Five JHU Materials Science & Engineering students make up the Augeo team and are the 2020 Undergraduate Team Winners of the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize. Led by Junior Siddharth Iyer, the team developed an improved, more cost-effective embolization treatment for stopping internal bleeding by creating a material that can rapidly expand to fit a wide range of blood vessels throughout the body. Historically, platinum coils have been used to stop hemorrhaging but with a high price-tag, the Augeo team wanted to find an alternative material that could be more cost-effective. Their solution was to develop a flexible, inexpensive material that behaves like a sponge, fitting blood vessels of various sizes with the use of cryogel polymers.
Student inventor groups are honored by the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize which is open to teams of undergraduate students (groups and individuals) from all over the country, focusing on technology-based inventions represented by different categories. The Augeo team won the “Cure It!” category which is awarded to students focused on developing healthcare-related inventions.
The team included Juniors Siddharth Iyer, Jasmine Hu, included sophomores Mathias Insley and Diane Lee and freshman Eric Lin and each group member played a key role in the success of the project. You can read more about each members’ role in the Augeo team and their award-winning cryogel polymer-based embolization solution here on their Lemelson-MIT Prize teams page.