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A senior design project by two students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill placed third in the National Industries for the Severely Handicapped (NISH) Ability One Network Design Challenge. The students, Morgan Leeds of Albuquerque, N.M., and Furat Sawafta of Greensboro, recently graduated from UNC’s Curriculum in Applied Sciences and Engineering.

A senior design project by two students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill placed third in the National Industries for the Severely Handicapped (NISH) Ability One Network Design Challenge. The students, Morgan Leeds of Albuquerque, N.M., and Furat Sawafta of Greensboro, recently graduated from UNC’s Curriculum in Applied Sciences and Engineering.

Leeds and Sawafta worked with Community Workforce Solutions, a nonprofit agency in Raleigh that provides employment opportunities for people with disabilities through contract work.  As part of their senior design project, they developed two devices that simplified several work tasks for employees with physical and cognitive impairments: one device to aid in assembly of cardboard boxes from flat cardboard templates, and one device to aid in cutting and placing filament tape on channel tubes, all with the use of one hand.

The students will receive a $3,000 award, and NISH donates matching amounts to both UNC and to Community Workforce Solutions. This is the seventh time in the past seven years that one or more UNC groups have been selected as finalists or winners in this national design competition, winning a total of $18,000 in award money during that span.

NISH is a national organization whose mission is to create employment opportunities for people with significant disabilities, and they sponsor this student design competition for projects that aid people with disabilities in the workplace.

Website: http://www.bme.unc.edu/~rlg/rehabDesign/?projects=assistive-technology-for-box-assembly-and-channel-tube-production

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