugh, Zachary Amodt, Sean Connell, Andrew Glassman and Anne Dye Zakrajsek.
Julia Alspaugh, a mechanical engineer in her second year as a master’s student, researches biomedicine. She says, “I see mechanical engineering as a broad field that analyzes the world’s processes and how the machinery and technology that makes them work can be simplified and improved.”
Julia is part of a large, interdisciplinary team seeking numerous patents related to the use of novel, resorbable biomaterials to create fixation devices for next-generation orthopedic devices, such as the plates, pins and screws used to set broken limbs or repair damaged tissues and joints.
“These devices would provide support while the bone and joint healed, for example, then degrade within a few years without leaving any foreign or potentially toxic materials in the body,” she explains. “It’s a similar concept to the dissolving stitches now used in many dental surgeries, but on a larger and more complex scale.”
For Julia, the most surprising thing she’s encountered in the patent process is unrelated to engineering or biomedicine. “Learning how to make sure what we are working on is novel and patentable has been more challenging than expected,” she says. “It may be an awesome new technology, but we also have to keep in mind its marketability. It requires communication between many different people with different interests and ways of doing things.”
Zachary Amodt dropped out of school to join the military after September 11, 2001. Ten years later, he returned and is now holding a provisional patent inspired by his experience as a combat medic in war zones all over the world.
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