Cooling Arizona: SenseHydro's Research & Patent Journey
The SenseHydro Team [Left to right in front: Rachna Nath (advisor), Sohani Sandhu, Kaitlyn Lai, Jacob Kaufman-Warner, Nealin Banerjee; in back: Diya Nath, Abe Troop, Alex Kroumov, Xieshi Zhang. Not Pictured: Omina Nematova, Daniel Wu]
In my freshman year of high school, a group of students and myself submitted a proposal to the $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Grant competition to develop an innovative solution for a community problem in Arizona. Our goal was to combat the rising number of heat-related deaths by building a ‘Hydro Hat’ device that constantly monitors a person’s vitals (temperature and pulse) and notifies the user if they display symptoms of heat stress or stroke.
Renderings of the prototype. Renderings 1 and 2 show the preferred prototype with solar panel and insulation. Rendering 3 is the basic prototype, using a battery with a charger. Renderings 4 and 5 are headbands for users who prefer one.
As Research Lead, I investigated existing patents and competitive products in the market to see how we could refine the capabilities of our device. Also, as a whole team, we interviewed the elderly, mountain rescuer supervisors, and our school district’s Athletic Director to best cater the product towards them. Although we made it to the finalist round, we did not win the grant, and it was disappointing to not reach our goal because we felt our project could improve Arizona’s public health by preventing thousands of heat injuries.
However, we did not allow this failure to stop us. We continued looking for additional funding sources to bring our vision into reality. Six months later, our team won a $50,000 Healthy Urban Environment Grant from Arizona State University’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. The ecstatic feeling of accomplishing what we put our heart and soul into was incomparable.
Soon after, we founded SenseHydro LLC and filed a provisional and non-provisional patent to expand our mission in helping the Arizona community with heat awareness. Even with frequent setbacks, persistence in believing in our potential and hard work transformed our sketches into prototypes. This journey encouraged me to continue solving health problems through research and novel technology, especially in the field of neuroscience. In particular, I am interested in non-invasive brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) as a treatment for neuropsychiatric conditions. So, I am very grateful for UBRP providing me the opportunity to pursue research at Dr. Chou’s Brain Imaging and TMS lab. Currently, I am studying how TMS could serve as an early diagnostic tool and therapeutic intervention for Alzheimer’s disease, and I am excited to see where my research journey takes me!