Index
Member Highlights
USF Sigma Xi members contribute to awareness and understanding through a variety of research and entrepreneurial activities.
Take a look below at accomplishments from USF Sigma Xi members.
USF Sigma Xi member, Carolyna Yamamoto Alves Pinto, and two classmates, Abby Blocker and Jacob Yarinsky, won the Steven H. Krosnick Prize from NIBIB’s annual Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge, earning the prize’s $20,000 award for the 2021 competition.
The Eucovent
The team’s design is called The Eucovent, a medical device that allows for multiple patients to be treated with a single ventilator, delivering different pressures and volumes to each patient from the same ventilator. The Eucovent addresses some of the safety concerns traditionally associated with co-ventilation and the device can be used in low resource scenarios such as rural areas, military settings, and natural disaster scenarios.
Read more about Carolyna and the development of the The Eucovent through USF Health and ABC WFTS Tampa Bay.
USF Sigma Xi Chapter President, Dr. Bogdan P. Onac, along with dozens of fellow geoscientists, astronomers, astrobiologists, and robotics and artificial intelligence engineers are looking to caves on the moon and Mars – and eventually other planets too – for insights on planetary history that could give unparalleled insight into the development of the solar system.
Given what scientists have learned about Earth’s history through exploring beneath the ground, allowing humans to explore more thoroughly into the caves of the moon and Mars likely will generate knowledge that goes well beyond surface exploration.
Onac’s exploration of caves in Romania, on the Mediterranean Island of Mallorca, and into New Mexico’s lava tubes have produced new discoveries of Earth’s sea levels and climate from millions of years ago. He said planetary caves are likely to yield equally valuable new knowledge and insights.
Read more about Dr. Onac's research and collaborations.
USF Sigma Xi Chapter President-Elect Summer Decker is an Associate Professor of Radiology at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, the Vice Chair for Research and the Director of the Division of 3D Clinical Applications.
When nasal swabs for COVID-19 testing were in short supply and high demand, team from the USF Health’s 3D Clinical Applications Division created an initial design, working with Northwell Health and collaborating with Formlabs to develop prototypes and secure materials for a 3D printed alternative.
Over the span of one week, the teams worked together to develop a nasal swab prototype and test it in the USF Health and Northwell Health labs. In two days, USF Health and Northwell Health, using Formlabs’ 3D printers and biocompatible, autoclavable resins, developed prototypes.