This is the call for entries in the 2017 cycle of our unique national Student Prize competition for technology innovations directed at the needs of primary care in medicine. Interested students should begin to pull together ideas for submission in the upcoming 2017 cycle. The five best student entrants will receive awards of $5,000 each and the three top student teams, chosen from those five Finalists, will win awards of $100,000, $50,000 and $25,000, respectively, to support their further work. We have given out over 80 awards to students around the country in the eight prior years of this competition! This competition, to encourage engineering-student interest in the challenges of primary care, is administered by the “Ambulatory Care of the Future” program of the Massachusetts General Hospital. (Click here for full details.)
THE BASICS:
Any graduate or undergraduate student in any U.S. university engineering or science department may enter. The entry process begins with the simple online submission of a short two-page pre-proposal, describing their project, their team, and the potential clinical impact. The deadline for upload of these short-form entries will be May 1, 2017. Note that early planning greatly increases a student’s chances of success. Forming teams and collaborations is important. Planning, and reaching out to primary-care clinicians for advice and mentoring, takes time. Students are welcome to incorporate ideas from their course or research-project work. Any intellectual property developed remains with your university, subject to your own policies.
For inclusion with their online May 1st entry upload, students will need a scan of a signed “Institutional Letter of Support” written on letterhead by a business official or Dean at your school. All that is required is verification that the entrant is a student in good standing and that your school will accept potential award money on behalf of support of the student’s work on his or her project without deduction of any indirect costs. The successful students may draw on these funds via their university’s research administration for any allowable expenses in support of their work, including appropriate travel expense.
DETAILS:
The five Finalists will be chosen from the field of entries received by May 1. As aforementioned, each of those Finalists will receive $5,000. They can use that for support while working toward a full ten-page proposal which is due at the end of August. From those, we will choose the top three Prize winners.
Full details are posted on the APF website. The announcements of the winners from all eight prior years can be seen via a hyperlink there. Looking at those winning projects will provide you with examples to stimulate your thinking.
We are excited to be able to offer this unique opportunity for support to graduate or undergraduate students or teams.