Students win top award for poster at Global Grand Challenges Summit

Texas A&M University’s Aggie-Challenge team won the Global Grand Challenges Poster Award at the 2017 Global Grand Challenges Summit (GGCS), which was held in Washington, D.C. on July 18–20, 2017.

The GGCS is the third in a collaborative series sponsored by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the UK Royal Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The Texas A&M team received the top award for their poster presentation titled “Cerebro: Point of Care Device for Proactive Epileptic Seizure Alerts,” co-authored by Stephen Manoharan, Kyle Reagan, Sandesh Reddy, Brian Arnold, Ishan Vasandani, Alan Ngo, Srujan Kancharla and Sagar Patel, along with their mentors Satish Bukkapatnam, Samba Reddy and Kahkashan Afrin.

The poster was among four selected from Texas A&M University, and it was one of six awarded out of about 90 posters selected for this event. The team was advised by Satish Bukkapatnam, PhD, professor at the Texas A&M University College of Engineering, and Samba Reddy, PhD, professor at the College of Medicine. Kahkashan Afrin, a graduate student at the College of Engineering, served as the graduate student mentor for the team.

The team showcased a wearable point-of-care device with embedded wearable wireless sensors and advanced “big data” analytic algorithms for the real-time monitoring and predicting of epileptic seizures. The device also uses smartphone app that will allow monitoring and alert for upcoming seizures.

 “This is an exceptionally innovative device with great potential to detect epileptic seizures in patients and could become a breakthrough in the management of epilepsy,” said Samba Reddy, a specialist in epilepsy research and Fellow of the American Epilepsy Society.