BME students show off their designs at annual Engineering Expo

The annual UIC College of Engineering Expo in April displayed seniors’ hard work, creativity, and ingenuity in a final showcase of their time and education at UIC.

Seniors from the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering showed off their innovative projects that solve problems in medicine and healthcare.

One groups of seniors created a female-specific midstream urine collection attachment using button-activated diversion.

About 40% of urine samples from women come back contaminated, leading to repeat testing, delayed diagnoses, or unnecessary antibiotic use. This contamination means this process remains as a major clinical challenge.

Seniors Santos Gordils, Zaara Haque, Jineen Ramahi, Umaimah Siddiqui, and Eric Alexander Vargas Vegas developed a device that diverts flow midstream.

A standard sample collection cup is screwed to the device—which consists of a handle with a button—that diverts urine to a separate collection area before enabling midstream collection. The device uses a handle for easy use and labial retraction to reduce contamination while a button on top helps users control where urine gets directed toward—the diverted section for contaminated urine and the standard collection cup for clean urine. The button and flow diversion system are inspired by children’s cause-and-effect toys that use a button to make other elements appear.

The project began in the Clinical Immersion Program, which pairs undergraduate biomedical engineering students with medical students during a six-week summer session to identify clinical-based needs for medical devices.

While working with their mentor UIC Department of Urology Visiting Assistant Professor and Urologist Dr. Michael Young, the students’ project evolved into a collaborative project with the Innovation in Medicine program, a program that prepares medical students for careers in medical technology innovation and product design.

This device has potential to improve diagnostic accuracy, reduce repeat testing and unnecessary antibiotic use, while saving time and money for both hospitals and patients.

The students completed validation testing shortly after the Expo and are working to further improve the device through transitioning to medical-grade, sterilizable materials, refining ergonomics through user testing, and optimizing sealing to prevent leakage. In fact, not long after the Expo, the group met with the Office of Technology Management to navigatethe patent process.

The students’ work was also motivated by the apparent lack of available resources within women’s health research. Haque mentioned that the integration of the button-activated diversion and labial retraction addresses the clinical gap in urine collection for females.

The team plans to continue working on this project this summer and hope to take their device to market.

Seniors Maryam Abdul-Kader, Anna Carroll, Evalyn Huizar, Hafsa Nasser, and Maryana Zuyeva worked to create a fecal management system for incontinence care in the ICU.

For 78% of ICU patients who experience fecal incontinence, each liquid stool event requires at least 16 minutes and two caregivers to manage. In fact, ICU patients experience who experience fecal discharge have a high risk of skin damage, mucosal injury, infection, and loss of dignity.

To help with fecal management, the team developed a device that uses a flexible silicone intrarectal funnel secured via moisture-sensing hydrocolloid adhesive, connected through tubing to a collection bag.

Where existing systems fail to optimize anatomical compatibility, minimize iatrogenic injury, and reduce nursing burden, their device prioritizes patient dignity, anatomical comfort, physiological compatibility, cost efficiency, and caregiver efficiency.

Through repeated testing, the team achieved effective fluid containment and improved seal integrity following interface redesign and prioritization of anatomical compatibility, physiological safety, and caregiver efficiency. Their testing also revealed improved sealing performance, controlled fluid routing, and effective moisture isolation from perianal skin.

The project stems from a partnership between the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering and Hollister Incorporated, a medical device company that focuses on ostomy and continence care, was formed in 2023, seniors have continued to improve continence care.

For plastic and reconstructive surgeries such as volume replacement, lip enhancement, scar corrections, and skin quality, many surgeons use autologous fat grafting, which involves harvesting fat from one area of the body and injecting it into another.

Despite its clinical advantages, the current workflow processing the fat before injection remains very manual, requiring several steps.

While current commercial systems have been developed to streamline fat processing and are widely used in clinical environments, seniors in the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering have built a new device to improve upon where current devices have high costs, inability to be re-sterilized, prolonged processing times, and potential mechanical damage to the graft.

To develop a safer, faster, and more reliable method for preparing adipose tissue for use in autologous fat grafting by reducing traditionally manual steps, seniors Jana Abdalla, Sara Jarquin, Axata Karki, Manuela Narvaez, and Jeana Vasquez have created an approach to streamline the procedure, minimize the risk of infection and graft loss, and ultimately improve consistency in patient outcomes.

Together, they have developed a dual-chamber syringe with a threaded interface and internal mesh filter that separates viable fat from waste using gravity or pressure in a closed, sterile system. While waste collects in a detachable lower chamber, purified fat remains in the upper chamber for transfer via a Luer lock and reinjection.

The team said that this design addresses key limitations of current methods by reducing manual handling of the tissue, lowering contamination risk, and improving procedural consistency. The system is also capable of effectively separating components using gravity-driven filtration, supporting the practicality of the design concept.

Winners from this year’s Senior Design Expo include:

• Pediatric Biofeedback Device: Wearable Anxiety Therapy: Kegan Jones, Denisse Mejia Gonzalez, Divinegrace Nwanguma, Charles Okonma, Victoria Wojcik
• A Deformable, Anatomically Detailed 3D In Vitro Model of the Spinal Subarachnoid Space: Mishti Broor, Siri Harish, Alena Morissette, Paulina Sequeda Malave, Sameena Vasi
• Development of Next Generation 3D Printed Mandibular Advancement Device for Sleep Apnea Management: Vayun Aryan, Nathan Manabat, Syed Rahman, Tomasz Rysiewicz, Nishant Sadangi
• CATEYE: Conjunctiva Bulbar Handheld Imaging Device: Aldo Arroyo, Maris Clinton, Jaanu Kakadiya, Kehkashan Khan, Jennifer Pena, Advik Sikligar