People who have had back surgery face the added difficulty of dealing with complicated and burdensome back braces, a process that causes many to bend and twist in ways that are harmful to their recovery. But a group of biomedical engineering students at the University of Rochester is getting recognition for developing back braces that are safer and easier to use, and for their plans to consider commercialization of their devices. As part of a senior design class, Frances Bell, Jacy Krystal Bulaon, and Swapna Kumar, whose project is called DonDoff Solutions, devised a system to help patients get into (don) and out of (doff) their braces throughout the recovery process.

The team won third place honors in the New York State Business Plan Competition last week and tied for second place in the Charles and Janet Forbes Entrepreneurial Competition at the University. The DonDoff team is also a finalist in the 2011 RESNA Student Design Competition, to be held in Toronto, CA in June. The team was supervised by Amy Lerner, and worked with Dr. Joanne Wu, an alumna of our BME program, who is now a physician with the Unity Health System in Rochester, and Shawn Biehler, an alumnus of ME who now works at Rochester Orthopedic Laboratories.