DAAP Students and Alums Win in the "Cincinnati Innovates" Awards

A regional innovation competition, Cincinnati Innovates, recently awarded prizes - and prize money - to eight area creative inventors. Four of the eight prize winners were either students in or recent graduates of DAAP's top-ranked industrial design program.

Four local innovators representing the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) as either a current student or recent graduate just won half of the eight final awards given in the Cincinnati Innovates competition.
Cincinnati Innovates sign
A sign from the Cincinnati Innovates contest announcing UC's Noel Gauthier as the $5,000 Commercialization Grant winner.

Collectively, the four DAAP winners - all from the college's nationally top-ranked industrial design program - won more than $10,000 in prize money.

The four are

  • Noel Gauthier, 27, of San Francisco, Calif., completed his UC undergraduate industrial design degree in June 2009 and is now a graduate student in the School of Design. He designed an ecologically friendly, inexpensive fire extinguisher called "FireStop," winning $5,000 in the Cincinnati Innovates competition.
    Dan Clifton's design
    Dan Clifton's innovative design for handcuffs.


  • Dan Clifton, 23, of Bridgetown, who graduated from DAAP in June 2009, designed a pair of handcuffs that would allow police to apply cuffs to a suspect's arms without having to place the suspect's arms behind his back. The project began as Clifton's senior capstone and won him $2,500, enough to allow him to pursue a provisional patent on his invention.


  • Ryan Eder, 26, of West Chester, who graduated from DAAP in 2006, has designed a universal fitness equipment project to serve the needs of the general population as well as the needs of those in wheelchairs. The project, which has previously won both national and international attention, began as Eder's senior capstone. He won $2,000 in the Cincinnati Innovates competition, and his "Include Fitness" design won the most public, online votes in the contest.


  • Patrick Yovanov, 22, of Milan, Ohio, is entering his junior year in DAAP's industrial design program, and he won the Cincinnati Innovates' Student Innovator Award for his medical device design, earning a $1,000 prize.
Renderings of Peter Yovanov's design.
View of Peter Yovanov's design.

The four UC participants were among nearly 300 entrants into the competition, and each of the DAAP winners in the contest had compelling motivation - whether personal or professional - in relation to his design.

For Clifton, the motivation for his handcuffs design was the challenge of accelerated problem solving. He worked out his initial design in as little as five weeks time during his last quarter at UC. "It's about problem solving. Taking something - like police handcuffs - and working with a unique population (in this case the Cincinnati Police Academy personnel) to improve their tools and work life."
Ryan Eder's design.
View of Ryan Eder's Include Fitness.

Eder, meanwhile, began his "Include Fitness" project during his senior year at DAAP, motivated by his own enjoyment of fitness work outs and a desire to make such work outs available to all. He explained, "I wanted to draw some attention to the lack of wheelchair-accessible equipment available in fitness centers. It's an issue I'm really aware of because I immersed myself in that world during my project conception and completion."

Gauthier, who actually began his "FireStop" project as a UC sophomore and has submitted a patent for the device, was motivated by the hazards related to fires in urban slums, particularly in the developing world: "The 'FireStop' can be manufactured for under $1 because it has no expensive materials, moving valves or springs. The fire-suppressing chemical within the device is expelled to combat a fire when the press of a button creates a chemical reaction. It's the same principle by which rocket fuel boosts a rocket into the atmosphere. The rocket fuel contains reactant chemicals that, when set in motion, have sufficient energy to lift a space craft. The chemical reaction within the 'FireStop' materials expel the fire suppressant where directed."
FireStop design.
Noel Gauthier's FireStop design.

Gauthier will use his $5,000 prize to found his own company, UMi Design and Development, which will have the mission of creating self-sustaining products (not reliant on donations for support) that serve humanitarian needs.

And, perhaps, Yovanov has the most compelling motivation of all. The medical device he designed was inspired by his own recent, long-term stay in the hospital. The device works in conjunction with a central venous catheter (CVC), which is most often used for the administration of chemotherapy and other medications at a point between the upper chest and neck.

He explained, "Last year at just about this time, I was diagnosed with leukemia. I underwent extensive treatments and had to wear a central venous catheter for both the delivery of medication and the taking of blood samples. Because the CVCs I had in the hospital didn't have additional supports to maintain position, making the entrance site in the chest very tender and sore."

He added that, in the hospital, he tried to clip the CVC to his t-shirt using women's hair clips and alligator clips. While this relieved the pain from the pull of the CVC device, it was not an ideal solution.

Yovanov developed a number of ideations to secure a CVC to a patient's shirt or hospital gown, including a "clothes pin" clasp, a magnet clasp and a "change purse" clasp. For the final design, he selected the magnet clasp.