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Member profile details

Membership level
Staff
Contact First Name
Maria
Contact Last Name
Oden
Picture
Title
OEDK Director and Teaching Professor, Bioengineering
Office
OEDK 107
Bio Summary
As director of Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, an appointment received in 2008, Maria Oden orchestrates engineering education initiatives in the school of engineering that provide students from multiple departments in the George R. Brown School of Engineering, Wiess School of Natural Sciences, and the School of Humanities with unique hands-on design experience and opportunities to test and carry ideas to their intended point of application.
Bio
Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Medical School (1994-1997)
Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering, Tulane University (1994)
M.S., Biomedical Engineering,Tulane University (1991)
B.S.E., Biomedical Engineering, Tulane University (1989)

Maria Oden has more than 15 years of combined academic, research, clinical experience in biomedical engineering with an emphasis in orthopaedic bioemechanics and computational modeling. This work is also supported by three years of experience in computational modeling working with engineering consultants at Sage-Crisp Engineering in Houston, TX. As director of Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, an appointment received in 2008, Maria Oden orchestrates engineering education initiatives in the school of engineering that provide students from multiple departments in the George R. Brown School of Engineering, Wiess School of Natural Sciences, and the School of Humanities with unique hands-on design experience and opportunities to test and carry ideas to their intended point of application.

Since joining the Department of Bioengineering as a lecturer and laboratory coordinator in 2004, Oden has collaborated with Rice faculty members to develop capstone engineering design programs for undergraduate students in both the bioengineering and Beyond Traditional Borders (BTB) programs. In 2012, the BTB program was chosen as a model program by Science magazine and awarded the Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction; and in 2013, the hands-on engineering education program was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Award for Global Innovation for bringing life-saving health solutions to the developing world.
As director of Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, an appointment received in 2008, Oden orchestrates engineering education initiatives in the school of engineering that provide students from multiple departments in the George R. Brown School of Engineering, Wiess School of Natural Sciences, and the School of Humanities with unique hands-on design experience and opportunities to test and carry ideas to their intended point of application. She has also developed several core undergraduate laboratory courses where she emphasizes open-ended problem solving as part of the laboratory exercises.

While at Rice, Oden has inspired thousands of students to work in design teams of four to five individuals to log countless hours to complete a design challenge project. Fifteen of these teams have won regional and national awards at design competitions, several devices are currently being tested for application in the U.S. and abroad, and over 45 students have left Rice with a patent application on their resume.
Since 2006, Oden has actively collaborated with Rice faculty to oversee the Rice/Texas Medical Center (TMC) Design Technology Forum - a quarterly series in which more than 20 surgeons from the TMC work with researchers/students at Rice to form technologic solutions to medical problems.

Contact us

Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen
Rice University

6100 Main Street MS 390 | Houston, Texas | 77005

Phone: 713.348.OEDK

Email: oedk@rice.edu

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