BME Senior Design Team Wins DEBUT 2020 Venture Prize

Aug 25 2020 | By Alexis Newman

Congratulations are in order for Columbia BME Senior Design Team, NeuroTrak, for winning the National Institutes of Health’s 9th annual Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) challenge Venture Prize. 

VentureWell selected two teams based on the criteria of market potential and patentability. The Venture Prize of $15,000 went to the NeuroTrak team, inventors of a wireless, wearable device designed to consistently collect electroencephalography (EEG) data in real time to monitor Focal with Impaired Awareness (FIA) seizures. It can increase the accuracy of seizure information over self-reported data and can help doctors make more informed treatment decisions.

The design team, led by team captain Brandon Cuevas, was formed during the 2019-2020 BME Senior Design class. With consultation by faculty advisors, Dr. Aaron Kyle and Dr. Katie Reuther, the NeuroTrak team devised an outpatient solution to detect and differentiate FIA seizures. The wearable device continuously gathers patient data, streams this biosignal to the patient’s phone, and classifies the data in real-time. Through the proprietary residual neural network technology, NeuroTrak provides substantially improved seizure monitoring than self-reporting alone, with 86% FIA seizure detection and 85% seizure differentiation accuracy. This device will enable quantitatively-informed clinician decisions to improve care for epileptic patients.

Team Captain: Brandon Cuevas
Team Members: Abhinav Kurada, Panagiotis Oikonomou, Juan Rodriguez
Faculty Advisors: Dr. Aaron Kyle, Dr. Katie Reuther

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