Villanova ECE Adjunct Professor Part of Winning Team for Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE

Electrical and Computer Engineering Adjunct Professor Edward Hepler, PhD, (third from left), was part of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE winning team.

In April, Paoli, PA-based Basil Leaf Technologies—under the name “Final Frontier Medical Devices”—was announced as the top winner of the $2.5M Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE. Sponsored by the Qualcomm Foundation, the competition calls for teams to develop a consumer-focused, mobile device capable of diagnosing 13 medical conditions and continuously capturing five vital health metrics—all within a well-designed consumer experience. Villanova University Electrical and Computer Engineering adjunct professor Edward Hepler, PhD, serves on Basil Leaf Technologies’ Executive Board of Managers and was a member of the winning team.

The company’s prototype, DxtER, is a portable device capable of collecting and interpreting large amounts of data to accurately diagnose specific medical conditions, provide users with real-time insight regarding their health, and guide them to appropriate action. According to its press release, “Our device gives users access to continuous, reliable health data - the information patients and providers need to more effectively manage chronic health conditions, such as diabetes and congestive heart failure.”

Dr. Hepler, a technology leader with a broad range of experience in product and embedded system specification, design and implementation, was part of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE team that included physicians, engineers, designers, health policy experts, mobile technology and sensor professionals. His 35-plus years of experience includes designing high reliability processors used for electronic switching for Bell Laboratories, participating in various hardware and software projects for the Space Systems Division of General Electric, and developing chips for next generation Amiga machines at Commodore Business Machines. Most recently, Dr. Hepler held the position of Fellow (technical equivalent of Vice President), Embedded Systems Architecture at InterDigital Communications, where  he provided the implementation architecture for 3G and 4G cellular modems and led a team that explored the use of “reconfigurable” computer architecture to implement a multi-mode (2G, 3G/R4, 3G/R7, LTE) modem.

An adjunct professor at Villanova since 1984, Dr. Hepler teaches courses in Digital Systems, Computer Architecture and VLSI Design.