How it all started!

Hello readers!

This week I met with Dr. John Tester, one of the research engineers on the BiOM project. Dr. Tester was hired by NAU in June 2000 as an engineer design professor. A few years after he was hired, there was a severe cutback in research funding at the campus level. NAU was fortunate enough to get money to support technology and help generate patents and intellectual property(IP). NAU received a stimulus package. Dr. Tester was the only candidate for product development available at NAU at that time. He was offered $500,000 to build a lab that could assist other labs design products for commercial use. He accepted the offer and took the money to buy key machinery. Dr. Nishikawa had been trying to get the BiOM project up and running so she contacted Dr. Tester. Dr. Tester didn't have time to take up a research project, so he declined her offer at first. But, Dr. Nishikawa was persistent and eventually Dr. Tester gave in. So Dr. Tester and Dr. Nishikawa met and hashed out all their ideas. Since Dr. nishikawa was a biologist, they quickly came to realize that biologists and engineers do not speak the same language nor do they have the same motives for conducting research. The proposal advocated for a new product developed in tandem with a commercial company, iWalk, inc. Dr. Tester was the lead on research and Dr. Nishikawa was the Co- Principal Investigator. iWalk, located in Boston, already had an existing device so one of Dr. Tester’s student, John Dyer, started preliminary work to control the mechanical device. He transferred his work to Jeremy perhaps some more background in him.. who only had to develop software because iWalk had the device ready. The university wanted to make a product for commercial industries. Currently, Dr. Nishikawa is looking to hire a biomedical engineer with a background in gait cycle analysis. Dr Tester is going on his sabatical this coming fall, which happens every six years for professors and he wants to make sure his graduate students can handle the project without him for a whole year.

Until next time,
Krishna Patel