6/15/2026 Taylor Parks
Written by Taylor Parks
A team of students including Daniel Cheah, Christian Guerrero-Juarez, Jacob Prince, Kristy Lin, and project leader Michael Nguyen-Truong (MD 2026), all from the Carle Illinois College of Medicine (CI MED), called on MechSE’s Senior Capstone Design to help bring their new innovation, PedalPro, to life.
PedalPro is a low-cost pedal device that can be used by immobilized hospital patients while in bed. The adjustable pedaling platform allows these patients to actuate their legs at regular intervals to avoid the onset of deep vein thrombosis (DVT), or blood clots that can develop in the legs during long periods of immobility. With DVT considered one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in hospital scenarios, the need for a device like PedalPro is clear.
“PedalPro was developed from a shared vision of enabling hospitalized patients to comfortably engage in blood clot prevention,” said Lin, who serves as the project’s clinical lead.
Two capstone teams have worked with CI MED to bring PedalPro to its current phase, with Mary Chronopoulou, Daniel Chun, Daniel Kim, and Bella Tortorici collaborating during the fall 2025 semester and Jonah Matanky, Shiraz Bacamusa, Justin De Leon, Pranav Rao, Dylan Harkness, and Neil Thakker working during spring 2026. Both teams were advised by associate professor Mattia Gazzola.
“I was motivated to work on PedalPro because it gave me the opportunity to apply engineering principles to a meaningful health care challenge,” said Kim (BSEM 2026), who focused on mechanical design and analysis of the device.
“Our final deliverable was a working prototype that went through preliminary testing,” Chun (BSME 2026) said of the fall team’s progress, noting that he was able to personally test the device while an ultrasound monitored the activity in his legs. “We checked blood flow measurements to see that there was an increase in blood flow while [I] was pedaling,” he said.
The spring 2026 capstone team then iterated the device to improve its function and add additional capability such as a digital display screen and pedal-powered game that patients can play while using the device.
“I chose this project because it seemed like a mechanically focused, innovative product,” said Matanky, who led the development of the device’s resistance mechanism during the spring semester. “My hope was to create something that would be used in the real world and the PedalPro seemed like the perfect avenue. It had many moving parts and constraints, making it technically challenging and rewarding.”
The project has garnered considerable accolades, with the fall semester team winning the Senior Design Outstanding Achievement Award for Excellence in Engineering Design as well as Best Final Presentation.
“I’ve always been interested in [the intersection of] engineering and medicine,” Chun said. “PedalPro encompasses biomechanics and human movement, which was appealing to me. [Another motivation for me was family]—my grandfather has mobility loss and this is a product that could be used to help him gain more blood flow to his lower limbs.”
The CI MED team, alongside several others, advanced to the semifinals of the Global health Innovation Grand Challenge this past April in Taipei, Taiwan. Members from the fall semester team including Chun also joined the CI MED team in taking the project to the 2026 Cozad New Venture Challenge. PedalPro was one of four innovations to be awarded the Landuyt Business and Engineering Partnership $5,000 prize, alongside the social connections application Globi, American Sign Language card game Sign Quest, and speech therapy toy startup Echo Me.
“From engineering and medical standpoints, our product is viable,” said Chun, who plans to iterate the current prototype to encase its electrical components and implement an impact-resistant housing. He will be pursuing his master of engineering (M.Eng.) degree in bioengineering at Illinois starting this fall. “The question now is what the business angle will be.”
“Our next steps will be to continue developing the device with enhanced comfort and engagement features for patients,” Lin said. “Eventually, we hope to reach a testing phase for evaluation of safety and effectiveness.”
“I hope the team [can] get the device into hospitals around the country,” Matanky said.