Malleous nabbed the top prize at the 2024 Big Idea Competition, sponsored by Pitt’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Big Idea Center, a hub for student innovation and entrepreneurship. The center runs the annual competition, which awards funding to projects with market potential. First place teams get $25,000.
Benjamin Leslie, Malleous CEO and second-year Pitt medical student, began developing the device while a bioengineering major and hockey captain at Pitt. He says the University has supplied $100,000 of the funding it has raised to date through several awards, getting the device to this point in its development.
“We’re looking to create a production equivalent prototype and have been working with a manufacturer,” he says. “It will be our first real look at what the device will look like in practice. As of right now what we have are some high-fidelity prototypes that we’ve done cadaver testing on.”
After the prototype is squared away, the team plans to get the device into clinical testing quickly.
