Summer semester’s Interprofessional Project (IPRO) Program course culminated in IPRO Day on July 28 with five teams involving more than 60 students from multiple disciplines telling the stories of their projects that featured innovative concepts and prototypes in the IPRO Team Collaboratory at IIT Tower. We had the highest judge-to-team ratio ever with 30 workplace professionals organized in five panels to evaluate the five IPRO projects, provide feedback and select a consensus recognition award for the highest performing team.

The range of IPRO project topics and innovative concepts was impressive and represented the broad spectrum of research, education, and community engagement activity at Illinois Tech: solar hybrid lighting to grow algae underground for biofuel (sponsored by NeoChloris), made in Chicago – developing concepts to better connect consumers with local products, social and economic development for Chinatown, using big data to visualize and communicate complex socio-technical issues in creative ways (sponsored by Motorola Solutions Foundation in collaboration with IIT/Perspectives Math & Science Academy).

The team selected as the overall highest performing team for summer 2017 was guided by Mahesh Krishnamurthy, professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering. The project focused on innovating assistive technology solutions for neuromuscular rehabilitation and physical therapy. The highly diverse team of 12 students represented biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, molecular biology and biophysics, mechanical engineering, information technology and management, computer science, aerospace engineering and materials science and engineering. They organized to identify, research and develop five concepts that were prototyped to successfully demonstrate the value of an open source approach to developing low-cost user-centered solutions that serve people with special needs.

The IPRO Program thanks students, faculty, Illinois Tech partners, alumni, guests, judges, and sponsors for making this mini-IPRO Day experience a success. Anyone interested in viewing the summer IPRO project exhibits through August can visit the IPRO team space in Room 7D3-1 along the west window wall of IIT Tower.

Mark your calendars now for the fall 2017 IPRO Day event on Friday, November 17.