From Fluid Circulation to Medical Device Design by Jack

From Fluid Circulation to Medical Device Design by Jack - October 2026 Scholarship Essay

The question behind my senior design project is simple to ask and difficult to answer: how can an engineered system support skin and tissue regeneration over a prosthetic implant? As a biomedical engineering senior at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, I am helping develop a closed-loop bioreactor concept to explore that question. Our current focus is a mechanically functional prototype, rather than a claim that we have already demonstrated tissue regeneration.

My role includes designing a fluid circulation loop with a pump, filtration system, flexible chamber, and tubing. We are also developing a control concept that uses pressure sensor feedback and a microcontroller to regulate flow. These components connect topics I have studied in biomedical fluid mechanics, biomaterials, system dynamics, and computer-aided engineering. A pump cannot be chosen independently of the tubing, chamber, and pressure conditions. Each decision changes how the rest of the system must operate.

The project makes me curious about the boundary between a system that moves fluid and one that could eventually support a biological process. Circulation is only part of the problem. The system must also provide useful measurements, maintain appropriate operating conditions, and allow us to evaluate whether the design performs as intended. Developing requirements, selecting components, and refining CAD concepts turn a broad medical goal into specific engineering questions.

This work also connects with my job as a biomedical technician at Tennova Turkey Creek Medical Center. I help maintain, inspect, troubleshoot, and repair patient-care equipment. That experience keeps reliability and practical use close to my thinking about design. A medical device must do more than make sense on paper; it must be understandable, testable, and dependable for the people who use it.

Our prototype is still in development, and that is part of what makes this project valuable. It requires us to distinguish an intended benefit from evidence that a system actually works. I want to carry that discipline into a career in medical device design: ask a meaningful question, build a careful prototype, measure its behavior, and improve it based on what the evidence shows.