The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) DEBUT Challenge is open to teams of undergraduate students working on projects that develop innovative solutions to unmet health and clinical problems. Entries are solicited in one of the following categories:

•   Diagnostic Devices/Methods
•   Therapeutic Devices/Methods
•   Technology to Aid Underserved Populations and Individuals with Disabilities

NIBIB’s mission is to improve health by leading the development and accelerating the application of biomedical technologies.  The goals of the challenge are 1) to provide undergraduate students valuable experiences such as working in teams, identifying unmet clinical needs, and designing, building and debugging solutions for such open-ended problems; 2) to generate novel, innovative tools to improve healthcare, consistent with NIBIB’s purpose to support research, training, the dissemination of health information, and other programs with respect to biomedical imaging and engineering and associated technologies and modalities with biomedical applications; and 3) to highlight and acknowledge the contributions and accomplishments of undergraduate students.

For further details and updates about the challenge, visit http://www.nibib.nih.gov/Training/UndergradGrad/DEBUT or contact Dr. Zeynep Erim at Zeynep.Erim@nih.gov.

$30,000 in prizes

1. Create an account on Challenge.gov or log in to an existing account. Every member of your team must create an account.
2. Read and agree to the Challenge.gov Terms of Participation.
3. Read the Official Rules for the challenge and acknowledge your understanding and acceptance of these Rules by signing the NIBIB DEBUT Challenge Certification Form.
4. Obtain a letter from a faculty member from the Biomedical Engineering, Bioengineering or similar department who is familiar with your team and your entry. The letter must verify that the entry was achieved by the named student team, which must be enrolled full-time in an undergraduate curriculum during the academic year 2011-2012.
5. Submit your entry as a single file that includes all the components listed under Rule 8 on the Rules tab). Be sure to add all team members and complete all the required fields on the submission page (which will be available once the challenge has opened).

• Significance of the problem addressed
  Does the project address an important problem or a critical barrier to progress in clinical care or research?
• Impact on potential users and clinical care
  How likely is it that the project will exert a sustained, powerful influence on the problem and medical field addressed?
• Innovative design
  Creativity and originality of concept: Does the entry utilize novel theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies, or instrumentation?
• Working prototype
  Has evidence been provided (in the form of results, graphs, photographs, films, etc.) that a working prototype has been achieved that implements the design concept and produces targeted results?