button

2015-16 Scientific Focus: 

Clean Water Technology 

This year, interdisciplinary student teams will work in parallel, to understand and cultivate product designs around a portfolio of clean water technologies developed by leading research labs. Each team's product concept will be developed and evaluated for potential product applications, intellectual property development and a viable business case.

The global demand for Clean Water Technologies is at an all-time high and the Great Lakes Region is home to hundreds of researchers and high-tech companies working to develop and deliver solutions to help meet this ever-expanding need. This year, Fusion teams will have the opportunity to work with technologies developed at the NASA Glenn Research Center, The the Department of Chemistry at Case Western Reserve University and at least one local start-up company. Partnering with key regional players like the Cleveland Water Alliance and other industry experts, the Fusion faculty will expose students to the landscape of this more than $.5 trillion market that is demainding technological solutions.

As with all scientific focus in FUSION, our goal is to bring deep context to a given scientific field by connecting with experts, practitioners and entrepreneurs to gain a hands-on understanding of the challenges faced when bringing promising new technology to market.

Some unique areas of focus presented by this scientific field include:

Product Design and Innovation - Because clean water technology is an extremely broad field, individual innovaitons can often address numerous applications. Student teams will, by necessity, have to develop needs analyses, acceptance criteria and systems requirements for products they think are enabled by the inventions they are analyzing. Importantly, needs and value propositions from a myriad of lenses will be considered: including, end-users, governmental authorities and international non-governmental players.  This work will drive opportunity analysis and cultivation, building the case for intellectual property protection, business case creation and technological development.

Innovation: Integration and Systems - notwithstanding the world class research behind them, few scientific innovations will embody in a fully integrated product. The commercialization of technology-based products requires a particularly creative focus on value chain, component product development and interdisciplinary approaches to designing and engineering a complete product.

Developing proof of concept - the regualtory requirements for a given market application may vary broadly for the same technology. Student teams will work to develop path-to-market strategies that accommodate potentially vastly different regulatory requirements, driven by the distinct applications and settings they identify.

 

2009-10 Scientific Focus: Genomics and Genetic Diagnostics

2011-12 Scientific Focus: Neuromodulation and Nerve Stimulation Technologies

2012-13 Scientific Focus - Advanced Energy Technologies & Systems

2013-14 Scientific Focus - Neuro Device Platform Technology Innovation

2014-15 Scientific Focus - Advanced Applications in Networked Neuro Devices

Fusion Disciplines

img

 

 

 

 

 


Science - the state of knowing; knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding.