Two groups of Wichita State faculty and students have received well-deserved attention for their innovative thinking and designs.

Heidi Bell, associate dean of the Dorothy and Bill Cohen Honors College and assistant professor of human performance studies; Piyush Kalra, graduate student in the Masters of Innovation Design (MID); and Jeremy Patterson, director of the MID program, have been accepted into a seven-week National Science Foundation program that will provide a path for commercialization of their project, which addresses a void in medical and clinical practices specializing in orofacialdisorders.

The project is named PARROT, a depiction of what the device is intended to do. Similar to a Parrot bird, which is known to mimic words and actions, PARROT will mimic the behavior of the tongue while recording real-time objective data of those behaviors.

2018 Wichita State grad Brock Milford developed a test to help prevent fuel from catching fire on airplanes. Now he has won the prestigious FAA Centers of Excellence DOT Secretary of Transportation Student RAISE Award for his design.

The RAISE (Recognizing Aviation and Aerospace Innovation in Science and Engineering) Award is given to only two college students and one high schooler in the country for their ability to demonstrate unique, innovative thinking in aerospace science and engineering.