28 Nov Students’ invention aims to clip crucial minutes off endovascular surgeries

By Tom Ziemer, UW College of Engineering

The device that netted a foursome of University of Wisconsin-Madison biomedical engineering classmates a 2023 Wisconsin Innovation Award doesn’t look flashy. It’s a small plastic cylinder, just over 1.5 inches in length, with a spring-loaded clip in the middle.

While you might mistake this small tool for a misplaced piece of a kids toy, it has the potential to trim several minutes off endovascular procedures—time that could prove crucial in preserving neurological function when treating strokes or aneurysms.

“The seconds matter in those procedures, and that’s what we’re trying to save,” says William Hayes (BSBME ’23), team lead on the project.

As part of the Department of Biomedical Engineering’s unique undergraduate design curriculum, Hayes, Anna Ankerstjerne (BSBME ’23), Isabelle Gundrum (BSBME ’23) and current senior Jakob Knauss developed their Novel Endovascular Clip-on Torque Operator, or NECTO. In Latin, the word formed by their acronym means to connect or attach.

Their prototype won the department’s 2023 Tong Biomedical Design Award, given annually to the top student design project in the eyes of industry judges, before adding the Wisconsin Innovation Award in the HealthIT category in October. The group is currently pursuing a patent for its design with the help of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Read more…