Battelle and Brookhaven Lab Join MIT to Help Miller Place High School Students Invent Wheelchair Safety Alarm
June 14, 2007
UPTON, NY - Miller Place High School students have invented a wheelchair alarm that is activated when the chair reaches an angle that might cause it to fall over. The alarm alerts the wheelchair occupant and automatically calls predetermined contacts with a message and GPS position. As part of an advanced engineering class, the students developed their invention with the help of a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam grant of $9,550 as well as an additional $1,000 from Battelle, an applied science and technology company that, along with Stony Brook University, comprises Brookhaven Science Associates (BSA), the organization that manages Brookhaven National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy.
"I told their teacher about the grant, and after brainstorming some ideas, he and the students decided to apply for it," said Douglas Ports, a policy and planning manager at Brookhaven Lab and a resident of Milller Place who volunteers his time to work with the local school district. "The supplemental Battelle grant will help the students with travel expenses to visit MIT on June 21, where they will present their invention."
The students and their teacher, Paul Siller (second row, second from left), recently visited Brookhaven Lab to present the results of their wheelchair project to a review panel of Brookhaven scientists and engineers (front row, from right): Edward O'Brien, John Valente and John Morris, all residents of the Miller Place School District. During their visit to the Lab, J. Patrick Looney, Brookhaven's Assistant Laboratory Director for Policy and Strategic Planning, spoke to them about the history and trends in U.S. science and technology, and Lori-Anne Neiger, the Lab's Chief Intellectual Property Counsel, gave a talk on patents. During their visit, the students and their teacher also toured the Laboratory's computing facility and the superconducting magnet production facility.
2007-10652 | INT/EXT | Newsroom
