UMass Lowell Team Wins Contest for Best Innovation
Image by Meg Moore for UMass Lowell
12/20/2019
Contacts for media: Nancy Cicco, 978-934-4944, Nancy_Cicco@uml.edu and Christine Gillette, 978-934-2209, Christine_Gillette@uml.edu
LOWELL, Mass. – A team of UMass Lowell students – including one inspired by friends injured in the Boston Marathon bombings – has won a prestigious entrepreneurship contest with an invention to help physical therapy patients relearn how to walk.
The Community Ambulation Tool (C.A.T.) Mat is a slip-resistant floor surface made of interlocking tiles filled with compression beads that simulate the feel of walking on grass, sand and gravel. The portable plastic mat allows patients to practice walking on uneven terrain so they can regain their confidence when walking outdoors.
The invention won the top prize at the seventh annual Beantown Throwdown, Boston’s largest pitch contest for college students with ideas for new products, services, technologies and startups.
The C.A.T. Mat team beat out 13 others from colleges and universities from throughout the U.S. and Canada, including Harvard, MIT and Boston College at the competition, held recently before a sold-out crowd at the Cambridge headquarters of tech company LogMeIn. The contest’s winners were determined by a panel of experts and a vote by the audience.
The win is motivating the students behind the product to bring it to market. They are working to achieve this goal through UMass Lowell’s DifferenceMaker program, which teaches students in all majors entrepreneurship skills and helps them launch business and nonprofit ventures. Since the program began in 2012, participants have founded 33 companies, raised more than $2.5 million to support their startups and have filed or received eight patents.
“I never thought I’d be the type to invent anything or start a company, but now I’m really determined and excited to get this accomplished,” said UMass Lowell student Michelle Mailloux of Lowell, who has formed the company Ambulatory Innovations to develop the C.A.T. Mat with classmate Katherine Muise of Saugus.
Both Mailloux and Muise are pursuing doctoral degrees in physical therapy at UMass Lowell. Other team members include business administration major Tyler Clifton of Ayer and chemical engineering major Nicholas Draper of Framingham. Travis Cohen, a chemical engineer from Brighton who is a friend of the students, rounds out the group.
Mailloux was inspired to become a physical therapist after watching two family friends learn to walk again after sustaining critical injuries in the Boston Marathon bombings. Muise’s interest in the field grew from her experience as a patient during her childhood. They came up with the idea for the C.A.T. Mat while gaining real-world clinical experience as part of their studies with physical therapists in the community. There, they heard from patients who wanted to practice walking on surfaces that mimic the uneven terrain of the world beyond a rehab setting.
“I found it frustrating I couldn’t take patients outside to walk on different types of surfaces,” Muise said. “Our rotations and our classroom studies contributed to our idea. We had a DifferenceMaker representative speak at one of our classes and that’s when Michelle and I started discussing the concepts that led to the C.A.T. Mat.”
The win at the Beantown Throwdown is just the latest coup for the team. Over the past year, Ambulatory Innovations has competed for and received more than $10,000 in funding and in-kind assistance from entrepreneurship experts in support of the invention. In addition, representatives of Nonspec – another award-winning company formed by UMass Lowell students through DifferenceMaker that makes low-cost, adaptable prosthetics – have mentored Mailloux and Muise in how to fabricate the plastic mold for the C.A.T. Mat’s square-foot tiles, which interlock and can be configured to fit a variety of spaces.
“The success of the Ambulatory Innovations team highlights the interdisciplinary reach and collaborative nature of DifferenceMakers. We are very proud of this team and their mentors. It is very exciting to see the hard work of our UMass Lowell students recognized by the Boston entrepreneurship ecosystem,” said Steven Tello, UMass Lowell vice provost of graduate, online and professional studies, who co-founded and oversees the DifferenceMaker program.
The Beantown Throwdown has introduced the C.A.T. Mat to a wider audience of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. As the contest’s winner, Ambulatory Innovations will receive mentoring, marketing and legal consulting sessions to advance their product, along with startup tools, incubator access and a trip to Montreal to spend a week at one of the city’s innovation hubs.
The team is also weighing next steps for its invention, including pursuing its development full time after Mailloux and Muise graduate in May, Muise said.
UMass Lowell is a national research university located on a high-energy campus in the heart of a global community. The university offers its more than 18,000 students bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in business, education, engineering, fine arts, health, humanities, sciences and social sciences. UMass Lowell delivers high-quality educational programs, vigorous hands-on learning and personal attention from leading faculty and staff, all of which prepare graduates to be leaders in their communities and around the globe. www.uml.edu