ASBME Makeathon 2018

The Associated Students of Biomedical Engineering is a student led undergraduate biomedical engineering organization at USC that serves the engineering student body via a comprehensive calendar of academic, social, mentoring, outreach, and professional events. Students gain insight into both their chosen field of study and the opportunities that are specific to the biomedical engineering major.

The Makeathon is a medical device design competition meant to encourage students to innovate solutions for real-world applications in a collaborative environment. Students hone design, prototyping, and presentation skills throughout the competition, and develop skills that will continue to serve them in their future endeavors.

The Makeathon is, in essence, a hackathon for designers instead of coders.  In 30 hours, 18 teams of 4-5 people will brainstorm, design, and CAD a device under material and functional constraints. Though biomedical engineering students are the target demographic, undergraduates from other fields are encouraged to participate.

The objective of the Makeathon is to submerge students in an environment that simulates engineering teams in the real world. We encourage students to form teams of varying levels of experience and pair students that may not know each other. Working with new people, and with people who know more or less than you is vital to being an engineer post graduation. The added pressure of time and design constraints acts to accelerate the team experience. We feel that students walk away from the event with a deeper understanding of themselves and how they work with others, in addition to all of the product development and engineering design skills that are accumulated throughout the competition.