Mullen Hopes to Help Autisitc Children "Self-Soothe"
Brian Mullen, a 26-year-old mechanical engineering doctoral student from Dedham, Massachusetts, has won the $50,000 grand prize in the UMass Amherst Technology Innovation Challenge, or TIC, a competition for the best entrepreneurial technology business plan produced by students, recent alumni and faculty advisors on campus. Mullen is the founder of Therapeutic Systems, a concept business that will market a novel “deep-pressure vest,” developed in the UMass Amherst Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, that improves the quality of life for people with mental illness, especially autism, by providing a “portable hug.” An estimated three to four million patients suffer from developmental disorders such as autism. “It helps them self-soothe,” says Mullin about his vest.
With the TIC jackpot plus an additional $16,500 he is receiving from the National Collegiate Innovators & Inventions Alliance in Hadley, Massachusetts, Mullen plans to pay for a commercial prototype of the vest.
“The Therapeutic Systems pressure vest provides discrete anxiety relief to anyone, anywhere, anytime, by applying a hug-like sensation called deep pressure touch stimulation,” says Mullen’s winning business plan.
Mullen has been working with Chrisopher Leidel, a graduate student in the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, on his winning business plan. The competition is intended to develop technological innovation on campus and bring that kind of intellectual property to the marketplace.
Professor Sundar Krishnamurty of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department was Mullen’s faculty advisor for the competition. The original idea for the vest was actually brainstormed 10 years ago when friends of Professor Krishnamurty asked him if any of his mechanical engineering students could invent a device to help their autistic child. The vest, called the UMass Pressure Vest, went through many developmental phases with the help of Tina Champagne and Debra Dickson, an occupational therapist and a nurse from Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton.
“They’ve been integral to all the research,” says Mullen.
The pressure vest can be inserted into any jacket with a few small alterations and can be inflated or deflated. It is also adjustable as the child grows.
The TIC competition is run by the College of Engineering, the Isenberg School of Management and the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at UMass Amherst. The two platinum sponsors of the TIC are the intellectual property law firm of Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C., and Saint-Gobain High-Performance Materials.
The TIC competition, established in 2005, was originally the brainchild of Michael F. Malone, Ronnie and Eugene Isenberg Distinguished Professor of Engineering and dean of the College of Engineering, and Soren Bisgaard, the Eugene M. Isenberg Professor of Technology Management. Dean Malone and Professor Bisgaard established the TIC as a competition that promotes innovation education based on technology conceived by faculty, students and alumni at UMass Amherst. The competition focuses on interdisciplinary student teams in consultation with faculty members who are experts in the technology. The object of the competition is that each team conceives a product with regard to its scientific and technological design, and then creates a business plan for its commercialization. The competition is open to teams that include at least one full-time UMass undergraduate or graduate student or recent graduate.
"Brian has done an excellent job of connecting his thesis research to bring new solutions for a real societal problem,” says Dean Malone. “We are very proud that his education and research in our mechanical and industrial engineering program is leading to such tangible impact."
Besides Wolf Greenfield (a TIC sponsor since its inception) and Saint Gobain, the sponsors are Artiman Ventures, Joseph Bohan, Paul Carney, Forge Partners LCC, Eric and Candy Janszen, Kodiak Venture Partners, Scott Perry, SABIC Innovative Plastics, VISTAGY, Stephen Dunne, Karen Lauter Utgoff Consulting, Michael Turnstall, Revolabs, Tom Gray, Long River Ventures, Bart Stuck and Mary-Jane Cross.
“Brian has gone through trials and tribulations to get it right,” says one of the TIC judges, Joseph F. Bohan. “He listened to all the advice. He’s been persistent. He’s done everything he has to make this into a viable business.” (May 2008)
