Hosted by the Biomedical Engineering Society at UC Davis

For the past six years, BMES at UC Davis has held an annual Make-a-Thon. Similar to a Hack-a-Thon, the Make-a-Thon is a competition in which participants have 48 hours to design and prototype a medical device that solves a real-world clinical or medical problem.​

The Make-a-Thon aims to provide engineering students with a hands-on experience using CAD and the design process in preparation for their capstone senior design project. Students will have the opportunity to prototype their device using the Translating Engineering Advances to Medicine (T.E.A.M.) Prototyping and Design Lab at UC Davis. Utilizing rapid prototyping techniques such as 3D printing and laser cutting, the teams will work to turn their designs into a functional device.

In the past, we have created a skin biopsy tool for procuring tissue samples from the wings of bats (currently being used by UC Davis Veterinarians), a low cost, modular, adjustable pair of eyeglass frames for economically disadvantaged communities, and a device that utilizes a person’s smartphone as an ophthalmoscope in order to record and capture images of patients’ retinas. We've also had a prompt from the UC Davis Eye Health Center to create a device that helped patients with low mobility or dexterity dispense daily eye drops. Most recently, the prompt was to create an assistive device to help patients with physical limitations open "push-and-twist" or “child-resistant” medicine bottles.