Capstone Threepeat! Coulter BME Wins Again

Story by Jerry Grillo

Photos by Yanet Chernet, Jerry Grillo, and Marianne Al Haj

“That’s what you call a threepeat,” said a smiling Alyssa Panitch, chair of the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, as she climbed the steps of the McCamish Pavilion.

Down on the basketball court, a team of biomedical engineering students called the Air Detectives was celebrating after winning the top prize in the Fall 2024 Georgia Tech Capstone Design Expo. It was the third straight time a Coulter BME team won the overall project competition — BME teams won a share of both top prizes in the last academic year, in the Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 Expos.

“What a great reflection on the ingenuity of our students and the expertise of our faculty,” Panitch said when she reached the arena concourse. “From the time they’re freshmen, our students are taught that it all begins with finding and understanding the right problems. And our Capstone faculty, who have brought companies to market, truly understand what the design process is all about.”

Two Coulter teams comprised entirely of women celebrated together on the floor — the Air Detectives and Team Rooting4U, which took the award for top project in the department. The cameras kept clicking, capturing the final scenes of a banner evening for the Coulter Department. 

Jishnav Kohli of the Airbenders helps a fellow Georgia Tech student through a demonstration of his team's device, an aid to help make infant lung imaging easier.

“The range of projects this semester was incredible,” said Chris Hermann, professor of the practice — a Capstone instructor who is a physician, engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur. “They’ve come up with extraordinary solutions to some real-world problems.”

And some out-of-this-world problems, too. One BME team, Astreos, designed a device that can administer medicine through space suits, while maintaining airtight integrity and protection for the astronaut, even while in space. But it was another invention aimed an airtight solution that most impressed judges.

Surgical Solutions

The Air Detectives won the $3,000 top prize for their minimally invasive solution for treating a serious complication in lung surgery: air leaks following an operation. They’re a major problem, leading to longer, more expensive hospital stays, which means more risk to the patient. 

So, the team developed the Air Detective, a handheld electronic device with an infrared sensor that detects air leaks at multiple points during a procedure. But their journey from idea to prototype wasn’t straightforward.

“The story of our project was pivot, pivot, pivot,” said Kanz Elkhiyari, whose fellow Air Detectives are Isabella Turner, Emily Cantrelle, Alondra Torres, and Paola Troconis. “During the semester, we changed our project statement, changed what we were doing, changed everything, threw our professors and instructors for a loop.”

Though they designed a device for human health, it was an interview with a veterinarian at the University of Georgia — who performs surgery on huskies, which tend to have lung problems — that set them on the right path.

“He was tired of cracking open the chests of these dogs,” Elkhiyari said. “He actually said, ‘if only I had a minimally invasive way to find these air leaks …’ That was our lightbulb moment.”

Team Rooting4U also developed a minimally invasive way to deal with a serious problem in the human thorax — aortic root replacement. Aortic aneurysms (a bulge or balloon in the wall of the artery) can happen anywhere on the aorta and most of the time can be treated endovascularly, a minimally invasive procedure performed inside the blood vessels. 

But aneurysms in the aortic root are a different matter. This is a complicated area of the heart, close to all the cardiac chambers.

“Currently the only available treatments are symptom management with medication and open-heart surgery,” said Jessica Bates, whose teammates are Abigail Catledge, Shreya Kumar, Anam Muhammad, and Hannah Payne. Their project advisor was Bradley Leshnower, director of aortic thoracic surgery for Emory Healthcare.  

“We developed a third option,” Bates said. “Particularly for people who are considered to be at high risk for open-heart surgery.”

Their design includes a stented endograft, coronary artery stents, and an artificial valve. The recovery time for inserting this device versus open heart surgery is one to two weeks compared to two to three months, for thousands of dollars less, “and it would achieve the same results as open-heart surgery,” said Bates.

In addition to the top Capstone prizes, several BME teams also earned prized “golden tickets” for the Georgia Tech InVenture Prize in the Spring — these tickets allow the teams to bypass the early rounds of InVenture competition.

Two BME teams also received honorable mention: No Look Heart Repair!, for its catheter that promotes clotting in the treatment of severe heart bleeds, and Doo Due Diligence, for its bedpan with a removable disposal container to reduce spillage and improve clinical workflow. This team may have won bonus points for its slogan: “We are #1 in Number 2.”