2 Grants awarded to College Students

The Pennsylvania Assistive Technology Commercialization Initiative or PATCI (Pat-Key) is a grant program run by the Technology Collaborative as a way to fund new start up companies run by College students. The two part grant program focuses on Quality of Life and assisted living technologies. Two Student Teams, one from Penn State Main Campus and Lehigh University received $30,000 grants to fund their new companies.
The Lehigh University team is developing a product that will make it easier for elderly people to plug and unplug appliances with the help of magnets.
The Penn State team is developing a Wireless Sensor Network for health care Facilities. For example, if a nursing home patient who needs monitoring leaves their room the nurses would be alerted to that.
The first part of the grant system gives money to teams to develop their ideas, and the second part delivers a $30,000 dollar grant to implement and start to manufacture the product. Nine teams took part in the first stage of the project with only 3 teams applying for the second stage of the grant.