Skoltech student Maria Goncharova won the Entrepreneurship Academy in Sheffield, the UK, with her smart brace project FitNee (click to enlarge image)
A smart knee brace project developed by Skoltech student Maria Goncharova won the Summer Academy in Digital Healthcare challenge in Sheffield, UK.
Called FitNee, the brace’s main component is a special sensor which collects muscle activity data, and a motor which moves the knee accordingly. It is designed to support people with knee pain or disabilities.
Goncharova is an MSc student of Skoltech’s Product Design and Advanced Manufacturing master degree program, in collaboration with MIT. She works at the Intelligent Space Robotics Lab under Professor Dzmitry Tsetserukou.
The Sheffield Summer Academy in Digital Healthcare aims to identify entrepreneurial solutions to healthcare challenges and support participants in pursuing their own entrepreneurial ideas.
It is organized by Startify7 – seven start-up summer schools (2015/2016) in Europe on Information and Communications Technologies for young aspiring entrepreneurs.
FitNee – a smart knee brace projetc by Maria Gonchanova won the Digital Health Entrepreneurship Academy challenge in Sheffield, UK (click to enlarge image)
After winning the UK phase and having been selected from 13 teams, Maria and her teammates – all of whom are PhD and MSc student from European universities – will travel this fall to Brussels, Belgium. There they will attend fast paced 3-day acceleration boot-camp.
The year the academy welcomed around 40 participants who worked in teams with an innovative lean-training structure and curricula as they develop their entrepreneurship ideas and associated technical skills based on the academy theme.
Text: Ilan Goren
