Invention to help quadriplegics makes finals in competition

CHAMPAIGN – Designing an assistive device for a quadriplegic friend has earned a University of Illinois student a place in the finals of the 2009 Collegiate Inventors Competition.

Stephen Diebold, a 21-year-old senior from Rolling Meadows, will compete against two other undergraduate students and six graduate students in the finals next week in Chicago.

Diebold's invention, called The Drop Point, makes it easier for quadriplegics to use pointing sticks to perform everyday tasks, such as using cell phones and keyboards.

Conventionally, the sticks are mounted to the forehead or held in the mouth, but neither approach is ideal.

Wearing it on the forehead is "horribly obtrusive and visually stigmatic," Diebold said, and holding it in the mouth can produce "prolonged jaw stress and teeth wear."

Diebold's device attaches the stick to a chin cup worn on an elastic strap around the user's neck.

"You can hang it around your neck at the beginning of the day," Diebold said. Then, when a need arises, the user can lower his chin and lift up the cup.

"The diameter of the neck increases and pulls it onto your chin," he said, noting the neck muscle is the one over which his quadriplegic friend has the greatest control.

Diebold invented the device his sophomore year when he was in an industrial design class. Each class member was teamed with a person with a disability and charged with designing a small product to make that person's life easier.

"Mine happened to actually go somewhere," Diebold said.

He was teamed with Jonathon Ko, a quadriplegic law student.

"The most important thing to him, besides his wheelchair, is his pointer," Diebold said. "He has no control over his arms or legs."

The pointer, Diebold said, "is a very important thing, a tool for independence, but he has to ask someone to put on the pointer every time he wants to use it. It was really a limiting thing."

Diebold will meet the other finalists at a dinner Sunday night and discuss his invention with a judging panel Monday morning.

Judges are scheduled to determine a winner Monday night, and awards will be presented Tuesday evening at the Museum of Science and Industry.

The undergraduate and graduate winners will each receive $15,000, and the grand prize winner will get $25,000. All other finalists receive $2,000, Diebold said.

The other undergraduate finalists come from Cornell and Dartmouth. The graduate finalists hail from Harvard Medical School, Duke, Cornell, Northwestern, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The inventions range from a household arsenic filter to automated genome engineering.

Diebold has a patent pending on his invention, and he's hoping to find a company interested in producing it. But he said the market for the device isn't big, with only 200,000 or so in the United States needing it.

He does want to make assistive devices for Disability Resources and Educational Services, an organization on the UI campus, to distribute to students who can use them.

In coming months, Diebold plans to go to job fairs in hopes of landing a job in industrial design. If he can't find a job, he'll consider graduate school.

"I've always considered myself creative and enjoy making things, which is why I came into industrial design," Diebold said. "In studio classes, I've created a lot of products and hand tools. This is the one that's taken off for me."

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