From novel gene guns and biodegradable mesh sutures to training devices and protective shields, the 2025-26 senior design teams in the Department of Biomedical Engineering showcased an array of innovative projects that helped address real-world problems.
BME featured 20 teams that worked on projects for clients that included the University of Tennessee Medical Center, the UT College of Veterinary Medicine, the UT Institute of Agriculture, and the UT College of Nursing. In total, each team completed 27 deliverables and five presentations throughout the two-semester design process.
The BME program faculty select design projects with a balance of challenge, complexity, and required work. Based on the FDA’s design control guidelines for medical device manufacturers, each project was broken into five phases:
- project proposal
- conceptual design
- design for manufacturing
- manufacturing and fabrication
- product testing and qualification
“Students experience open-ended biomedical design projects. Participants gain systematic knowledge of the design process organized by general principles and life cycle phases of biomedical innovations,” said BME Associate Professor and senior design instructor Jeff Reinbolt said. “This process has given participants the opportunity to evaluate and ensure innovations suit functionality and performance requirements. The open-ended biomedical design projects foster students to build upon their theoretical knowledge and develop problem-solving skills.”
Among the projects completed this spring were:
Pediatric Chest Tube Trainer
A pediatric chest tube trainer to help UT nursing students learn how to manage a collapsed lung and practice proper needle insertion in babies and infants. Two senior design teams designed a cost-efficient and practical model of varying ages.
“It’s amazing to know our product will actually be able to be used by nursing students who help treat patients,” said Emma Sieg, who helped design the child-sized prototype with the BioInnovators group. “Hopefully, they’ll get a better understanding of how to diagnose and treat pneumothorax, so when the situation comes up when they are a nurse, they will know how to do it from our model. That is very cool to think about.”
Novel Gene Gun
UTIA Professor Scott Lenaghan’s lab is developing a synthetic genome that encodes boosted photosynthetic proteins. The work requires using a gene gun to engineer plant chloroplasts. A BME senior design team created a gene gun that can do the work faster, more efficiently and at a cheaper cost.
“One of my personal goals when I entered UT was to get the most out of my education, so I wanted to tackle something ambitious for senior design,” said Pailin Beller, a member of the senior design team. “We wanted to be one of the first teams to make these efficiency improvements (to the gene gun) and kind of set the gold standard for efficiency.”
Liver Ablation Tool
Liver ablation tool for improved cancerous tissue detection. In collaboration James McLoughlin at UT Medical Center, a BME team designed an assistive device for liver ablation surgeries of small tumors. McLoughlin wanted to develop a sensor system to more efficiently identify cancerous tissue during ablation surgery that can provide real-time feedback to the surgeon while not interfering with the normal operation of the ablation tool. The final product had a strong likelihood of shortening operation times and improving patient outcomes.
“The BME senior design program continues to address an important problem where a gap exists between the education of biomedical engineers and their roles in the engineering workforce,” Reinbolt said. “This series of courses is arguably the most important for biomedical engineering students and it is the last bridge between theory-based education and a problem-solving profession.”
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey ([email protected])