Biomedical engineering alumni Jared Meyers and Stephen Kalinsky believe they have a chance to change lives with a device that has earned them a spot in the national Collegiate Inventors Competition finals in October. It’s an opportunity that began taking shape during a friendly, random conversation on an airplane.

Meyers was flying to Atlanta and happened to strike up a conversation with the couple in his row. One of them was a retired urologist, and after their talk, Meyers suddenly saw an area with untapped potential.

Before long, he was talking to friends interested in creating marketable solutions to medical problems and learning about the process through the CREATE-X Idea to Prototype program. With Kalinsky and another friend, Camille Díaz, Meyers started talking to other urologists and learned about catheter-associated urinary tract infections, a common problem for patients with long-term catheters.

“Catheter valves seemed like a great option, but we realized that surprisingly few people actually use them,” said Meyers, who finished his degree in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering in May. “We asked ourselves, ‘Why not?’ and then we realized — because many people can’t tell when to empty their bladder.”

Fast forward, and the group’s solution will compete with five others in the undergraduate division of College Inventors Competition, organized by the National Inventors Hall of Fame. They’ve designed a noninvasive sensor that sends notifications to a smartphone or wearable device, like a smart watch, when the user’s bladder is full.

“We’re building it specifically for people who are using indwelling urinary catheters, typically as a result of spinal cord injury or another neurological condition,” said Kalinsky, who also finished his degree in May.

Meyers added: “We realized the magnitude of the problem when we started talking to people who live with indwelling catheters. In these conversations, we learned that urine collection bags could make people too embarrassed to go outside, unable to go in the pool, and risk accidents and leakage during physical activity. Some wheelchair users even told us the ability to use the bathroom more normally would be a higher priority than being able to walk again.”