Author: Coley Coleman

Pacemakers are life-saving devices for patients with cardiac arrhythmias, but the batteries that keep them running do not last forever. For many patients, that means replacement surgeries every five to seven years, each carrying risks such as infection, lead damage and added health care costs.

For Team Cardion, the challenge was both technical and personal.

The senior design team, made up of Anjali Shukla (BE’26), Nicholas “Nico” Manuto (BE’26), Andrea Perez Pizarro (BE’26), Cesar Ruiz de Castilla (BE’26) and Ella Nevo (BE’26), set out to design an implantable energy-harvesting pacemaker system. Their prototype converts the heart’s natural mechanical motion into electrical energy that can help replenish a pacemaker battery and extend the device’s lifespan.

Their work earned the Technology and Innovation Prize at this year’s Penn Engineering Senior Design Competition.

A Personal Need, A Biomedical Challenge

The idea began with a problem some members of the team had seen up close. Nevo’s mother has a pacemaker and recently underwent a pacemaker replacement surgery. Other team members also had relatives with pacemakers, giving the group an early understanding of the physical and emotional toll of repeat procedures.

“My mom has a pacemaker and recently had a pacemaker replacement surgery, so I was made aware of the process and that there was a need to make the batteries last longer,” says Nevo. “We were all fascinated by the idea of using the body’s motion for battery recharging capabilities, and that interest grew as we researched it more.”

Cardion uses a piezoelectric material, a material that can generate electrical charge when mechanically stressed, attached to the exterior of the heart. As the heart beats, the device captures motion, converts it into electricity and stores that energy for use by the pacemaker.

The system includes a piezoelectric harvester, power management circuitry, a custom printed circuit board, energy storage, a software monitoring dashboard and a mechanical heart model for testing.

Building a Way to Test the Heart

For Michael Siedlik, Lecturer in Bioengineering, the project stood out not only because of its ambition, but because of how quickly the team turned an uncertain idea into a viable engineering plan.

“When Team Cardion first told me that they wanted to design an improved power system for pacemakers, I was skeptical that they would be able to achieve their goals within the one-year senior design class,” says Siedlik. “I am happy to say that they quickly changed my mind.”

The team’s challenge was not simply designing an energy-harvesting system. They also needed a way to test it. Without access to a beating heart, they built a mechanical model that could replicate cardiac motion and allow them to evaluate whether their device could generate and store power.

“The biggest question we had when it came to testing our pacemaker battery was how exactly to test it, considering we couldn’t implant it in the body at its current stage,” says Shukla. “As a result, we decided to build a mechatronic heart model that we could place our third lead on to replicate the movement and force of a heart beat.”

That test system became one of the project’s defining achievements. Siedlik describes it as “essentially a robotic heart,” a tool the team needed to build before they could validate their own device.

Complementary Skills, Shared Ownership

Team Cardion divided its work across hardware, software, testing, integration and commercialization. Ruiz de Castilla led much of the circuitry work, including how to process the power generated by the energy harvester. Shukla, Nevo, and Perez Pizarro focused on testing and the heart model. Manuto led the software components, including the monitoring dashboard.

For Ruiz de Castilla, the challenge was not only generating energy, but preserving as much of it as possible.

“The really difficult engineering problem that comes up when trying to harvest small amounts of energy to extend the battery life of a system as crucial as a pacemaker is that you need to minimize inefficiencies as much as possible,” says Ruiz de Castilla. “Every little thing needs to be considered: the different values for electrical components, the design of the circuit, the structure of the PCB; it’s a problem of trying to squeeze out as much power as possible.”

But the team’s process was not siloed. Weekly meetings, regular troubleshooting and iterative testing helped the group move through setbacks.

“One of the greatest challenges was integrating all of the systems together in a way that produced meaningful, measurable results,” says Manuto. “We overcame this by breaking each part down into even smaller subsystems, and validating them independently.”

Perez Pizarro says the experience showed her what a team with different strengths could accomplish together.

“I learned how much we were able to accomplish by putting 5 people with complementary skill sets and interests together,” she says.

Senior Design With Real-World Stakes

“Team Cardion exemplifies what it means to do senior design in Bioengineering,” says Siedlik. “They immersed themselves in clinical settings to identify real-world needs, lead the design work and carried out rigorous technical validation to build an ambitious biomedical solution.”

While the device would require substantial further testing, design refinement and regulatory review before any possible clinical use, the team sees long-term potential in the idea of powering implantable devices with energy produced by the body itself.

For pacemakers, the impact could be significant. A longer-lasting power system could reduce repeat surgeries, improve patient safety, lower lifetime health care costs and expand access to care for patients in communities where specialized surgical follow-up is harder to reach.

For future senior design teams, Shukla offers a simple piece of advice rooted in Cardion’s own patient-centered beginning.

“Put the patient first,” she says. “At the end of the day, the engineering is important–but the patient experience prevails.”

Ruiz de Castilla’s advice is to treat senior design as a chance to go deeper.

“Use this project to delve into a subject of interest that you may not have gotten a chance to explore as much in your undergraduate education,” he says. “I liked working with circuits, but getting the chance to expand that knowledge into PCB design has been really fascinating.”

For many hospitalized infants and children, an intravenous line is a critical part of care. But when that line becomes tangled, pulled or dislodged, the consequences can be painful, disruptive and potentially dangerous.

That problem became the focus for Team Reel-IV, a Bioengineering senior design team made up of Priya Agarwal (BE & Wharton ‘26), Anushka Gandhi (BE ‘26), Yerahm Hong (BE ‘26), Nicole Mirzaian (BE ‘26) and Ayma Waqar (BE & BioMed ‘26). Their device is designed to reduce accidental IV dislodgement in pediatric hospital settings, particularly neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) and pediatric intensive care units (PICUs).

The system automatically manages slack in IV tubing through a tension-sensing mechanism, allowing patients to move more naturally without placing dangerous tension on the catheter site. The goal is to improve patient safety, reduce interruptions in treatment and ease the burden on nurses who regularly reposition and untangle IV lines.

The project has already earned national recognition. Reel-IV placed second in the PennHealthX Venture Pitch Contest, second at the M&T Summit, received the Founder’s Award and an Honorable Mention at the TCU Values and Ventures Competition, and placed second at the University of Minnesota’s 25th Anniversary Design of Medical Devices Conference.

For Michael Siedlik, Lecturer in Bioengineering and one of the team’s faculty advisors, that recognition reflects the team’s commitment to understanding the problem before designing the solution.

“A critical component of Bioengineering senior design at Penn is that each team of students must identify a meaningful, real-world problem to be solved,” says Siedlik. “Team Reel-IV exemplifies the commitment to learning from nurses, doctors and patients.”

A Personal and Clinical Need

For the students, the project began with both personal connection and clinical observation. Several team members had close friends or family members whose babies spent time in NICUs, giving them a window into how overwhelming pediatric hospital environments can be for families.

That connection deepened as the team spoke with NICU and PICU nurses. They learned that IV dislodgement is not an occasional inconvenience, but a recurring problem nurses manage during routine care and patient movement. The team was also drawn to pediatric care because many medical devices are designed first for adults, then adapted for children.

“We did not want to build something purely technical for the sake of engineering,” says Waqar. “We wanted to work on a problem where even a small improvement could genuinely make hospital experiences safer and less stressful for children, families and healthcare workers.”

Siedlik says that the process of listening, learning and refining is central to senior design in Bioengineering. Reel-IV, he says, “continuously evolved their project throughout the fall semester until they settled on their final design solution.

A Team Effort Across Disciplines

Reel-IV required the team to work across technical development, clinical research, market analysis, business strategy, computer-aided design refinement, presentation development and outreach. Each part of the project depended on the others: clinical research helped define the need, prototyping and testing shaped the device, market analysis and business strategy clarified its path forward, and presentation development and outreach helped the team communicate the value of their work to clinicians, judges and potential partners.

That range of responsibilities made collaboration essential. Team members brought different strengths to the project, but the work had to move as one system. They regularly came together for testing sessions, design reviews and feedback discussions with clinicians, using each round of input to refine both the device and the broader strategy behind it.

“Because Reel-IV sits at the intersection of engineering, healthcare and entrepreneurship, we had to constantly communicate across different areas of expertise,” says Waqar.

For Siedlik, that ability to sort through feedback was one of the team’s most important areas of growth.

“A challenging part of entrepreneurship, and something that many students can initially struggle with, is identifying which external input is valuable feedback and which is just noise,” he says. “It was very exciting to see them become increasingly confident throughout the semester at navigating through that to ultimately arrive at their final, award-winning prototype design.”

Designing for Reliability

One of the team’s biggest technical challenges was designing a system that could actively manage IV tubing tension without interfering with medication flow or creating additional safety risks. The students repeatedly tested tubing behavior, spool geometry, motor responsiveness and force thresholds to make sure the device responded appropriately without damaging tubing or affecting flow rates.

The process also taught the team to prioritize simplicity. As the project advanced, they narrowed their focus to the core problem: preventing dangerous line tension and dislodgement.

“One major lesson we learned is that good engineering is rarely about building the most technically complicated solution,” says Waqar. “It is about building something reliable, practical and usable in the real world.”

Siedlik was especially impressed by the team’s validation work, including usability testing, durability testing, quantitation of failure modes and evaluations of possible unintended consequences.

“I have been impressed by Reel-IV’s drive to rigorously validate their final device,” says Siedlik. “I expect them to be ready to test their device with patients soon, and I believe they are well-positioned because of the effort and intensity that they have put into their senior design project.”

Beyond Senior Design

Reel-IV is not ending with the academic year. The team plans to continue developing the device through additional prototyping, clinical testing and, eventually, hospital pilot programs.

For Siedlik, Reel-IV represents something larger than a successful senior design project.

“To me, Team Reel-IV represents engineering with empathy,” he says. “I believe that as technological advances continue to grow exponentially, human connection and empathy will be more important than ever.”

That mindset is visible across the team’s work: in the clinical research that grounded the project, the technical design that made it functional, the business strategy that helped define its path forward and the communication that carried Reel-IV onto national stages.

The team began by listening carefully to patients, families and clinicians. They then translated that understanding into a biomedical engineering solution designed to improve safety, comfort and care.

“I am eager to see the impact they have,” says Siedlik, “and I am confident that their work will improve lives and communities.”