“When it came time to boot up the device at the convention and we saw it worked flawlessly, I felt myself breathe a sigh of relief,” said alumna Haley Duncan, who graduated in the spring. “And when the manufacturers and nurses had positive reactions, it definitely put a smile on my face.”

Duncan and her fellow mechanical engineering classmates Savannah Anderson, Joseph Freeman and Jake Garza, as well as Master of Industrial Design student Sheridan Kromann, were part of a research team that worked with KYRA Medical, Inc., a global manufacturer of medical equipment, to create a new surgical device. As KYRA’s special guests at the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses’ (AORN) annual conference in Boston earlier this year, they got to witness the premiere of their design in front of industry professionals.