College student finalist in invention competition

A class assignment to find a way to make life easier for the disabled led to an invention that could earn a patent for a Rolling Meadows student.

Stephen Diebold, a sophomore at the University of Illinois, was named a finalist for the Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize, a contest that recognizes young inventors and encourages solutions to real-world problems.

Steve, an industrial design major, spent 10 weeks with a disabled student, shadowing him on campus with the task of finding some way to improve his life. The pre-law student had become paralyzed below the neck in a swimming accident nine years before.

Steve spent hours each day with him, taking note of how he handled tasks that are mundane to his able-bodied peers. "I really liked him," Steve says. "I hung out with him outside of classes."

The student used a helmet pointer fitted with a long bar in front of his face that enabled him to move his wheelchair, answer his phone, press elevator buttons and type papers.

But the helmet, which sat on his lap when he didn't need it, was bulky and odd looking. "It's scary for people to even see these -- it looks like a torture device," Steve says.

And there was another problem with the helmet. "Whenever he wanted to use it, he'd have to ask someone to put it on him," Steve says.

Steve's goal was to make the student more self-reliant by inventing a device he could put on and take off by himself. So he attached a pointer stick to a plastic piece the student could scoop up with his chin when he needed it.

After a few weeks of testing and adjusting angles, the student grew to really like it, Steve says. "He was surprised. He thought I'd make something small like a holder for his helmet."

Steve's invention got noticed, and he was asked to enter it in the innovation contest. He was chosen as one of five finalists and honored at a ceremony in Champaign last week.

"A lot of graduate engineering students make it to the top five," Steve says. "They did say it was kind of rare for an undergraduate to get it, let alone a sophomore."

Steve is the son of Robert and Susan Diebold of Rolling Meadows. He attended St. Colette School and Fremd High School.

His father and brother are engineers, but Steve's first passion is art. Deferring to the more practical, he went for industrial design. "I like the idea of using art in the applied sense," he says. "I like art that develops the product."

All five finalists won a free university service that will help them with the patent process.

While the patent is pending, Steve won't be sitting around. His next step is to find a company to make his device, then market it at trade shows. "It's kind of a scary thing," he says. "It's weird to think about starting my own business."