UW students win $10,000 prize for LED CPR guidance patch

A team of four University of Washington students—Shubham Bansal, Prisha Hemani, Deeya Sharma and Nikhita Vaddineni—has engineered CPRight, a compact, disposable patch that uses LED lights to give real-time feedback on chest-compression quality during cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Guided by mentor Tristan Jafari, the inventors designed the patch to attach directly to the sternum, eliminating the need for smartphones or additional equipment.

Their invention earned the $10,000 undergraduate first-place prize at the 2026 Collegiate Inventors Competition, a contest run by the National Inventors Hall of Fame and supported by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The NIHF highlighted the urgency of improving out-of-hospital cardiac arrest outcomes, noting that roughly 350,000 Americans face such emergencies each year with a 90% fatality rate. CPRight was among several medical projects recognized, including a knee-rehabilitation sleeve from UNC-Chapel Hill, a gel-free EEG electrode from the University of South Florida, and a radiation-shielding jaw plate from the University of Pittsburgh. Winners also received patent-acceleration certificates to aid future commercialization.