By Xoel Cardenas, Sr. Communications Specialist, Office of the Vice President for Research
Imagine a portable intelligent robot arm that combat medics can use for emergency medical assistance; to a wearable temperature monitoring system for frostbite prevention and research; to a drone-delivered tele-assisted defibrillation system. These are some of the amazing innovations from the minds of University of Utah investigators with the goal to help those living or working in remote, rural, and austere conditions.
What will U innovators come up with next? We’ll soon get a look.
On March 7th, the second annual Remote and Austere Conditions (RAC) Grand Challenge will be held on the U campus. The event is a research competition where teams propose innovative research solutions for problems faced by rural communities and military personnel in remote or isolated conditions.
The Intermountain region is vast, sparsely populated with varying geographical conditions, severe access issues, and supported by limited infrastructure and resources. These challenging conditions affect real people – families in counties with fewer than 20 residents per square mile, often living more than 30-60 minutes away from basic services. Approximately 56% of the U.S. is frontier and the majority of that is concentrated in the Intermountain region.
The RAC Grand Challenge brings together leading research experts, industry partners (including DoD), and legislative representatives to explore groundbreaking technologies, innovative techniques, and holistic solutions to tackle pressing challenges faced in remote, rural, and austere conditions.
Live pitch event to showcase U teams’ innovations
On March 7th, a live pitch event will take place at the Cleone Peterson Eccles Alumni House (155 S Central Campus Dr.) on the U campus. The event showcases investigative teams’ innovations in a highly competitive environment. This year, 17 teams will be competing, up from 16 at last year’s event. Thirteen distinguished judges from national security, academia, industry, medicine, and engineering will decide which teams will receive seed grants of up to $250,000.
The RAC Grand Challenge, a signature event of the Applied Medical Engineering (AME) Laboratory in the Office of the Vice President for Research highlights our commitment to use-inspired research. Our teams are driven by a mission to solve real-world problems that matter most to society. Dr. Jim McDonough, Executive Director of Department of Defense Research at the U of U, says the RAC Grand Challenge is an example of the U and its research community’s commitment to bringing innovative solutions to our local, regional and global population.
“The RAC Grand Challenge — and importantly, the University of Utah — is a venue where science comes to life for others to see and believe in, to bear witness to the value that research provides to our modern world, and to understand how solutions to problems unfold in academic settings,” he said. “Our use-inspired research stance here in Utah recognizes the unique environment we’re part of every day, and how science interacts with that to improve lives is fundamental to the university’s DNA.”
Bringing resources to military personnel
Our Nation’s military is no stranger to working, training and carrying out combat missions in remote, rural and austere conditions with limited or no resources. The U.S. Army defines remote and austere conditions as “environments where access to clean water, electricity, and to a fixed or mobile medical facility is significantly degraded or denied, and where diagnostic and treatment resources and medical personnel are unavailable or limited for extended periods of time.”
McDonough, who served in the U.S. Army, sees the innovations presented by RAC Grand Challenge participants as an important step in bringing the needed resources that our U.S. military needs, both in training and on the battlefield.
“Over the past three months I’ve been working very closely with the 17 teams represented in this year’s RAC Grand Challenge, so I know their solutions firsthand,” he said. “As someone who previously served, I was encouraged to see the potential in the solutions being presented. They were significant in that they represent needed advancements that ultimately could help save lives and improve upon our nation’s warfighting readiness.”
What to expect at the 2025 RAC Grand Challenge
What can attendees expect of the RAC Grand Challenge? McDonough says: expect to see competing teams represent projects within the fields of medicine, engineering, and the humanities.
“For starters, be prepared to see a suite of better medical diagnostics that can save lives, technologies that can extract water from soil, and innovative drone technologies and delivery systems that can rescue stranded individuals without delay, just to name a few of the projects being presented at this year’s RAC Grand Challenge.”
This is an invite-only event. Registration is subject to approval by the host. Click here to register.
For more information on the 2025 RAC Grand Challenge, click here; To learn more about the inaugural RAC Grand Challenge, click here.