senior design – Penn Bioengineering Blog

“Senior Design was such an incredible part of my senior year and Penn Engineering experience that when I joined the Board of the Engineering Alumni Society, I knew immediately that I would focus on helping the event continue,” says Lyle Brunhofer (EAS’14, GEng’14).

Today, Lyle Brunhofer (EAS’14, GEng’14) advises companies on digital transformations, applying the skills he learned at Penn Engineering to modernize firms’ understanding of customers in industries as diverse as pharmaceuticals and consumer products.

He also helps run Penn Engineering’s annual Senior Design Project Competition, which recruits dozens of alumni to evaluate seniors’ year-long capstone projects. As the Vice President and Senior Design Chair of the Engineering Alumni Society, Brunhofer works hand-in-hand with Bradley Richards (C’92, LPS’17), Director of Alumni Relations, to coordinate the year-long competition and multi-day concluding extravaganza — part Shark Tank, part science competition — in May.

While at Penn Engineering, Brunhofer’s own Senior Design team developed assistive technology to help those with physical disabilities interact with their environment using modular, 3D printed switches. Assist3D partnered with the HMS School for Children with Cerebral Palsy, located in West Philadelphia, to ensure that products met users’ needs. “We set out to create ability switches that would be affordable, customizable and simple, in contrast to the ability switches available on the market,” Brunhofer recalls. After graduation, the team provided the finished products to the HMS School.

As Brunhofer sees it, Senior Design instills skills far beyond the scope of typical engineering courses. “As a student, I felt that Senior Design was an extremely challenging, but rewarding experience,” he says. “It was also unlike any assignment we had been given previously.”

In a Q&A with Penn Engineering Today, Brunhofer discussed what motivates him to stay involved with Penn Engineering as an alumnus and the impact of participating in Senior Design.

How did you get involved as an alumni volunteer with Senior Design?

Senior Design was such an incredible part of my senior year and Penn Engineering experience that when I joined the Board of the Engineering Alumni Society, I knew immediately that I would focus on helping the event continue.

What do you feel makes Senior Design unique?

The mentorship. Students get to work with industry experts, faculty members, alumni and other professionals who help students hone their technical and soft skills, and foster networking opportunities for future careers.

Read the full story in Penn Engineering Today.

Lyle Brunhofer is Business Integration Manager at Accenture. He graduated with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2014.

July 31, 2024July 24, 2024

Innovation in Action: Penn Engineering’s 2024 Senior Design Project Competition

by Ian Scheffler

BE’s award-winning team, Epilog, at the 2024 Senior Design Awards.

How do you make robotics kits affordable for children in low-income countries? Speed up the manufacturing of organs-on-a-chip? Lower the environmental impact of condiments in restaurants?

If you’re a senior at Penn Engineering, the answer is to team up with your peers in the Senior Design Project Competition, which every year draws interdisciplinary groups from across the School’s six majors to solve real-world problems. Championed by the late Walter Korn (EE’57, GEE’68), a past president of the Engineering Alumni Society (EAS), Senior Design also invites alumni back to campus to evaluate the seniors’ year-long capstone projects.

Since the program started nearly two decades ago, hundreds of alumni have shared centuries’ worth of their collective experience with soon-to-be-minted graduates in the form of constructive feedback. “Senior Design is really one of the best days at Penn Engineering,” says Bradley Richards (C’92, LPS’17), Director of Alumni Relations, who manages the program. “Faculty advisors work with students all year long to bring out the best in each group’s efforts, and the results speak for themselves.”

This year, three student teams from each of Penn Engineering’s six departments — Bioengineering (BE), Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE), Computer and Information Science (CIS), Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE), Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), and Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) — presented their work to more than 60 alumni in person and online.

Judges’ Choice Award

The Judges’ Choice Award, which recognizes overall excellence, went to ESE’s VivoDisk, which developed a novel machine to manufacture organs-on-a-chip for Vivodyne, a startup launched by Dan Huh, Associate Professor in BE.

As one of the team members, Akash Chauhan (ENG’24), learned while interning for Vivodyne, assembling the stacks of organs-on-a-chip, which are collections of plastic plates containing cells that simulate organs for preclinical drug testing, is extremely finicky and time consuming.

By developing a machine that could automatically align the plates with high precision using computer vision and AI, the team reduced the disks’ manufacturing time and expense, leading Vivodyne to adopt the device for commercial use, accelerating the process of drug discovery. VivoDisk’s team members included Chauhan; Angela Rodriguez (ENG’24), Aliris Tang (ENG’24, W’24), Dagny Lott (ENG’24), Simone Kwee (ENG’24) and Vraj Satashia (ENG’24, GEN’25) and was advised by Sid Deliwala, Alfred Moore Senior Fellow and Director of Lab Programs in ESE, and Jan Van der Spiegel, Professor in ESE.

Technology and Innovation Award

One of the greatest challenges for children with epilepsy is status epilepticus, an abnormal type of long-lasting seizure that is hard to distinguish from typical seizures and that has a mortality rate of 30%. There is currently no way to perform a test for status epilepticus at home, meaning that children suspected of having the condition must be rushed to the hospital for an electroencephalogram.

Epilog, a team from BE, developed a novel, wearable headset that analyzes brainwaves to accurately determine whether or not a child suffering a seizure is actually suffering from status epilepticus. The team, composed of Rohan Chhaya (ENG’24, GEN’24), Carly Flynn (ENG’24), Elena Grajales (ENG’24), Priya Shah (ENG’24, GEN’25) and Doris Xu (ENG’24) and advised by Erin Berlew, Research Scientist in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Lecturer in BE, carefully validated the device’s accuracy.

The judges recognized Epilog’s technological expertise, which ran the gamut from software to hardware, including a custom app to work with the device and carefully considered features like electrodes whose position can be adjusted to accommodate a child’s growth over time.

Read the full story in Penn Engineering Today.

April 23, 2024April 23, 2024

2024 Penn Bioengineering Senior Design Projects Advance to Interdepartmental Competition

On April 17, 2024, the Department of Bioengineering held its annual Bioengineering (BE) Senior Design Presentations in the Singh Center for Nanotechnology, followed by a Design Expo in the George H. Stephenson Foundation Educational Laboratory & Bio-MakerSpace.

A panel of expert and alumni judges chose 3 teams to advance to the School-wide, interdepartmental competition, to be held on May 3, 2024.

Team ADONA: Jude Barakat, Allison Elliott, Daniel Ghaderi, Aditi Ghalsasi, Taehwan Kim

ADONA (A Device for the Assisted Detection of Neonatal Asphyxia)

Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) is a condition that arises from inadequate oxygen delivery or blood flow to the brain around the time of birth, resulting in long-term neurological damage. This birth complication is responsible for up to 23% of neonatal deaths worldwide. While effective treatments exist, current diagnostic methods require specialized neurologists to analyze an infant’s electroencephalography (EEG) signal, requiring significant time and labor. In areas where such resources and specialized training are even scarcer, the challenges are even more pronounced, leading to delayed or lack of treatment, and poorer patient outcomes. The Assisted Detection of Neonatal Asphyxia (ADONA) device is a non-invasive screening tool that streamlines the detection of HIE. ADONA is an EEG helmet that collects, wirelessly transmits, and automatically classifies EEG data using a proprietary machine learning algorithm in under two minutes. Our device is low-cost, automated, user-friendly, and maintains the accuracy and reliability of a trained neurologist. Our classification algorithm was trained using 1100 hours of annotated clinical data and achieved >85% specificity and >90% sensitivity on an independent 200 hour dataset. Our device is now produced in Agilus 30, a flexible and tear resistant material, that reduces form factor and ensures regulatory compliance. For our final prototype, we hope to improve electrode contact and integrate software with clinical requirements. Our hope is that ADONA will turn the promise of a safer birth into a reality, ensuring instant peace of mind and equitable access to healthcare, for every child and their families.

Epilog

To address the critical need for effective, at-home seizure monitoring in pediatric neurology, particularly for Status Epilepticus (SE), our team developed Epilog: a rapid-application electroencephalography (EEG) headband. SE is a medical emergency characterized by prolonged or successive seizures and often presents with symptoms too subtle to notice or easily misinterpreted as post-convulsive fatigue. This leads to delayed treatment and increased risks of neurological damage and high mortality. Current seizure detection technologies are primarily based on motion or full-head EEG, rendering them ineffective at detecting SE and impractical for at-home use in emergency scenarios, respectively. Our device is designed to be applied rapidly during the comedown of a convulsive seizure, collect EEG data, and feed it into our custom machine learning algorithm. The algorithm processes this data in real-time and alerts caregivers if the child remains in SE, thereby facilitating immediate medical decision-making. Currently, Epilog maintains a specificity of 0.88 and sensitivity of 0.95, delivering decisions within 15 seconds post-seizure. We have demonstrated clean EEG signal acquisition from eight standard electrode placements and bluetooth data transmission from eight channels with minimal delay. Our headband incorporates all necessary electrodes and adjustable positioning of the electrodes for different head sizes. Our unique gel case facilitates rapid electrode gelation in less than 10 seconds. Our most immediate goals are validating our fully integrated device and improving features that allow for robust, long-term use of Epilog. Epilog promises not just data, but peace of mind, and empowering caregivers to make informed life-saving decisions.

NG-LOOP

Nasogastric (NG) tube dislodgement occurs when the feeding tube tip becomes significantly displaced from its intended position in the stomach, causing fatal consequences such as aspiration pneumonia. Compared to the 50% dislodgement rate in the general patient population, infant patients are particularly affected ( >60%) due to their miniature anatomy and tendency to unknowingly tug on uncomfortable tubes. Our solution, the Nasogastric Lightweight Observation and Oversight Product (NG-LOOP) provides comprehensive protection from NG tube dislodgement. Physical stabilization is combined with sensor feedback to detect and manage downstream complications of tube dislodgement. The lightweight external bridle, printed with biocompatible Accura 25 and coated with hydrocolloid dressing for comfort and grip, can prevent dislodgement 100% of the time given a tonic force of 200g. The sensor feedback system uses a DRV5055 linear hall effect sensor with a preset difference threshold, coupled with an SMS alert and smart plug inactivation of the feeding pump. A sensitivity of 90% and specificity of 100% in dislodgement detection was achieved under various conditions, with all feedback mechanisms being initiated in response to 100% of threshold triggers. Future steps involve integration with hospital-grade feeding pumps, improving the user interface, and incorporating more sizes for diverse age inclusivity.

Photos courtesy of Afraah Shamim, Coordinator of Educational Laboratories in the Penn BE Labs. View more photos on the Penn BE Labs Instagram.

Senior Design (BE 4950 & 4960) is a two-semester capstone course taught by David Meaney, Solomon R. Pollack Professor in Bioengineering and Senior Associate Dean of Penn Engineering, Erin Berlew, Research Scientist in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Lecturer in Bioengineering, and Dayo Adewole, Postdoctoral Fellow of Otorhinolaryngology (Head and Neck Surgery) in the Perelman School of Medicine. Read more stories featuring Senior Design in the BE Blog.

April 12, 2024April 10, 2024

2023 PIP-Winning Team Sonura: Where Are They Now?

Members of Team Sonura: Tifara Boyce, Gabriela Cano, Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, & Caroline Magro (credit: Penn BE Labs)

In April 2023, three President’s Prize-winning teams were selected from an application pool of 76 to develop post-graduation projects that make a positive, lasting difference in the world. Each project received $100,000 and a $50,000 living stipend per team member.

The winning projects include Sonura, the winner of the President’s Innovation Prize (PIP), who are working to improve infant development by reducing harsh noise exposure in neonatal intensive care units. To accomplish this, they’ve developed a noise-shielding beanie that can also relay audio messages from parents.

Sonura, a bioengineering quintet, developed a beanie that shields newborns from the harsh noise environments present in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs)—a known threat to infant wellbeing—and also supports cognitive development by relaying audio messages from their parents.

Since graduating from the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the team of Tifara Boyce, Gabriela Cano, Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, and Caroline Magro, has collaborated with more than 50 NICU teams nationwide. They have been helped by the Intensive Care Nursery (ICN) at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP), which shares Sonura’s goal of reducing NICU noise. “Infant development is at the center of all activities within the HUP ICN,” note Daltoso and Ishiwari. “Even at the most granular level, like how each trash can has a sign urging you to shut it quietly, commitment to care is evident, a core tenet we strive to embody as we continue to grow.”

An initial challenge for the team was the inability to access the NICU, crucial for understanding how the beanie integrates with existing workflows. Collaboration with the HUP clinical team was key, as feedback from a range of NICU professionals has helped them refine their prototype.

In the past year, the team has participated in the University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab and the Venture Initiation Program at Penn’s Venture Lab, and received funding from the Pennsylvania Pediatric Device Consortium. “These experiences have greatly expanded our perspective,” Cano says.

With regular communication with mentors from Penn Engineering and physicians from HUP, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and other institutes, Sonura is looking ahead as they approach the milestone of completing the FDA’s regulatory clearance process within the year. They will begin piloting their beanie with the backing of NICU teams, further contributing to neonatal care.

Read the full story and watch a video about Sonura’s progress in Penn Today.

Read more stories featuring Sonura in the BE Blog.

September 19, 2023September 19, 2023

Sonura Named Among 2023 PHL Inno Under 25 Honorees

A team of recent Penn Bioengineering graduates have been included in list of prominent young Philadelphia innovators as chosen by The Philadelphia Business Journal and PHL Inno.

Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, Gabriela Cano, Caroline Amanda Magro, and Tifara Eliana Boyce founded Sonura as their Senior Design Project in Bioengineering. The team, who all graduated in 2023, picked up a competitive President’s Innovation Prize for their beanie that promotes the cognitive and socioemotional development of newborns in the NICU by protecting them from the auditory hazards of their environments while fostering parental connection. Now, they have been included in the list of fourteen Inno Under 25 honorees for 2023.

“To determine this year’s list, the Philadelphia Business Journal and PHL Inno sought nominations from the public and considered candidates put forth by our editorial team. To be considered, nominees must be 25 years of age or younger and work for a company based in Greater Philadelphia and/or reside in the region.

Honorees span a wide range of industries, including consumer goods, biotechnology and environmental solutions. Many are products of the region’s colleges and universities, though some studied farther afield before setting up shop locally.”

Read “Announcing the 2023 PHL Inno Under 25 honorees” and “Inno Under 25” in PHL Inno. Penn affiliates can subscribe through Penn’s library services.

May 11, 2023May 10, 2023

2023 Senior Design Project Competition Winners Announced

Each year, Penn Engineering’s seniors present their Senior Design projects, a year-long effort that challenges them to test and develop solutions to real-world problems, to their individual departments. The top three projects from each department go on to compete in the annual Senior Design Competition, sponsored by the Engineering Alumni Society, which involves pitching projects to a panel of judges who evaluate their potential in the market.

We are proud that two of the four awards went to Penn Bioengineering teams!

This year’s panel included over forty judges, and each winning team received a $2,000 prize, generously sponsored by Penn Engineering alumnus Kerry Wisnosky.

Congratulations to all of the 2023 participants and winners!

Technology & Innovation Award

This award recognized the team whose project represents the highest and best use of technology and innovation to leverage engineering principles.

Team BAMBI poses with Dean Vijay Kumar.

Winner: Team BAMBI
Department: Bioengineering
Team Members: Ria Dawar, Pallavi Jonnalagadda, Jessica Ling, Grace Qian
Mentor: Erin Anderson
Instructors: Erin Berlew, Sevile Mannickarottu, and David Meaney
Abstract: BAMBI (Biointelligent Apnea Monitor for Bradycardia-Prone Infants) is a tripartite system that leverages machine learning and automated mechanical stimulation to detect and treat apnea of prematurity in the NICU.

Judges’ Choice Award

Team StablEyes poses with Dean Vijay Kumar. This award recognizes the group whose all-around presentation captures the best of the senior design program’s different facets: ideation, scope of project, team problem-solving, execution and presentation.

Winner: Team StablEyes
Department: Bioengineering
Team Members: Ella Atsavapranee, Jake Becker, Ruoming Fan, Savan Patel
Mentor: Erin Anderson, Dr. Drew Scoles and Dr. Tomas Aleman (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Penn Medicine)
Instructors: Erin Berlew, Sevile Mannickarottu, and David Meaney
Abstract: StablEyes consists of a stabilization mount that provides fine, motorized control of the handheld OCT to improve ease of use for physicians and machine learning-based software to aid in diagnosis from retinal images.

Read the full list of SEAS Senior Design Competition Award winners in Penn Engineering Today.

Read more about all the Class of 2023 Penn Bioengineering Senior Design Teams in the Penn BE Labs website.

May 5, 2023May 2, 2023

Celebrating the 2023 President’s Engagement and Innovation Prize Winners

by Lauren Hertzler

At a special luncheon on campus, President Liz Magill recognized this year’s eight awardees, who she said ‘exemplify imagination, creativity, grit, and leadership.’

President Liz Magill and Interim President Beth Winkelstein with the 2023 PEP and PIP awardees.

When Kenneth Pham got the call last week, he said he was “shocked.”

“It’s kind of embarrassing, the president’s call went straight to voicemail,” the fourth-year chemistry major said. “But I called her office right back.”

Pham quickly learned that he and Catherine Chang had earned one of this year’s President’s Engagement Prizes (PEP) for their project Act First, which, once established, will provide critical first-aid training to high school students in Philadelphia. Both members of Penn’s Medical Emergency Response Team since their earliest years on campus, Pham, from South Philadelphia, and Chang, from Taiwan, hope to extend the program’s lifesaving education off campus, teaching others how to reverse opioid overdoses, successfully administer CPR, and prevent life-threatening bleeding.

“We feel honored to be recognized for the work we’ve been so passionate about, and we are so glad to finally have the opportunity to work on this,” Pham said Wednesday afternoon, sitting next to Chang as well as his parents at a celebratory luncheon for this year’s PEP, as well as President’s Innovation Prize (PIP), winners.

“After all our hard work this past year, it feels great,” added Chang, who graduated with her degree in biology in December.

President Magill meets with Sonura teammate Sophie Ishiwari and her startup’s mentor Brian Halak, from Penn Engineering.

In addition to Act First, fourth-year neuroscience major Lucy Lee has been awarded a PEP for her initiative Communities for Childbirth, and fourth-year bioengineering majors Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, Gabriela Cano, Caroline Amanda Magro, and Tifara Eliana Boyce have received a PIP for their startup Sonura. All three projects will be awarded $100,000 for implementation expenses, as well as a $50,000 living stipend per team member to be used in the coming year, immediately following graduation.

“This is a uniquely Penn experience,” said President Liz Magill, speaking to the awardees and their family members and mentors at the gathering. “No other university has a program quite like this, and I would like to say that’s in part because no other university has the student body we have at Penn, so focused on creating solutions to pressing societal problems. That particular characteristic is a trait that we celebrate, coming down from—yes, you guessed it—our founder Ben Franklin.”

Read the full story in Penn Today.

May 4, 2023May 2, 2023

Penn Bioengineering Senior Design Expo Featured in Technical.ly Philly

Technical.ly Philly journalist Sarah Huffman recently paid another visit to Penn Bioengineering’s George H. Stephenson Foundation Educational Laboratory & Bio-MakerSpace, this time for the 2023 Senior Design Expo. Following the annual Senior Design presentations held in the Singh Center for Nanotechnology, in which graduating fourth-year undergraduates in Bioengineering presented their final capstone projects, the Expo offered an opportunity for the teams to do live demonstrations (or demos) for the department’s internal competition judges and the wider BE community.

“In the course of the day, students presented the challenge they were aiming to solve and the technical details of their solution. After, demonstrations sought to find if the devices really worked.

‘[It’s] looking at the device as a whole, because quite frankly, you can say whatever you want at a presentation, does it really work,’ said [BE Labs Director Sevile] Mannickarottu. ‘You can make it look pretty, “but does it work?” is the big question.'”

Read “At Penn’s Senior Design Expo, students aimed to solve healthcare issues with tech devices” in Technical.ly Philly.

To learn more about the 2023 Senior Design projects, including pitch videos, abstracts, full presentations and awards, visit the Penn BE Labs Website.

Read about Technical.ly’s first visit to the Penn BE Labs here.

April 28, 2023April 28, 2023

Penn Bioengineering Senior Design Team “Sonura” Wins 2023 President’s Innovation Prize

Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, Gabriela Cano, Caroline Amanda Magro, and Tifara Eliana Boyce pose on College Green. — Sonura

University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill announced on April 21, the recipients of the 2023 President’s Engagement and Innovation Prizes.

Awarded annually, the Prizes empower Penn students to design and undertake post-graduation projects that make a positive, lasting difference in the world. Each Prize-winning project will receive $100,000, as well as a $50,000 living stipend per team member. The Prizes are the largest of their kind in higher education. All Prize recipients collaborate with a Penn faculty mentor.

A team of fourth-year Bioengineering majors, Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, Gabriela Cano, Caroline Amanda Magro, and Tifara Eliana Boyce, have received the President’s Innovation Prize for their project, Sonura.

“This year’s President’s Engagement and Innovation Prize recipients are fueled by a desire to make a difference—in their community, across the country, and around the world,” Magill said. “Communities for Childbirth, Act First, and Sonura embody an inspiring blend of passion and purpose. They are addressing consequential challenges with compelling solutions, and their dedication and smarts are exemplary. I congratulate them and wish them success as they launch and grow their ventures.”

The 2023 Prize recipients—selected from an applicant pool of 76—will spend the next year implementing the projects:

Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, Gabriela Cano, Caroline Amanda Magro, and Tifara Eliana Boyce for Sonura: Daltoso, from Boise, Idaho; Ishiwari, from Chicago; Cano, from Lawrenceville, New Jersey; Magro, from Alexandria, Virginia; and Boyce, from Jamaica, Queens, New York, are bioengineering majors in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Their startup, Sonura, is developing a beanie that promotes the cognitive and socioemotional development of newborns in the NICU by protecting them from the auditory hazards of their environments while fostering parental connection. The Sonura Beanie is composed of a frequency-dependent filter and a mobile application. The Sonura team is mentored by Brian Halak, a lecturer in the Engineering Entrepreneurship program. Sonura was developed in Penn’s Stephenson Foundation Bio-MakerSpace and was part of their Bioengineering Senior Design class.

To learn more about the 2023 President’s Engagement and Innovation Prizes, visit Penn Today.

April 27, 2023May 1, 2023

2023 Undergraduate Awards for Bioengineering Students

Congratulations to the Bioengineering student recipients of undergraduate awards from the School of Engineering and Applied Science for the 2022-2023 academic year. These awards are given annually by the school and the department in recognition of outstanding scholarship and service. Read the full list of Bioengineering undergraduate award winners below.

The Wolf-Hallac Award: Sofia Mouchtaris. This award was established in October 2000 to recognize the graduating female senior from across Penn Engineering’s departments who is seen as a role model, has achieved a high GPA (in the top 10% of their class), and who has demonstrated a commitment to school and/or community.

The Management and Technology Scholarship Award: Savan Patel. This prize is awarded by the SEAS faculty to that member of the senior class in the Jerome Fisher Management and Technology Program who has created an innovative system and attained high scholastic achievement.

The Hugo Otto Wolf Memorial Prize: Joshua Freedman & Le He. This prize is awarded to one or more members of each department’s senior class, distinguishing students who meet with great approval of the professors at large through “thoroughness and originality” in their work.

The Herman P. Schwan Award: Laila Norford. This department award honors a graduating senior who demonstrates the “highest standards of scholarship and academic achievement.”

Exceptional Service Awards recognize students for their outstanding service to the University and their larger communities: Dylan Hurok, Julia Lottman, Caroline Magro & Grace Qian.

The Student Leadership Award: Moses Zeidan. This award is given annually to a student in Bioengineering who has demonstrated, through a combination of academic performance, service, leadership, and personal qualities, that they will be a credit to the Department, the School, and the University.

Additionally, the Bioengineering Department also presents a single lab group with the Albert Giandomenico Award which reflects their “teamwork, leadership, creativity, and knowledge applied to discovery-based learning in the laboratory.” This year’s group consists of Ella Atsavapranee, Jake Becker, Ruoming Fan & Savan Patel, aka Team StablEyes.

The awardees above were recognized at the annual Penn Engineering Awards Ceremony held Wednesday, March 29, 2023 in the Harrison Auditorium, Penn Museum.

Three Bioengineering Senior Design teams were chosen for recognition in the Bioengineering Senior Design Competition:

Team BAMBI: Ria Dawar, Pallavi Jonnalagadda, Jessica Ling, & Grace Qian. BAMBI (Biointelligent Apnea Monitor for Bradycardia-Prone Infants) is a tripartite system that leverages machine learning and automated mechanical stimulation to detect and treat apnea of prematurity in the NICU.

Team StablEyes: Ella Atsavapranee, Jake Becker, Ruoming Fan, & Savan Patel. StablEyes consists of a stabilization mount that provides fine, motorized control of the handheld OCT to improve ease of use for physicians and machine learning-based software to aid in diagnosis from retinal images.

Team inSPIRE: Jackson Dooley, Joshua Freedman,Yi-An Hsieh, Isabella Mirro, & Parth Mody. inSPIRE is the first smart incentive spirometer, used post-operatively to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs associated with complications and readmissions.

These teams will compete in the Penn Engineering Senior Design Competition on Friday, April 28, 2023.

Research for these projects was conducted in the George H. Stephenson Foundation Education Laboratory & Bio-Maker Space. Learn about all the 2023 Senior Design projects and view their final presentations on the Stephenson Bio-MakerSpace website here.

A full list of Penn Engineering award descriptions and recipients can be found here.

Tag: senior design

Empowering Future Engineers: Lyle Brunhofer and the Impact of Senior Design