Students Win Award at Conference for Design of Colonoscopy Project

A team of WPI undergraduates working on an improved probe for colonoscopies received the Best Senior Project Design Award at the 2025 Northeast Bioengineering Conference.

Jessica Vo, Jamie Baines, Kyla Fu, and Laurel Whitley received the prize for their poster presentation on their major qualifying project, “A Resistance-Based Colonoscopy for Real-Time Polyp Analysis.” Project advisors were Assistant Professor of Teaching Ahmet Sabuncu and Associate Teaching Professor Sakthikumar Ambady.

Nearly 70 projects competed for the award. The WPI team’s project focused on developing a probe to provide real-time identification of polyp clusters on the gastrointestinal lining. Due to the large number of polyps in clusters, these polyps often are not sampled for biopsy. The team developed its probe to identify cancerous polyps in the clusters through determination by identifying tight junction presence in the tissue.

The conference was held April 4–5 in Brooklyn, N.Y.