BioDesign 2025 Summary and Achievements

Posted on by kwanghui

Thank you to everyone who helped make BioDesign2025 a success.

The BioDesign 2025 Cohort

The 2025 cohort consists of six teams.

Team 1: Vera

The members of Vera are Ayush Tutakne, Junqi Hao (Jackie), Jess Lang, Kaspar Lucattini, and Renee Buck. Their project is on developing a new way to detect progress during labor, helping avoid complications and improving safety leading to childbirth..

Team 2: TermWise Medical

Team TermWise consists of Anton Kogios, Gemma Melville, Steve Lau, Yeely Khoh and Winkin Kuan.

Their project is a wearable monitoring technology for preterm birth prevention. They won the prestigious $10,000 Stephen Ho award for best BioDesign project. They also won the Airwallex Award for the Endeavour project that best Enhances Social Impact Through Innovation.  

Team 3: Athera Medical

The team consists of Jad Cordon, Julia Archimandritis, Jun Keat Wong, Nicholas McEniry and Shohban Mitra.

Team Athera’s project is an at-home monitoring system post heart attack, using a new approach. Team Athera won one of two SEMBA2003 awards for best business approach ($5000).

Team 4: Encompass Medical

Team Encompass consists of Anisha Bhoyro, Dylan Cheong, Hilary McKie, Melanie Yuan and Praneel Pradhan. They are working on postpartum pelvic health to address prolapse. The team won one of two SEMBA2003 awards for best business approach ($5000).

Team 5: Dremedy

Team Dremedy is working on home tracking of immune system health for chemotherapy patients. They won this year’s prestigious University of Melbourne Research Innovation & Commercialisation Award, of which only one was awarded at Endeavour.

The team members are Aaron Toy, Adeeba Aziz, Corin Feist, David Ding, and Georgia Agati.

Team 6: NECstep

Team NECstep is working on early detection of gut disease in newborns, a life-threatening issue. NECstep won the $5000 Stephen Ho Award. The team members are Alex Savvas, Matt Ong, Neha Keswani, Nidhi Muppalla and Wara Asahara.

Thank you for supporting BioDesign 2025

Posted on by kwanghui

We appreciate the extensive help of our guest speakers, community leaders, partners organisations and colleagues.

The teaching team (David Grayden, Kwanghui Lim and Simon Wilkins) would like to express our gratitude to everyone who contributed to making BioDesign2025 a success, including:

Guest Speakers and Presenters:

  • Alex Agudelo, CEO of Kemu.
  • Andrew Nash, Co-founder and CEO, Austral Impact.
  • Bob Soh, Brandon Capital.
  • Esther Apos, Director at CMS Scidoc.
  • Guido Tresoldi, Liaison Librarian, University of Melbourne.
  • Jordan Green AM, President Emeritus and Founder, Melbourne Angels; Chairman of Axletree Capital; Victorian State Chair and National Exco Member, Pearcey Foundation.
  • Jia-Yee Lee, Director, Strategy and Alliance, BioNTech Australia.
  • Makenzie Thomas from The Actuator.
  • Maria Pelipas, Research Acceleration Manager, TRAM Air program.
  • Sinthujan Jegaskanda, BioDesign2023 and MCRI on IP Strategy.
  • Tajanka Mladenovska, Head of Compliance, H3D.
  • Dr. Tam Nguyen, Associate Professor and Deputy Director of Research, St Vincent’s Hospital.
  • Wei Sue, CFO of Navi Medical and Acting CEO, Climateworks.

Panelists

  • Prof Ampalavanapillai Nirmalathas (Thas), Dept of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Dean, FEIT.
  • Prof Andrea O’Connor, Dept of Biomedical Engineering.
  • Assoc Prof Daniel Heath, Dept of Biomedical Engineering.
  • Assoc Prof David Ackland, Dept of Biomedical Engineering.
  • Prof. David Nisbet, Dept of Biomedical Engineering. Director of the Graeme Clark Institute and the Head of the Laboratory of Advanced Biomaterials.
  • Assoc Prof Hamish Meffin, Dept of Biomedical Engineering.
  • Prof. Leigh Johnston, Dept of Biomedical Engineering. Director of the Melbourne Brain Centre Imaging Unit in the Department of Medicine and Radiology.
  • Pam Rebecca, MBS Alumnae and representative of the MBS Semba Class of 2003.
  • Dr. Philippa (Pip) Karoly, Dept of Biomedical Engineering.
  • Stephen Ho and Tracy Ho.
  • Assoc Prof Vijay Rajagopal, Dept of Biomedical Engineering.

Alumni

  • Alex Newton, Brad Bergmann, Mubin Yousef, Shing Yue Sheung, and Wei Sue of NAVi Medical Technologies for helping us throughout the term.
  • Liam Murray on ideation.
  • Lorace Zhang, CEO of Vysum.
  • Ellis Medical: Lee M Hanify, Liz Davis, Shirdheen Murali and Sinth Jegaskanda.
  • Lenexa: Ajit Ravindran, CEO and Will Yang, Chief Scientific Officer.
  • Sano Technologies: David Conidaris, Benny Li, Candice Bao and John A. Nguyen.
  • Ventora Medical: Amy Yu (CTO) and Edward Bujis (CEO).
  • All the alumni who came and supported us throughout.

Donors

  • Stephen Ho for very generously contributing time and funding towards the student teams, along with his daughter Tracy Ho.
  • Ian Kirk whose contributions to MBS makes this course viable.
  • The MBS SEMBA class of 2003 for project funding and a commercialisation prize.

BioDesign 2024 Summary and Achievements

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In 2024, the BioDesign Program was named one of five finalists in the Future Builder category of the #ShapingAustraliaAwards24 by Universities Australia. We are honored to receive this recognition. The winner will be announced in Feb, 2025. You can vote us for the Peoples Choice Award at the link.

Thank you to everyone who helped make BioDesign2024 a success.

The BioDesign 2024 Cohort

The 2024 cohort consists of six teams.

Team 1: Auryx

The members of Auryx are Saad Hassan, Jayani Galketiya, Anton Jensen, Fiona Sherwin, Ingra Bringmann and Alvaro Sanchez Herrero. Their project uses the stimulation of the vagus nerve to improve rehabiliation of stroke patients.

Team 2: Mitera

Team Mitera consists of Jingxiu (Mathew) Huang, Jack Christie, Luke Gennaccaro, Simon Holmberg, Karen Parr and Alex Potenza. They are working on a better way to screen for high breast density, a risk factor in cancer.

Mitera won one of two SEMBA2003 Awards for best business approach at the Endeavour Showcase. They also won the Telstra Tech Breakthrough and Community Impact Award.

Team 3: VisionPulse

VisionPulse team members are Finn O’Neill, Danny Feng, Stephanie Xu, Zane Ng, Zan Yang and Aaradhya Srivastava. They are working on a home-based vision monitoring system for diabetes patients.

Team 4: Elen

Team Elen is working on endometriosis, a chronic disease of the uterine region affecting 1 in 7 women in Australia. The team members are Charlotte Jones, Yipu (Jayde) Wang, Charlotte Thomas, Fernando Gargollo and Ryan Armin.

Elen won a number of prestigious awards at the Endeavour Showcase, including the Stephen Ho Innovation Award and the University of Melbourne’s Reseach, Innovation and Commercialisation (RIC) Award.

Team Elen also won one of two SEMBA2003 Awards for best business approach.

In November, Team Elen won the People’s Choice Award at the Victorian Startup Network Impact Pitch Night. They also won the Monash Young Inovators award.

Team 5: Ospray

Team Ospray consists of Chuntian (Alex) Zhang, Fanxuan (Gary) Xia, Zilan (Gloria) Huang, Sunny Chen and Jack Hong. They are working on a sprayable bandage to address pressure ulcers.

Team 6: Visionry

Visionry consists of Owain Chan, Shivam Sharma, Dongpeng (York) Tan, Mayank Beri and Alexander Spoljar. They are revolusionizing eye surgery with a new real-time monitoring system.

Team Visionry was one of four finalists in the 2025 Medtech Actuator Origin Competition. At the Endeavour showcase, Visionry won the prestigious Stephen Ho Innovation Award.

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