Movers & Shakers
MEMBER NEWS
need detailed urban scenes,” Dr. Wang explains in a U of C news story. “[Users] need to know about building facades, roads, sidewalks, trees, and parking spaces.” His project was one of 950 proposals from 55 countries and 350 universities submitted for the award. Only 151 were funded. His earlier Google award, in 2014, came with a US $35,000 cheque, helping Dr. Wang develop mapping technology that makes it easier for people to find building entryways. Dr. Wang joined the Geomatics Engineering Department at the Schulich School of Engineering in 2012. Before that he was an in- dustrial researcher at HERE Maps (formerly NAVTEQ) in Chicago. He has a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from McGill University, an MScE in geomatics engineering from the University of New Brunswick, and a bachelor’s degree in photogrammetry and remote sensing from Wuhan University in China.
INVENTORS RECEIVE $100,000 BOOST TO COMMERCIALIZE BONE MODELS
If it feels like bone, acts like bone, and responds like bone — it might actually be synthetic. Tactile Bone — invented by a biomedical engineering team at the University of Calgary and a spine surgeon — allows orthopedic surgical residents completing their medical training to practise their surgical techniques on lifelike bone models. Most surgical residents typically learn in the operating room on real patients. That’s because other options, like cadavers and other synthetic bone products currently on the market, are not always considered good training options. Tactile Bone, on the other hand, replicates real bone density, weight, and resistance to instrument forces. It can even be X-rayed. In test trials, surgeons were impressed with how realistic the Tactile Bone spinal models were. So were judges with TENET I2C (Innovation to Commercialization), a Dragon’s Den-style competition held in April at the U of C campus. The competition, which aims to help medical entrepreneurs get their ideas to market, was organized by the McCaig Institute for Bone and Joint Health and supported by TENET Medical Engineering, Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions, the Haskayne School of Business, the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Innovate Calgary. Four teams competed, with judges awarding the Tactile Bone inventors — U of C biomedical engineering associate professor Dr. Carolyn Anglin, P.Eng. , biomedical engineering master’s student Aubrey Blair-Pattison, and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Rick Hu — a $100,000 prize to help the co-inventors commercialize their product. Their startup, Ammolite BioModels, will use the seed money to scale up manufacturing. It’s not all about the spine, though. Other products are also in the works, including femur, hip, and knee models. The models will allow doctors to better prepare for surgery and ultimately
32 | PEG SUMMER 2016
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker