Daily Pioneer News

PLATTEVILLE - Innovation often begins at small moments - a casual conversation at a Christmas party, a discussion at the lunchroom microwave, two guys just sitting around thinking about how to solve a problem. Eventually, out of these uneventful moments, an automated sample transfer machine is born and sitting in the basement waiting to be shipped to the Mayo Clinic.

That's the short version of how University of Wisconsin-Platteville students Kevin Neff and Ben Nemec came to be the designers of the first lab automated equipment the clinic will use to harvest cytotoxicity assays (cell research) in its immunology laboratory. Neff, an electrical engineering student at the time, is married to a graduate assistant working at the clinic and was used to hearing the technicians talk about the time consuming and tedious work of cytotoxicity protocols.

He began to process the problem and approached Nemec, a mechanical engineering student, about a partnership in which they would design and build a machine which would allow the technicians to conduct the experiments more quickly and efficiently. And, to their amazement, the Mayo Clinic was so interested in the project that it awarded the students funding for the proposal.

Under the supervision of David Kunz, UWP associate professor of mechanical engineering, and with help from dozens of people on the UWP faculty and in the engineering community, the students began their work in the fall of 2003. Neff built and programmed the microcomputer and circuitry, with some help from John Steenbergen, another UWP graduate who now works at Avista Corporation in Platteville, while Nemec designed the frame, gears and motors. Like generations of inventors before them, these fledgling innovators ran into a few bumps along the way and got a very real-world taste of life beyond the classroom.

"I love the fact that this started as a real life problem," said Kunz, himself a 20-year veteran in the biomedical engineering field. "These guys got to experience a level of uncertainty that always comes when something hasn't been done before. They ran into problems at many steps along the way and had to go back and re-think. They had to think ahead, plan ahead, and reach out to people and look for resources to solve problems. I think this shows why UWP students are ready to contribute when they get into the workforce a lot sooner than many other students."

Neff, who graduated in December 2004, has since been accepted into the graduate biomedical engineering program at the Mayo Clinic. He spent the spring of 2005 traveling from Rochester to Platteville to help with troubleshooting and fine tuning the machine as it is prepared for testing at Mayo. Nemec is preparing to graduate from UWP in May. Both are excited that the machine will soon be in use.

"The machine will just be a small part of cancer research, but it will improve efficiency by cutting down on the amount of time researchers spend transferring samples, and quality because, with automation, samples won't have to be moved by hand. But, we can't really anticipate all the applications for the research these people are doing. Right now, we know they are exploring how the immune system works and ways to have it recognize cancer in a specific way, but it will certainly have wider applications," said Neff.

Now that the work and testing on the machine is nearing the end and he is about to graduate, Nemec says he might put some time aside to start looking for a job in mechanical engineering.

"Whatever comes next, I think I got a great start through this project. It's exciting to think I had a hand in a machine that, even though it's just a small part of a large process of research, could really affect people's ability to understand more about human biology and immunology. To improve people's quality of life is the best kind of job I could ask for," Nemec said.

Contact: David Kunz, associate professor, School of Engineering, (608) 342-1431, kunzd@uwplatt.edu

Prepared By: Evelyn Martens, Public Relations, (608) 342-1194, martense@uwplatt.edu