BME Projects

Regenerative Medicine
 

Regenerative medicine focuses on repairing, replacing, or restoring damaged tissue and organs by using the body's own repair mechanisms.

An untapped resource in this field is the use of fat (adipose) tissue.

Through the mechanical processing, fat tissue is processed into smaller particles while preserving regenerative cellular components. This fat, commonly referred to as nanofat, can be used for regenerative properties in applications such as wound healing, scar treatment, and skin rejuvenation.

The Problem

Currently, fat processing methods rely on manual emulsification techniques, where surgeons repeatedly transfer fat between two connected syringes to mechanically break down and process the tissue (video shown). This method leads to inconsistencies in fat tissue particle size and processing efficiency, increasing the risk of infection during regenerative therapeutic procedures. While this method is widely used, there is an clinical unmet need...

Immune Innovation For Active Healing

ANGel is an engineered immune-activating hydrogel that accelerates healing by promoting rapid blood vessel regrowth.

Delayed tissue regeneration causes high failure chance for skin grafts:

160K Skin Grafts

Performed annually in the US treating burns and chronic wounds.

1 in 4 Fail

Procedures fail on average—leaving wounds open to chronic complications.

$32B Burden

Annual economic burden in the US from failed graft procedures.

Angiogenesis & Why It's Delayed

Angiogenesis is the process of new blood vessel formation, promoted by anti-inflammatory M2 macrophage signaling. Chronic inflammation prevents pro-inflammatory M1 macrophages to effectively differentiate into their pro-regenerative M2 state. When angiogenesis is prolonged, the risk of infection increases and likelihood of healing is decreases.

 ...

BiteBio
Smart Mouthguard

A next-generation sports monitoring device for saliva-based biomarker detection. BiteBio stands for Biomolecular Intraoral Tracking & Evaluation, reflecting our focus on noninvasive intraoral biosensing for athlete health monitoring.

See every shade, save every life

CHROMAskin is a 2025-2026 UCI BioENGINE Senior Capstone Project in collaboration with the team at DermaVision Technologies and University of California, Irvine Biomedical Engineering Department.

Our Cause

Why skin cancer diagnostics?

1 in 5 Americans will be diagnosed with skin cancer by age 70. This looks like over 9,500 new cases a day. As for the 5-year survival and late stage diagnostic rates for skin cancer, these fluctuate greatly between different ethnic groups with African Americans being particularly marginalized.

Industry Standard

What is the current diagnostic process?

Initial skin cancer screening involves using a dermascopy tool, the primary non-invasive method,which is subjective and leads to less accurate diagnostics. This issue is further amplified for patients with darker skin tones. Even experienced physicians...

Clear surgical visibility in humid operating rooms.

An affordable clamp-on airflow attachment for ophthalmic microscopes. The system directs controlled airflow near the optical path to reduce lens fogging and help surgeons maintain visibility with fewer workflow interruptions.

Fogging interrupts surgery.

Patient breathing, humid rooms, and long procedures can create condensation near the microscope lens. A low-cost retrofit can reduce interruptions without replacing existing microscopes.

A practical visibility problem in low-resource surgical settings

In warm, humid operating rooms, microscope lenses can fog during cataract and other ophthalmic procedures. Reduced visibility can break concentration, slow the procedure, and require repeated manual clearing.

• Fogging blocks the surgeon’s view during precision work
• Manual clearing delays the procedure and disrupts sterile workflow
• Existing solutions can be costly, bulky, or inconsistent

Making the Invisible Visible

DermaVision is developing DermaSpect, a portable multispectral imaging device that uses UV-A, visible, and near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths to capture subsurface bruise information that may not be visible under standard lighting conditions. Our goal: improve consistency, objectivity, and equity in clinical and forensic imaging.

The Problem

Why This Matters

Bruise documentation plays an important role in both healthcare and forensic investigations, especially in cases involving domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, and physical trauma. However, current bruise assessment methods still rely heavily on visual inspection and standard photography, which are subjective and inconsistent.

According to national statistics, over 10 million domestic violence cases occur annually in the United States, and approximately 44.2% of victims are people of color. Existing bruise detection and aging methods are often less accurate on highly pigmented skin because melanin absorbs much of...

DiagNose

Making speech assessment accessible through a portable, child-friendly nasometer.

About us

For a child born with a cleft palate, surgery is only the beginning of the journey. The real challenge is finding their voice. In low-income countries, where the majority of cleft palate cases occur, the 'gold standard' for diagnosing hypernasality is a clinician's ear. It is subjective, inconsistent, and prone to error. While objective tools like nasometers exist, they cost thousands of dollars, making them inaccessible in the communities that need them the most. We at DiagNose seek to change that with tinytalk.

The Mission

Redefining how we measure and analyze speech nasality.

tinytalk was born from the need to identify nasal air emission and hypernasality in children with cleft palate that is affordable and portable. By combining high-tech...

Restoring Ears. Restoring Childhoods.

Earicular is a tissue-engineered reconstruction project to restore natural ear shape for patients with congenital deformities.

Engineering a path to natural ear restoration

Earicular combines clinical insight, allograft tissue, and 3D bioprinting to address microtia in a way that's gentler on patients.

Transforming blind nasogastric tube placement into an ultrasound-guided procedure to enhance neonatal safety and care

Background

One in ten infants in the United States is born prematurely, and many rely on nasogastric (NG) tubes to receive medication and enteral nutrition. However, neonatal nasogastric tube insertion is a blind procedure, and tube misplacement has been reported in up to 59% of cases, leading to serious complications such as aspiration, perforation, and mortality.

Problem

Current confirmation methods, X-ray and gastric pH testing, also present significant limitations. Chest radiography, the current clinical gold standard, exposes infants to ionizing radiation and can further delay timely care. Gastric pH testing may also be unreliable in neonates due to limited aspirate volumes and the effects of acid-suppressive medications.

Mission

Our mission is to improve neonatal safety by enabling fast, accurate, and non-invasive confirmation of nasogastric...

How EMBRACE Began

EMBRACE began as a Siemens-sponsored senior design capstone project through UC Irvine’s Biomedical Engineering program. The original project concept explored adaptive prosthetic control through biosignal processing and machine learning.

As our interdisciplinary team of biomedical engineering and computer science students formed, we brought together expertise in hardware design, signal acquisition, controls, and machine learning to refine the concept into a practical solution. This collaboration ultimately shaped EMBRACE into a portable EMG-controlled prosthetic system designed for intuitive and accessible upper-limb assistance.

Hema Weave

Weave got you covered.

Electrospun Chitosan Nanofiber Scaffold for Wound Dressing and Hemostatic Applications.

InfraMed

Empowering post-stroke recovery with NIR.

THE PROBLEM

Reperfusion
without repair.

Ischemic stroke:

#1Cause of long-term disability.

#2Cause of death worldwide.

Current ischemic stroke thrombectomy procedures successfully remove the occluding blood clot but do not address or restore the downstream tissue and cellular damage caused by prolonged ischemia.

Clinical Need

Autologous fat grafting is widely used in reconstructive, cosmetic, and regenerative medicine due to its biocompatibility and regenerative potential from adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) and stromal vascular fraction (SVF) populations. However, current fat washing methods are highly manual and operator-dependent, contributing to inconsistent graft retention rates of 20-80% and reported cell viability losses of up to 30-50% during preparation and handling. These inefficiencies can prolong operating room time, increase healthcare costs, and reduce clinical outcomes by compromising adipocyte and stem cell survival. Therefore, there is a clinical need for an automated, scalable, and standardized adipose tissue washing and processing system capable of rapidly preparing large tissue volumes while preserving cellular viability and producing reproducible, high-quality graft material.

The current Sayenza platform can only process approximately 50 mL of adipose tissue per wash cycle, which is sufficient for small procedures and nanofat applications but...

Over 2 million cancer cases are projected in the United States in 2026.

While we aren’t inventing a cure, our team is helping accelerate cancer research to make future breakthroughs possible.

In collaboration with Kino Discovery, MicroJAMBRs' goal is to explore a more efficient pathway to isolating single cells for research through an innovative injection-molded microfluidic device.

Why is isolating cells so important?

Isolating cells for study, or single-cell analysis, is used in cancer research to examine gene expression, protein signaling, and mutations of cells in a tumor, allowing researchers to track treatment resistance and develop more targeted therapies.

In addition to oncology, single-cell analysis is useful in immunology, regenerative medicine, and pharmaceutical research markets.

The single cell analysis market is projected to exceed 1 billion dollars globally over the next decade.

With the help of Kino...

The Problem

Labor, measured by hand.

Manual cervical exams remain the standard for tracking labor progression.

Cervical dilation and effacement are still assessed much as they were a century ago: manually, subjectively, and intermittently. A clinician performs a physical exam, interprets findings based on experience, and records a discrete value in the chart. These exams are inherently uncomfortable for patients, carry a risk of infection with repeated assessments, and exhibit meaningful variability between providers.

Between assessments, there is little to no visibility into how labor is progressing. Exams are typically spaced one to four hours apart, creating extended gaps where changes go unobserved. During these intervals, clinicians must rely on indirect signs or wait for the next exam to reassess progression. Opportunities for timely intervention can be delayed, contributing to avoidable complications.

NeoFusion — a fully mechanical syringe pump for neonatal care in low-resource settings

Introduction

Neovi Medical is a team of engineers dedicated to developing innovative medical solutions for low-resource countries. Our flagship product, NeoFusion, is a fully mechanical syringe pump designed to address neonatal mortality in regions with limited infrastructure and unreliable electricity.

Needs Statement

There are approximately 6,500 newborn deaths every day. Although many of these deaths are preventable with proper access to quality healthcare, the world continues to see a health crisis that disproportionately impacts low-resource countries, with 98% of newborn deaths occurring in these regions. The WHO has identified syringe infusion pumps as necessary medical devices in low-resource countries. Syringe pumps are able to deliver precise amounts of medications, fluids, nutrients, and electrolytes to neonates, and they are critical in helping preterm babies...

An automated metallic particulate counting device.

Website: https://particlear.uci.design/

Validating Photoplethysmography Across Every Skin Tone

Mission Statement

Our mission is to ensure that photoplethysmography technology delivers accurate, reliable results for people of all skin tones by developing rigorous, melanin-responsive validation standards that eliminate bias at the source.

Clinical Certainty, Delivered at Home!

An integrated diagnostic pad for the immediate detection of Premature Rupture of Membranes (PROM), empowering expectant mothers with a reliable, non-invasive safety net.

The Problem

1 in 10 pregnancies suffer from PROM. Currently, mothers are forced to rely on inaccurate "look and smell" tests or face $1,800+ unnecessary ER visits for false alarms.

What is PROM?

Premature Rupture of Membranes (PROM) is a medical complication affecting over 1 in 10 pregnancies (over 360,000 women annually in the U.S.). It occurs when the amniotic sac ruptures before the onset of labor. Because the leaked amniotic fluid looks and feels strikingly similar to common urinary incontinence or standard discharge, it is incredibly difficult to confidently identify at home.

The Anxiety of the "Look and Smell" Test

Currently, there are no accurate at-home tests...

RapInject

Redesigning epinephrine delivery for faster emergency

About Our Project

A safer and more intuitive epinephrine auto-injector redesign

Anaphylaxis is a life‑threatening emergency, and epinephrine auto‑injectors are the only proven first‑line treatment. Yet despite their importance, they’re often not used when they’re needed most. With 1 in 20 Americans experiencing anaphylaxis and early epinephrine shown to reduce hospitalizations by 26%, it’s deeply concerning that 62% of patients never receive the injection during the reaction. At the same time, more than 6,800 accidental injuries occur each year due to confusing device orientation, difficulty knowing when the injection is complete, and limited safety features that leave users exposed to needles. These issues highlight a critical gap: epinephrine auto‑injectors can only save lives if people can use them safely, confidently, and correctly.

Unmet Need Statement

Current epinephrine auto-injectors are difficult...

ReForm

A science-backed wearable designed to reprogram movement

Knowing The Fix Does Not Mean Being Able To Fix It

The problem is not effort.
The problem is execution.

Sports are built on complex movements. Athletes learn those movements through thousands of repetitions. When the movement is trained incorrectly, the body can repeat stress patterns it was not meant to withstand.

In volleyball, poor swing mechanics can lead athletes to rely too heavily on the shoulder instead of using the full body. Over time, repeated poor mechanics can contribute to pain, frustration, performance plateaus, and overuse injuries.

The hardest part is that every rep strengthens the pattern. Once a movement becomes automatic, athletes can understand the correction and still fail to apply it during full-speed play.

Athletes Need Two Things to Improve...

...

Real‑time suture tension feedback for safer hernia repairs.

A mechanical, surgeon‑friendly tool designed to standardize closure tension and reduce recurrence.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Ventral hernia repair makes up about a third of all hernia surgeries in the United States. However, recurrence rates remain high, between 45% and 73% within 5 years, leading to costly re-operations.

SURGEON VARIABILITY

There is no widely adopted method for measuring suture tension in the operating room. This leads to variability across surgeons, techniques, and suture types, impacting patient outcomes.

VascXpand

Expanding into the future of healthcare