The internship's ground rules.

Team conduct

• Each team operates independently. Cross-team collaboration or sharing of designs is prohibited.
• Each team assigns a Team Lead as the primary point of contact.
• All members sign the participation agreement prior to Week 1.
• Respectful conduct toward all participants, panel members, MedDots engineers, and pharmacy staff at all times.

Milestones & visits

• Five milestones, one every two weeks, validated at the corresponding MedRock pharmacy visit.
• Each milestone has a published acceptance checklist; meeting all items unlocks the $1,000 stipend.
• At least one team member must attend the in-person kickoff and each Friday milestone visit. We strongly encourage every team member to show up — only one is strictly required.
• Catch-up is allowed: a missed milestone met at a later visit counts retroactively (stipend pays then).
• Grand-prize eligibility requires all five milestones met by the end of the review window.

• M1 · Week 2 Mechanical doser — Build the part that physically moves powder — a mechanism that pulls a controlled amount out of the hopper (the bin the powder sits in). No scale or automation yet; the goal is a dose you can make bigger or smaller and roughly repeat by hand — and a doser that comes apart for cleaning. It's the foundation every later milestone builds on.
• M2 · Week 4 Doser + scale closed loop — A focused milestone — fewer boxes than the others, but the one that matters is a big leap: weighing tolerance jumps from ±20% (rough, hand-actuated in M1) to ±3%. Add the controller and scale so the machine weighs powder as it dispenses and stops itself — "closed-loop" control, where the scale's reading feeds back to the controller, replacing hand-counting and guessing on time. This is where rough dispensing becomes real precision.
• M3 · Week 6 Single-doser full coverage — Push the single-doser machine hard: prove it's accurate across the whole weight range, handles every powder on the test list — not just the easy free-flowing ones — and repeats run after run. This is the rigor checkpoint before you add more dosers, and where the machine starts driving itself from a basic on-device screen.
• M4 · Week 8 Multi-doser compounding — Now more than one powder per recipe. Several dosers feed one scale and build a compound (a mixture of ingredients) where every amount adds up correctly — the machine tracks which powder is loaded in which doser, and the on-device interface grows to build recipes and manage settings.
• M5 · Week 10 Autonomous compounding · Final Demo Day — Full autonomy: an operator loads the powders, enters a recipe on the device, hits go, and walks away while the machine makes the compound start to finish — logging every step. This is also the Final Demo Day — the judge panel scores your machine live.

Pharmacy visit conduct

• All five milestone visits are mandatory; absences flag the milestone for re-validation.
• Follow all MedRock Pharmacies' protocols, hygiene standards, and staff instructions.
• Activities at the pharmacy are observational — no hands-on compounding by participants.
• Dress code: scrub-style attire (loose-fitting but not baggy), close-toed shoes only — no open-toed shoes, sandals, or flip-flops.
• No baggy clothing, dangling jewelry, lanyards, or hoodie strings near operating equipment.
• Long hair tied back; no hats unless required for hygiene reasons.
• Phones silenced; no photography on the pharmacy floor without explicit staff approval.

Submissions & documentation

• Upload deliverables (design docs, BOMs, CAD / Fusion, source, video) for each milestone via the dashboard.
• Submissions back up your milestone status — empty uploads weaken your validation case.
• Falsifying results or design provenance disqualifies the team.

Applications, selection & waitlist

• We accept up to 20 applications per cycle. After 20, the open call closes early and additional submissions are rejected.
• Up to 5 teams are selected from the application pool. Selection is by the Itkan, MedRock, and MedDots panel.
• If we receive fewer than 3 viable team applications, we open a waitlist for individual applicants. Individuals on the waitlist may be matchmade into a team for the cycle, or held over for the next one — being on the waitlist is not a guarantee.
• All decisions on team and individual selection are final at the close of the application window.