Heartbeat Heroes

Rice students’ prototype for treating irregular heartbeats wins engineering showcase.

Heartbeat HERoes
The students’ project was to create a prototype for a novel catheter designed to treat premature ventricular contractions, or irregular heartbeats originating in the ventricles of the heart. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

Fall 2024

By Marcy de Luna

 

Last spring, Team Heartbeat HERoes took home the top honor at Rice’s annual Huff OEDK Engineering Design Showcase. The all-female team included Class of 2024 bioengineering majors Shannon McGill, Valentina “Vale” Ortega, Ananya Lingineni, Rachel Lee, Kate Mischlich and Jing Liu, along with mechanical engineering major Veronica Aguilar. Together, they developed a catheter equipped with a trio of stainless steel electrodes capable of sensing electrical signals from the heart in order to treat irregular heartbeats. 

The students’ project was to create a prototype for a novel catheter designed to treat premature ventricular contractions, or irregular heartbeats originating in the ventricles of the heart. Left untreated, these irregular heartbeats can lead to cardiomyopathy, a condition weakening the heart muscle. The traditional treatment method is a surgical procedure known as alcohol ablation. 

“The current procedure for alcohol ablation is complicated for physicians to perform. They go in with three separate devices, and it’s very complex and time-consuming,” McGill says. “Our goal was to streamline the process and provide physicians with a single device.” The team’s design allows for precise targeting of abnormal heart tissue while sparing healthy cells, thus minimizing procedural complexity and improving patient outcomes.  

The team’s design allows for precise targeting of abnormal heart tissue while sparing healthy cells, thus minimizing procedural complexity and improving  patient outcomes. 

The team had several mentors from the Texas Heart Institute at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, including Mathews John, the engineering program manager of electrophysiology clinical research and innovations, as well as Allison Post, Dr. Michael Tan and Dr. Mehdi Razavi. “The students displayed ingenuity and teamwork with their innovative project,” Razavi says. 

The Huff OEDK Engineering Design Showcase is a long-standing tradition for Rice engineering students at the OEDK, Rice’s premier undergraduate engineering makerspace. Director Z. Maria Oden highlighted the significance of the OEDK in nurturing innovation among students, as it supported the work of over 900 students in at least 20 courses during the 2023–2024 academic year.

This year’s competition, held at the Ion innovation hub in Houston’s Midtown neighborhood, saw 68 teams compete.

“Team Heartbeat HERoes secured a well-deserved victory and also paved the way for advancements in cardiac care that could benefit countless individuals worldwide,” Oden says.
— Marcy de Luna

Z. Maria Oden is teaching professor of bioengineering at the Wiess School of Natural Sciences, director of Rice’s OEDK and co-director of the Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies.