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To think beyond one's own disciplines and to learn to cooperate with other professions - this is the message and goal of the university educational competition of smart solutions DESING+, which is entering its third decade at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. The project brings together the fields of Design Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. This year, approximately one hundred students from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Design and Art, Faculty of Health Studies or Faculty of Economics will participate. "At the beginning of the winter semester, the students don't even know each other, which makes it all the more difficult for them to come up with innovations in a matter of weeks that require teamwork," say project coordinators Stanislav Hosnedl and Josef Dvořák.

The topics, which are prepared directly by top practitioners, change every year. It is also the commissioners who can be consulted during the six-month period. This year, the main partners remain Streicher spol. s.r.o. and OttoBock CR s.r.o. 

Representatives of Streicher commissioned the students to design a workplace for the cryogenic storage of biological materials. By this, one can imagine a kind of laboratory where, for example, living cells and tissues can be stored at very low temperatures. The prosthetics company Ottobock then commissioned the student teams to develop an interactive therapy game for children aged 3-5 years old to practice gripping objects with myoprostheses. A myoprosthesis is an upper limb replacement that relies on sensing a myosignal from a muscle to control it. It makes life significantly easier for paediatric patients.

In addition to the multidisciplinary DESING+ project, a second, interdisciplinary project is starting this semester for the first time - it is called DESING². "While in DESIGN+ the students focus on doing the right things - in this case doing the right things, in this case their designs, because there is no time for more, in DESING² it will be about finishing the previously solved projects so that they are properly developed, and therefore doing things right. We will build on previous years of DESING+ and develop selected innovations and bring them closer to implementation," explained Stanislav Hosnedl. 

In this case, the students will work on one of three topics from three sponsors. It will be a device for the production and storage of electrical energy under the supervision of UWB and Deggendorf Institute of Technology, a small material distributor that must meet the conditions for the food industry or health care, which the students were commissioned by Engel strojírenská spol. s r.o., and the Streicher company wants to complete last year's topic, which was the design of a test facility for simulating the space environment. 

The best teams that make it through to the finals will be treated to a final, 16th international workshop in April next year, where the students will present the results of their solutions in English. Jana Čepičková from the Institute of Language Preparation traditionally helps the students with communication in teams and with the preparation of presentations and presentations.