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Suresh a finalist in Engineering 2169 competition

Suresh a finalist in Engineering 2169 competition

Photo of Dr. Andrew Brightman & Shruthi Suresh
(l to r) Purdue BME Prof. Andrew Brightman, with "Best Pitch" award finalists Carolina Vivas, Ashlee Colbert, and
Shruthi Suresh
PhD student Shruthi Suresh (IAS Lab) was named as one of three finalists for the Engineering 2169 Health and Longevity pitch competition’s “Best Pitch” award on May 3. Suresh won an earlier qualifying round at an April 11 event at Purdue with seven other Purdue Engineering graduate students.

Suresh's winning presentation was titled, "What IF 15 minutes could save your life?", given at IUPUI in Indianapolis.

"Current autonomic dysreflexia detection technology utilizes smart phones and watches to transmit data to a remote server that runs a machine-learning algorithm trained to detect the condition up to 15 minutes before symptoms present," she explained. "In the future, more advanced technology could predict heart attacks, seizures and strokes and save lives."

At the final level of the Engineering 2169 Health and Longevity competition, Suresh and two other finalists, Carolina Vivas and Ashlee Colbert, won "Best Pitch" awards.

The Engineering 2169 competition was co-hosted by Purdue Engineering and the Indiana University School of Medicine. In their research presentations, students predicted how humans will live, communicate, work, travel and play 150 years from now. The competition challenged students to compose well-researched, persuasive, educational, and fun presentations that painted a picture of life in the year 2169.

The pitches were structured like a Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) pitch, developed by The University of Queensland. This is a fast-paced competition where the top 10 finalists compete by summarizing their two to three-plus years of research in only three minutes - with only one slide. 

The Engineering 2169 Health and Longevity competition aligns with Purdue's Giant Leaps celebration, acknowledging the university's global advancements in Health, Longevity and Quality of Life as part of Purdue's 150th anniversary. Health, Longevity and Quality of Life is one of the four themes of the yearlong celebration's Ideas Festival, designed to showcase Purdue as an intellectual center solving real-world issues.