Bioengineering senior design team awarded an ASTM International grant

 One of the highlights of the bioengineering undergraduate experience is Senior Design, a capstone course for student teams to work on projects that tap into what they have learned throughout their undergraduate program. This year, bioengineering professor Holly Golecki serves as the instructor.

Teams are made up of two to four students and are paired with sponsors from within the University of Illinois and beyond. Bioengineering seniors Courtney Ketchum, Michael Nelappana and Elizabeth Troy have been awarded an ASTM International grant for their project, "Fully Implantable Bidirectional Microperfusion Device". This project is developed in collaboration with the team's sponsor, Dr. Terence Burns at Mayo Clinic. 

The goal of this Senior Design project is to design and prototype a fully implantable bidirectional microperfusion device for cerebral implantation that will enable repeated sampling of the brain extracellular fluid composition. If successful, this device will be used for implantation in glioma patients. 

"My team and I are honored to receive this award for our senior design project and so excited to use it to continue prototyping next semester," said Ketchum. "We’re working hard to bring our device to completion and hopefully make a difference in brain cancer research."

ASTM International announced five $500 grants for university students to help with senior or graduate design projects that contain an ASTM International standards component. ASTM standards that are being considered for this project are F2038-18, F2042-18, FR503-20 and F647-94(2014). These standards provide guidelines to create and evaluate implantable medical devices. 

Travis Murdock, academic outreach coordinator at ASTM International said, “these grants allow ASTM International to support students who are directly engaging with our standards in real-world scenarios as they work on capstone projects.”

About ASTM International
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