Design Health Team Places on International Top 20 Shortlist for 2021 James Dyson Award
Michaela Kane
With a device to make cardiovascular procedures safer, Duke’s ArchGuard team was recognized out of 2,000 applicants
A team of graduates from Duke University’s Design Health program were selected as finalists for the 2021 James Dyson Award. Organized by the James Dyson Foundation, the prestigious engineering and design competition aims to celebrate, encourage and inspire the next generation of design engineers.
The 2021 competition had a record-breaking number of entries, with over 2,000 submissions from across the globe.
Design Health students Kevin Rosenthal, Len Assakul, Pratik Doshi, Anish Nigade and Kelly Yang were named on the recently announced International Top 20 Shortlist for their invention, ArchGuard. This shortlist is selected by Dyson engineers, and it recognizes the strongest problem-solving inventions. Teams that are shortlisted for the final prize will be reviewed by engineer and inventor Sir James Dyson, who will hand-pick the winner. The winning international team will receive a cash prize of $40,000.
ArchGuard aims to make minimally invasive cardiovascular procedures safer. The tool is a novel cerebral protection device for use in interventional cardiology procedures to prevent dislodged debris from traveling to the brain and causing strokes or silent ischemia. ArchGuard offers complete cerebral protection using a shape-memory frame and porous mesh to deflect debris away from the brain, making it unique compared to existing devices.
The tool was developed by Rosenthal, MS’20 in mechanical engineering, Assakul, an MBA candidate from the Fuqua School of Business, Doshi, a medical student at the Duke University Medical Center, Nigade, MS’20 in biomedical engineering, and Yang, BS’21. These students participated in Duke Engineering’s Design Health Program, which is a patient-focused design program that teaches student teams how to identify pressing needs in health care and design innovative solutions. The program assembles teams across engineering, business, medicine and other disciples to create practical, real-world devices. 
The ArchGuard team recently won a $100,000 TMC Innovation Healthcare Investment Prize from the Rice Business Plan Competition for their project. More information about the team and their project is available on the James Dyson competition site. The entire International Top 20 Shortlist is also available to view.
“Looking back on our engineering design process and looking ahead at what is to come, we are honored and thrilled to have made it into the Top 20 of the James Dyson Award competition,” Rosenthal, the team leader, said in a press release. “We are eager to use this accomplishment as a stepping stone as we continue to develop ArchGuard towards becoming the standard of care in cerebrovascular protection.”
Sir James Dyson will announce his selection for the international winners on November 17, 2021. The announcement will be available on the Dyson Newsroom.