Last Wednesday, members of the Georgia House Science and Technology Committee got a first-hand glimpse at how students at Tech are engaged in solving the community’s most complex problems.  Demonstrating their CardioScout device, four biomedical engineering (BME) seniors showed that the Institute’s undergraduates can provide solutions to real medical challenges.

Tahir Haque, Chris Jorgensen, Nick Patel, and Kevin Rego, team members in BME’s capstone  design course, presented a medical tool they developed to deliver therapies to a beating heart.  The device, for which a patent application has been filed, was developed under the mentorship of Dr. Jim Fonger and the St. Joseph’s Translational Research Institute and advisor Professor Franklin Bost. 

The group provided committee members with background on the problems their tool seeks to solve and took the members through the entire development process from initial planning to prototyping and testing.  They also conducted a live demonstration of the device as legislators gathered around.

In his introductory remarks for the group, Fonger explained that the students were presented with a medically-relevant engineering challenge, and the product they invented looked to be a “very significant achievement.”

Wednesday’s presentation provided not only an opportunity to share the innovative and problem-based approach to learning that is being embraced at Georgia Tech, but also the importance of external partnerships to these efforts.  President Peterson, who also attended the presentation took note of this in his comments to the committee.

“This project really is a partnership between a number of different institutions... and through this partnering, we can address many of these very, very challenging problems.”