Viterbi MEDesign team wins UC Davis Medical Makeathon


Making medicine. (From left to right) Sophomore Michael Kyzar, freshman Andrew Yock, senior Hope Miller and junior Margaret Field won the annual Translating Engineering Advances to Medicine Makeathon at UC Davis. Photo from Viterbi School of Engineering website.

Four students from the Viterbi School of Engineering were announced as the 2018 winners of the annual Translating Engineering Advances to Medicine Make-a-thon at UC Davis, according to a Viterbi news release.

This design competition required student teams to utilize 3-D printing, laser-cutting machines and computer-aided design to create and build a functional medical device.

This year’s team from USC comprised Hope Miller, a senior studying biomedical engineering; Margaret Field, a junior studying mechanical engineering; Michael Kyzar, a sophomore studying computational neuroscience; and Andrew Yock, a freshman studying biomedical engineering.

The teams were tasked with creating a device to speed up the production process of gel plates that are used to diagnose coccidioidomycosis, a soil fungus commonly known as valley fever. Their winning design will be implemented in the UC Davis Coccidioidomycosis Serology Lab, according to a Viterbi news release.

Yock, who came up with the idea for the winning design, said he was inspired by a tennis ball-collecting tube. 

Field said the biggest challenge the team faced was in the materials they were provided. She said it was difficult to build airtight prototypes with syringes and suction devices, so they opted to use straws which they had to laser-cut to the shapes they needed.

Miller, who wants to develop and work with biomedical devices after graduating, recommends the experience to other biomedical engineering students who wish to  get hands-on experience in the field.

“Working with the mentors was a major perk of the competition,” Miller said in the news release. “It was also amazing to be surrounded by so many engineering students.”