BME seniors work with startup LumiVici to improve health care
Team 25055 lead and BME senior Ella Marshall (second from left) tests the LumiVici self-sterilizing catheter at the University of Arizona Water and Energy Sustainable Technology Center with her team members Gabi Andreakis, Dennis Shaw, Kyle McIllece and Omar Ramos.
At the 2025 Craig M. Berge Design Day, two capstone teams sponsored by biomedical startup company LumiVici presented devices that use light to prevent infections and protect health care workers.
Team 25055 designed a system that uses light to sanitize catheters, which can introduce bacteria into patients and cause urinary tract infections. Their design used an optical fiber to guide light with a wavelength of 405 nanometers, which is known to kill bacteria.
“We’ve designed the fiber in such a way that when it gets to the end and toward the patient, it releases all of the 405 light that was produced by the LED in a specific radiance pattern that helps uniformly kill the bacteria,” said Dennis Shaw, project procurement lead and optical sciences and engineering senior.
Team 25012 used light of a different wavelength in its design of a self-sterilizing reusable face shield for health care workers. Their design uses 90-second cycles of Far UVC light to inactivate germs on the face shield.
“We were able to see the effectiveness of our light source to deactivate the test virus and then relate that to other diseases like COVID and influenza,” said team lead and BME senior Caitlin Ruhland. “We found we had a 90% disinfection efficiency.”