At Lulu eGames this week, BME doctorate students Aaron Fleming and Lindsay Sullivan, co-founders of OpenGait Prosthetics took home several prizes for a total of $19,000 – including first prize in the categories of New Venture and Audience Choice. Back in 2017, Fleming and Sullivan took a product innovation course at NC State, where they came up with the idea of manufacturing affordable prosthetic kits for above-knee amputees in developing countries. With the money prize, the two are planning to develop the product and travel to Guatemala later this year to test it. “We’re hoping to have about 10 kits to put together, so this (prize) will go towards the kits and also funding the testing that we need to do in Guatemala,” Sullivan explained. Aaron Fleming’s Phd advisor, BME professor He Huang stated “we could not be prouder of the work they are doing to help amputee’s around the world.”
Lulu eGames is run by NC State’s Entrepreneurship Initiative with the goal of helping startups coming out of NC State with early-stage capital. This year, officials handed out more than $100,000 in prize money as part of the competition. Around 35 finalists were selected out of 148 entries to compete across five categories: Arts Venture, Built on Cloud, Social and Environmental Impact, Design and Prototype and New Venture. Check the full article at WRAL TechWire.
