NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Two Vanderbilt biomedical engineering seniors are heading to Boston to show off the invention they helped refine and develop—a probe that uses laser light to quickly and accurately diagnose ovarian cancer.
Vanderbilt seniors Elizabeth Kanter and Matt Keller are one of only 15 teams across the nation chosen to display their device as part of “March Madness for the Mind” on March 22, sponsored by the Museum of Science and the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA).
The NCIIA gives grants to colleges to create student invention teams, courses, projects, networking opportunities and resources for faculty and student innovators. The organization funds work considered likely to result in the licensing of new products or technologies.
“These students are transforming the future with their innovations,” said Phil Weilerstein, executive director of the NCIIA. “The act of turning a creative idea into an innovative and viable product—while still in school—represents a new movement in education that gives students the opportunity to build the skills they need to be successful in a dynamic, collaborative workplace.”
Kanter and Keller worked closely with their Senior Biomedical Engineering Design course teacher, Associate Professor of Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering Paul H. King, and with their adviser, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Anita Mahadevan-Jansen. Mahadevan-Jansen invented the optical technique, which distinguishes between healthy and diseased tissue by shining laser light on the tissue, measuring the wavelengths of the light that is scattered as it moves through the tissue, and generating a spectrograph. This visual representation of wavelength can then be compared with spectrographs of normal and diseased tissue to diagnose the tissue condition.
Used to diagnose ovarian cancer, the technique is minimally invasive and does not require painful and time-consuming laboratory tests.
Media contact: David Salisbury, 615-343-6803, >david.salisbury@vanderbilt.edu