A pediatric chest tube trainer<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to know our product will actually be able to be used by nursing students who help treat patients,\u201d said Emma Sieg, who helped design the child-sized prototype with the BioInnovators group. \u201cHopefully, they\u2019ll 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.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\nStudents watching a live demonstration of the pediatric trainer model at the 2026 Senior Design Showcase<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Novel Gene Gun<\/h2>\n\n\n\n UTIA Professor Scott Lenaghan\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne 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,\u201d said Pailin Beller, a member of the senior design team. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nSenior Design group stands beside poster and prototype gene gun<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Liver Ablation Tool<\/h2>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d Reinbolt said. \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Contact<\/h2>\n\n\n\n Rhiannon Potkey (rpotkey@utk.edu<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From novel gene guns to 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":855,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"no-feature-post","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-students"],"yoast_head":"\n
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