On January 9, 2021, Public Invention hosted our virtual “year in review” conference titled PubInvCon 2021: Work To Be Done. The conference was a coming together of dedicated inventors, volunteers, scientists, students, and more interested in humanitarian inventing “in the public, for the public.” We discussed our successes of 2020 and outlined the hard work still to be done in 2021.
The conference was facilitated by Public Invention President Robert L. Read, PhD and was attended by approximately 58 people. It lasted about four hours as so many great speakers and discussions put us over our scheduled time. The first portion of the event covered a review of Public Invention projects. As for pandemic-related projects, we heard from Sonika Goginenii from the Fraunhofer Institute on the COVID-19 Vent List, Rob Read on the Vision of the Open Source Medical Device Ecosystem, PIRDS, and VentDisplay, Lauria Clarke on the VentMon and SFM3X00, Geoff Mulligan on VentMon Data Lake, Ben Coombs on VentOS and PIOC, and Avinash Baskaran on the Patient Inflating Valve. To highlight our non-pandemic related projects, we heard from David Jeshcke on the Euler Notebook, Rob Read on the Gluss Controller Video, Rob Read on an early stage medical device open source license, Halimat Farayola on Moonrat, and Chris Ferguson on the Rapid E. Coli Project.
After an attempted game revolving around the Fuller Scale, which didn’t quite go according to plan, we transitioned into briefly discussing finances and past conferences. Afterward, we heard from two Rice University Teams (The EcoPot Team and the Minicubator Rice Team) and representatives from other Public Invention-parallel organizations: Victoria Jacqua from Open Source Medical Supplies (and a Public Invention board member), Dr. Philip Edgcumbe, MD/PhD, and Patrick Wilkie from COSMIC.
To close the conference, after briefly discussing Public Invention’s 2020 publications, we gave out our annual awards. Award recipients were those who demonstrated hard work and dedication through their role as part of the Public Invention team. Awards are important to us, as would not be able to function without the incredible volunteers that take time out of their busy schedules and dedicate it to humanitarian inventing for free. Our award recipients were as follows:
Pierre Lonchampt, Special Recognition, 2020. For QA/RA Assistance to the Entire COVID-19 Pandemic Response Community
Erich Schulz, Special Recognition, 2020. For Community Leadership to the Entire COVID-19 Pandemic Response Community
Hamilat Atinuke Farayola, Best New Public Inventor, 2020. For the Moonrat Project
Marc. T. Jones, Most Active Board Member, 2020. For the FDA sharing proto-license and the Libre Planet 2020
Megan Cadena, Best Addition to a Research Paper, 2020. For “Modelling the impact of rise time on ventilator performance”
Avinash Baskaran, Best Academic Publication, 2020. For “Controlling a variable geometry truss tetrobot with an isomorphic puppet controller,” ICMME 2020
Juan Enrique Villacres-Perez, Best Student Contribution, 2020. For COVID-19 Vent-List and “Modelling the impact of rise time on ventilator performance”
Jerry Chang, Best Educational Media Production, 2020. For Rapid E. coli Video Production
David Jeschke, Invention Coach, Honorable Mention, 2020. For the Euler Notebook Project.
Chris Ferguson, Best Invention Coach, 2020. For the Moonrat and Rapid E. coli Projects
Ben Coombs, Greatest Contribution 2020. For the PIOC, VentMon, and VentOS Projects
Lauria Clarke, Best Public Inventor, 2020. For the VentMon Project
Thank you to all our amazing speakers and to all those who attended. If you’re interested in volunteering for any of Public Invention’s active projects, check out our volunteer spreadsheet. If you want to learn more about how to get involved in other ways, email read.robert@pubinv.org. We hope to host more events throughout 2021, whether virtual or in-person, so keep your eye out for future opportunities.
Videos from the conference can be found here:
