Student Team Wins National Prize for ICU Hydration Monitoring Device

Four recent Northwestern Engineering graduates are being honored for work done in their 2026 capstone sequence, Biomedical Engineering Design (BME 390-1, 390-2, and 390-3). The recognition by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and VentureWell is for UroSense, a device the team of biomedical engineering majors designed to improve hydration monitoring in intensive care units.

Built for the capstone, UroSense was entered into a competition that drew 119 applications from 64 universities in 29 states, representing 490 students. Participants submitted their individual capstone projects to different categories.

The BME capstone is a required two-quarter sequence for biomedical engineering students. Teams of four work on projects proposed by external clients, including physicians, faculty members, and companies. This project emerged from a relationship between the biomedical engineering capstone program and Hollister Incorporated, which presented students with the challenge of improving hydration monitoring in the ICU.

The assignment didn’t come with an obvious solution.

Under the guidance of Professor David O’Neill, team members Claudia Arriaga, Bhavi Barnwal, Yiming Luo, and Hayeon (Hazel) Yun examined dozens of possible indicators, interviewed nurses, and eventually developed a device that could work with existing catheter systems to monitor urine output and concentration more frequently.

That approach earned the team the $15,000 Kidney Technology Development Prize in the 2026-27 Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge. The win was announced Aug. 25, and the team is being honored Oct. 23 at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida. 

The Northwestern team’s solution is designed to work with existing Foley catheter systems and provide more frequent information about a patient’s urine output and concentration without requiring clinicians to repeatedly collect and analyze samples.

“Usually, a lot of our coursework culminates in an open-ended question where we have to go out, do our own research, figure out user needs and requirements, and then design a solution,” said Barnwal, who now works on AbbVie’s data analytics team. “McCormick taught us to be very good at critical thinking, in terms of receiving any kind of problem statement, no matter how vague or specific, and being able to go out there and come up with a creative solution.”

Although the prototype requires additional engineering and validation before implementation, the work will continue in a future capstone course. A new student team will take over the project to refine the existing design, validate additional elements, and examine potential new features.

Finding a better way to measure hydration

Hydration can be difficult to assess in critically ill patients. Patients might be unable to drink normally, could receive fluids intravenously, and might have other medical conditions that affect how fluid moves through the body.

The team said clinicians carefully monitor ICU patients, but hydration presents a particular challenge because there is no single, straightforward indicator that provides continuous information.

“You always want more measurements in the ICU, but you also don’t want to burden the clinical staff more,” said O’Neill, Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished Professor of Instruction of Biomedical Engineering.

The team began by investigating possible ways to measure hydration. The students considered roughly 60 potential biomarkers and evaluated them against factors including cost, reliability, speed, usability, precision, and whether a method would require direct contact with bodily fluids.

O’Neill said the students distinguished themselves by conducting extensive research without allowing that process to prevent them from making engineering decisions.

“It wasn’t just research for research’s sake,” O’Neill said. “They were always able to keep their focus on really making a design decision out of everything they were trying to do.”

Barnwal said the open-ended nature of the problem was one of the project’s biggest challenges.

“When we did our initial market analysis, everywhere we read, every piece of research, every firsthand input we got, blood draws were by far the gold standard,” Barnwal said. “But our client’s primary domain of expertise was in urine and ostomy care. Creating a solution that matched our client’s portfolio while still maintaining the accuracy that the ICU would need was a big challenge.”

The team ultimately focused on measuring urine output along with specific gravity, a measurement related to the concentration of substances in urine. Their approach uses changes in light reflection and refraction to provide information related to flow rate and specific gravity.

Their device includes a small cartridge placed between the catheter and collection bag. As urine enters the chamber, two infrared sensors detect when the fluid reaches designated lower and upper levels. The chamber then empties through an automatic siphon and begins filling again, allowing the system to track output based on repeated, known volumes.

Because the process is automated, it can gather measurements without requiring a nurse to repeatedly collect a sample. Keeping the device compatible with equipment already used in ICUs was a priority.

“Adopting a new procedure in a hospital isn’t always easy,” said Luo, now pursuing his PhD in bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “It takes time to train staff and adjust existing workflows, and sometimes it requires a significant investment in entirely new equipment.”

Instead, the team sought to make an existing part of ICU care more informative.

“By building on something that already exists, we can lower the barriers to adoption and reduce the time and cost of implementation,” Luo said.

Arriaga said the students were also conscious of the demands already placed on ICU clinicians.

“It was really important that we could provide more insight into the patient’s health status, but also keep it right there in the room,” she said. “They could react quickly as well.”

Bringing it all together

O’Neill said this project drew particularly broadly on the students’ previous coursework, including fluid mechanics, physiology, electronics, microprocessors, sensors, experimental design, biology, optics, materials, computer-aided design, and 3D printing.

“It was a really good example of a project that drew from six or seven different courses, which is precisely what you want from a capstone project,” O’Neill said.

The students also brought different experiences to the team.

Arriaga had clinical experience working with surgical robots in Berlin. Barnwal brought experience in computing and sensors. Yun’s work in the laboratory of John Rogers, Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Neurological Surgery, provided experience with biointerfaces, microfabrication, and wearable devices, while Luo contributed to 3D modeling, optics, and other technical aspects of the design.

“I think the beauty of McCormick is there are so many different spheres of engineering that you can get involved in,” Arriaga said. “Even just the four of us, we all have such different backgrounds, and those backgrounds really came into play when creating this project.”

For Yun, working across scientific specialties was familiar from her research experience, where projects can involve collaborators working in biology, material science, and electrical engineering.

“Especially in the biomedical field, I think it’s really interdisciplinary,” Yun said. “It’s important to communicate with people who have different specialties.”