M.Eng. Graduates

Team Projects

• Novel secondary containment for advanced therapy transportation

  Ariana O’Brien, Rhianna Patel, Shahab Nassar

  Advanced therapies are high value, high cost treatments for critical illnesses. To ensure that active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) integrity and efficacy is maintained, advanced therapies are transported at cryogenic temperatures. Current solutions fall short in their high number of unit operations and their inability to customize logistics for an individual therapy. Addressing these shortcomings, we designed a hybrid secondary containment module, combining passive and active cooling mechanisms to maintain temperatures less than –150 °C for transit time. We computationally modeled the design and experimentally tested various inputs for the parameters and converged on an optimized design of an internal apparatus scaled down to transport a single therapy using passive cooling. This internal apparatus will be placed within an outer system of active cooling to maintain cryogenic temperatures and protect API integrity for the entire duration of transportation. This design is recommended for implementation in future advanced therapy logistical applications to ensure the highest efficacy drug for patients, and its scope would likely apply to other types of cold-chain transportation as well.

• Silent speech device for speech recognition

  Aniqa Tabassum, Ganqing Hu

  This project focuses on developing a silent speech device using surface electromyography (sEMG) to detect articulatory muscle movements aided by machine learning. Our device would allow intubated patients to significantly communicate their needs and problems by recognizing what they are trying to say. All patients would need to do is mouth the words. Our device comes with a facemask design that patients can put on comfortably. We have also developed a complete protocol to train our machine learning algorithm in clinical settings using data from human volunteers. The technology also has potential for applications for individuals suffering from permanent speech loss due to throat cancers or surgeries.

• Novel containment solution for global vaccines

  Seonae Breckenridge, Paris Dickens, Anjola Solola

  The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the vaccine landscape, heightening the need for a global containment solution suitable for large-scale manufacturing and distribution of mRNA LNP vaccines at sub-zero temperatures. There is a substantial need to prevent disease, but there is still a global disparity in vaccine accessibility due to price and an area of opportunity for more sustainable containment solutions. Accounting for cost-effectiveness and global sustainability, we developed a novel and scalable containment and administration solution suitable for the sub-zero criteria of mRNA LNP vaccines.