Awards for undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni of UD BME department

University of Delaware engineering students Sarah Peden, Marjelle Scheffers, Dylan Wergelis-Isaacson and Desik Somasundaram placed third in the Undergraduate Design Competition at the Summer Biomechanics Bioengineering Biotransport Conference (SB^3C) earlier this summer in Tucson, Arizona. As their engineering senior design project, the students developed an affordable and portable cardio training device for manual wheelchair users.

The team built a functioning prototype of the training device in early December and originally intended it for people in Ghana. When the team participated in the National Science Foundation I-Corps Sites program and learned quickly that the device had large market application, the scope of the project grew to include many other countries. The progress made at NSF I-Corps encouraged the team to participate in the SB^3C conference.

SB^3C serves as a presentation and paper competition for upcoming innovations in the fields as well as a networking event for all involved. The theme of this year’s conference was “Growth, Development, Remodeling and Repair.” Peden, who recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from UD’s College of Engineering, represented the team at the event.

“It was so great to see what other engineering students across the country are doing for their own senior design projects,” says Peden. The UD team was one of six that presented a project, all selected from a pool of 30 applicants. “The networking opportunity was great, too, meeting established people in the field and other students interested in bioengineering.”

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