It started at Thanksgiving dinner.
Megan Cales watched her partner’s 5-year-old son—who is autistic—struggle to manage his voice in a noisy room full of family. She searched online for a discreet, wearable tool that might help him self-regulate. Nothing existed. She made a mental note and moved on.
Then, an email from UTC caught her eye. A call for MOCS Innovate! mini-grant proposals had just gone out.
“I had this need—and suddenly there was this chance to do something about it,” said Cales, a career engagement coordinator in the Gary W. Rollins College of Business.
Cales’ first mini-grant idea wasn’t even a device. It was a nonprofit to help women navigate the family court system—something she knows well after a years-long legal battle of her own. She poured hours into that proposal before realizing it wasn’t the right fit.
“That wasn’t an invention,” she said. “This was about building something real. So I pivoted.”
Instead, she pitched a new idea: the Brooks Band, a wearable wristband that gives children with autism or other neurodiverse traits gentle, real-time feedback when their voices get too loud. It vibrates softly when a preset volume threshold is exceeded, offering subtle support without singling anyone out.
The name? A tribute to the boy who inspired it all.
Cales had no idea where to begin, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her.
“I didn’t know how to build something like this,” she said. “I even used AI just to figure out how to describe it. I didn’t know the vocabulary, just what it needed to do.”
Winning the MOCS Innovate! mini-grant—funded by UTC’s Clarence E. Harris Chair of Excellence in Business and Entrepreneurship—in January 2025 gave her the push she needed. At a February researchers meet-up, she connected with Dr. Erkan Kaplanoglu, a mechatronics professor and director of UTC’s Biomechatronics and Assistive Technology Lab. He saw potential in her idea and introduced her to Chantz Yanagida, a UTC mechanical engineering alum who helped design and build the first working prototype of the Brooks Band.
“Seeing it come to life was wild,” she said. “He made it real.”
With guidance from UTC commercialization counselor Jennifer Skjellum, Cales filed a provisional patent, thanks to local attorney Stephen Adams, a UT Knoxville law grad and former UT Research Foundation intern who filed it at a discounted rate.
“Stephen made it feel doable,” she said. “Suddenly, I was allowed to dream a little bigger.”
Cales is already connecting with local autism communities, including UTC’s Mosaic program, to gather feedback and explore testing opportunities. Some Mosaic students may even take on roles with Sensory Bridges, helping refine the product while gaining job-like experience, she said.
“I’ve talked to teachers, therapists, even autistic young adults,” she said. “The feedback has been amazing. People want this. They need it.”
And she’s just getting started.
Since winning the grant, Cales has traveled to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas—a major festival known for music, film and emerging technology—where she joined a UT System cohort of early-stage researchers for a national I-Corps experience. The program focuses on testing ideas, validating customer needs and exploring commercialization.
Back in Chattanooga, she’s continuing that work through the UT System’s virtual I-Corps Hub.
Her path reflects a broader effort at UTC to make research and innovation more accessible across campus.
Through the Max Fuller Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Rollins College of Business—and with support from the UT Research Foundation—UTC is helping students, faculty and staff advance early-stage ideas into UTC’s innovation pipeline. The MOCS Innovate! mini-grants and Fly for Researchers pitch competition are part of that expanding ecosystem.
“We’re helping people across campus move from idea to impact,” Skjellum said. “That’s how you build a research culture, by making sure people know where to go when they’re ready to take that next step.”
For Cales, it’s a whole new world.
“I used to think I’d just put this on Amazon,” she said. “Now I know it can take years. But that doesn’t scare me anymore.”
As an advisor in the Rollins College of Business, Cales spends her days helping students find their path. Now, she’s drawing from experience.
“I tell students all the time: You’re always going to be learning. You’re never done,” she said. “What matters is showing up, trying anyway and using the resources around you.”
She learned that lesson the hard way.
“The biggest lie I believed was that I had to already know how,” she said. “That mindset holds so many people back.”
“Innovation doesn’t only happen in labs or classrooms,” said Dr. Robert Dooley, UTC’s interim chancellor and longtime dean of the Rollins College of Business. “It happens when people across campus feel empowered to take a chance—and when we as a University have the systems in place to support them.
“Megan’s story reminds us that entrepreneurship lives everywhere: in staff, in business, in lived experience. That’s exactly what the Max Fuller Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is here to support. We want to keep proving that small, early investments like MOCS Innovate! can unlock incredible potential.”
Skjellum agrees.
“Many inventions start as cool ideas looking for a problem to solve,” she said. “Megan did the opposite—she saw a real need and built something from scratch. That’s the kind of thinking we want to promote across campus. It’s not about where you work; it’s about how you think.”
From a moment at the dinner table to a startup with a patent pending, Cales is the kind of innovator UTC hopes to keep inspiring.
“I didn’t set out to become a founder,” she said. “I just wanted to help someone I love. But this experience showed me I could create something real—and that there are people here who’ll help if you just ask.”