Never miss another interview! Join Devin here: http://bit.ly/joindevin. Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/2iBFGUo. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. -------------------------- Six women, all undergraduate students at MIT, have invented a text to braille scanner that significantly advances the state of the art for text scanners, most of which convert text to speech. The patent-pending device is not yet available in the marketplace, but the inventors are committed to the project, called Tactile, full time upon graduation in the spring. (Disclosure: My wife owns fewer than 100 shares of Microsoft.) The team comprises three students in Mechanical Engineering, Jialin Shi, Charlene Xia and Grace Li; two students in Electrical Engineering, Tania Yu and Chandani Doshi; and Bonnie Wang, who studies Materials Sciences. A spokesperson for Microsoft points out that women hold just 5.5 percent of commercial patents in the United States. The company is trying to change that by providing pro bono legal support to female inventors. Team Tactile has been accepted into this program. Keely Swan, IDEAS Global Challenge Administrator at MIT, boasts, "The Tactile team won a $10,000 grant in last year’s MIT IDEAS Global Challenge, an annual innovation, service, and social entrepreneurship program run by MIT’s Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center. The program helps students take what they learn in the classroom and apply it to real-world challenges. As one of our winning teams, Tactile received a 15-month grant, and we’ll work with them through summer 2017 as they refine their project." -------------------------- Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/2iBFGUo. Need a corporate social responsibility speaker? Learn more about Devin Thorpe at http://corporatesocialresponsibilityspeaker.com.
#499: These 6 Women Undergrads At MIT Invented A Game Changer For The Blind