Biomedical Engineering alumni named finalists in Collegiate Inventors Competition
National student design contest honors inventions that show exemplary innovation and patentability
Three recent graduates from the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have been named finalists in the National Inventors Hall of Fame's Collegiate Inventors Competition (CIC).
Myles (Max) Miller, Nicolas Chicoine and Cameron Freeman, who earned their bachelor’s degrees in biomedical engineering in May 2025, submitted their BME Day-winning senior design project from BME 401 to the competition. Their invention, the Selective Electronic peaNut Sensing Entity (SENSE), is a portable device designed to detect latent peanut presence in foods, helping people avoid exposure to allergens that could endanger them. Hovered over food, SENSE scans for peanut presence and displays results on a smartphone application in under a minute. It has achieved very high accuracy during testing. The group’s faculty adviser was Barani Raman, the Dennis & Barbara Kessler Professor of Biomedical Engineering.
“Professor Raman was an exceptional mentor during SENSE’s development,” Miller said. “He created an environment for us to flourish and push boundaries, and I am profoundly grateful for his continued support. We are thrilled to bring SENSE to the CIC.”
The finalists will present their inventions Oct. 16 to a panel of final-round judges composed of influential inventors and invention experts including National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officials. The winning teams, which will receive cash prizes and patent acceleration, also will be announced on Oct. 16.
Additionally, the CIC includes a People’s Choice prize. Members of the public can vote once per day through Oct. 15.
Established in 1990, the Collegiate Inventors Competition is a program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and is sponsored by United States Patent and Trademark Office. A program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, this competition recognizes and rewards the research, innovations and discoveries by college students and their advisers for projects leading to inventions that have the potential of receiving patent protection. Introduced in 1990, the competition has featured more than 500 innovators who have created cutting-edge, world-changing inventions, and awarded more than $1 million of support to winning student teams for their innovative work and scientific achievement through the help of its sponsors.
The alumni were also recently named finalists in the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) student design competition, sponsored by Medtronic. They will present SENSE to judges, in a final round of competition, at the BMES 2025 Annual Meeting in San Diego Oct. 8-11. BMES serves as the lead society and professional home for biomedical engineers and bioengineers.
