ASBME Makeathon 2019

Welcome to the Makeathon

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, 15 teams of 4-5 people will brainstorm, design, and CAD a device under material and functional constraints. By working in teams, students engage in an interdisciplinary sharing of knowledge in order to solve a time-sensitive case. During the competition, corporate representatives and graduate students act as mentors, providing feedback to students, and offering advice. Students from other universities are invited to compete to provide exposure to Viterbi’s innovative and collaborative environment and to foster bonds with students and organizations from other schools. 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.

Rules and Parameters

• The 14-15 teams will each consist of 4-5 people, with at least 2 underclassmen (freshman/sophomore) and at least 2 upperclassmen (junior/senior). You may register with an unfinished team and we will complete your team for you, you may also sign up as an individual and we will place you on a team.

• No outside materials may be used on the device for the fairness of all the participants (ex: don’t bring your own LEDs or power tools that you intend to use on your device).

• Bring laptops with Solidworks, AutoCad or whichever CAD software the team is comfortable with installed. CAD licenses will NOT be provided. Students have the opportunity to rent laptops from SAL, which have Solidworks for four hours at a time with a max of 8 hours. 

• The design prompt will be released 24 hours before the Makeathon so that teams have time to brainstorm before the event.  Any attempt to access the prompt before then will disqualify a team.

• While contact with professionals and scientists at the event is highly encouraged, contacting professionals outside of the event for design ideas and help will disqualify a team.