The 2025 Annual BME Undergraduate Senior Research Symposium celebrates student research achievement

The Department’s Annual Biomedical Engineering Senior Research Symposium was held on Friday, April 18, 2025 on campus.  In this yearly celebration of our BME student capstone research experience, every student in the BME major completes some form of independent research or design and development activity.   This serves as the foundation for the content of their required capstone technical Scientific Writing and Communication 2-semester course sequence (BME 4991 and 4992). BME majors fulfill this opportunity by working in a University of Utah or other university academic research lab or participate in an industrial internship R&D experience.  The diverse range of possible hosts/sources for these required BME research projects is helpful in preparing each student for a particular career path. For example, a student planning to attend medical school can chose to perform a clinically oriented research project under the mentorship of a faculty member with a clinical appointment. This will not only bolster the student’s application to medical school, but the mentor can be of significant assistance in guiding the student to an appropriate MD or MD/PhD program. Likewise, a student with interests in entering the industrial sector will do a project at a local company, providing a valuable perspective on what skills and aptitudes employers seek in entry level workers and even assistance in securing their first industrial job after graduation. While involved in this capstone experience, the student performs and gathers a set of original research data required in fulfilling multiple different assignments in the BME 4991/4992 courses.  They must produce several figures’ worth of original research data.  These data comprise the source material for their written “senior thesis” that follows the guidelines for a scientific manuscript structured and formatted for submission to the journal, IEEE Transactions in Biomedical Engineering. Students also perform a series of oral technical and layperson scientific presentations culminating in their summary research presentation at the Department’s yearly BME senior research symposium.  While participating in this full-year course sequence, BME students also learn to provide respectful peer critique and guidance to each other to foster effective means of communicating about a wide range of research and development projects that they mutually see and share over 2 semesters.  This capstone experience is an important training activity to foster communication (both oral and written) as well as through peer critique.  This year’s symposium included 72 individual student oral research talks (5 minutes each) and 72 research poster presentations, an impressive intellectual culmination of this BME-unique course sequence and requirement for the major.

Oral Talks – Room 1

First Place – Lauren Hulse

Second Place – Malia Mason

Third Place – Amir Sharaf

Oral Talks – Room 2

First Place – Sylvia Pack

Second Place Abbie Saccomanno

Third Place – Sarah Kingsley

Oral Talks – Room 3

First Place – Kishore Jay

Second Place – Jashanpreet Kaur

Third Place – Madelyn Lott