The undergraduates transforming brain health, disaster relief and diagnostics

From wearable EEG stickers to earthquake rescue drones, these are the bold, cross-disciplinary ideas being developed by the 2025 FoNS-MAD finalists.

Six undergraduate teams at Imperial College London have been selected for the finals of this year’s Faculty of Natural Sciences Make-A-Difference (FoNS-MAD) competition. Over eight weeks this summer, they will receive funding, lab space and mentorship to develop their proof-of-concepts.

The competition, designed to foster low-cost technologies that tackle global challenges, offers the winning team up to £7000 in prize money. This year’s shortlisted teams are:

ANA: A wearable EEG patch for brain health

ANA is developing a discreet, wearable EEG patch that allows users to monitor their brain activity in real-time, offering insights into focus, stress and mental well-being.

The idea was sparked by Dameer Ahmed’s (Department of Life Sciences) earlier work on a bulky focus tracker for neurodiverse users. "It helped me understand how my brain works best,” he said. “But I thought: what if it were as simple as a sticker?"

Together with long-time friends and now teammates Keeran Thayer (Department of Physics), Szymon Ciba (Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering) and Brishti Miller (Department of Life Sciences), the ANA team plans to miniaturise EEG tech into a forehead patch and develop a companion app that uses machine learning to process noisy brainwave data.

SacchroSense: At-home diagnostics to cut antibiotic misuse

In places where antibiotics are sold over-the-counter, viral infections are often mistreated with unnecessary medication. The overprescription of antibiotics is currently fuelling the growth of pathogens that have become resistant to traditional treatments.

SacchroSense aims to tackle this using a whole-cell biosensor that detects respiratory viruses like flu or RSV, designed to be used at home.

Our idea will aim to cut out that need for someone to either self-diagnose or go to the GP Amelia Barton Department of Life Sciences

All four members — Claire Shyle, Skanda Swaminathan, Oliver Abraham, and Amelia Barton — are Department of Life Sciences students, studying biochemistry. Drawing on synthetic biology, their diagnostic uses engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast) to bind viral markers and trigger a visual readout.

"Our idea will aim to cut out that need for someone to either self-diagnose or go to the GP,” said Amelia. By offering precise viral detection, the team hopes to reduce pressure on GPs and help combat antimicrobial resistance worldwide.

FlyeWheel: Haptic feedback for prosthetic hands

The FlyeWheel team is enhancing the experience of prosthetics users by restoring a sense of touch. Their device integrates sensors on prosthetic fingers with a soft robotics armband that inflates on the user’s arm to simulate pressure.

Motivated by teammate Edwin Ko’s (Department of Physics) experiences volunteering with disabled users, the team — which includes Fiona Li and Joseph Birch (Dyson School of Engineering), and Lucas Cheung (Department of Physics)— aims to make prosthetic use safer and more intuitive.

“There’s often no feedback when using a prosthetic,” said Fiona, “You don’t know how hard you’re gripping something, which may cause the thing you’re holding to slip or burst.”

Their low-cost, modular system will be designed to be retrofitted onto existing prosthetics, avoiding invasive surgery or the high costs of current sensory tech.

D-View: Earthquake rescue drones

After witnessing the devastation of the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake, Turkish students Arda Kancal (Dyson School of Design Engineering), Idil Igde (Department of Physics), and Ahmet Dogan (Department of Mathematics) wanted to develop a practical solution. Their answer: D-View, a drone-based search-and-rescue system equipped with geophones — sensors that detect vibrations caused by trapped survivors.

We grew up knowing that a big earthquake is coming... Arda Kancal Dyson School of Design Engineering

“We grew up knowing that a big earthquake is coming,” said Arda, “And we also knew that the rescue systems aren’t ready.”

Unlike costly NASA-grade radar systems, D-View’s geophone setup aims to be low-cost and deployable at scale. Drones autonomously land on debris, then analyse the vibration data to distinguish between noise and signals from survivors.

Their project over the summer will concentrate on developing a system that can reliably detect and classify vibrations coming from behind a concrete wall.

LaminaBio: Turning algae waste into sustainable glucose

LaminaBio wants to make synthetic biology more sustainable, starting with the sugar that fuels engineered microbes. Rather than relying on land-intensive glucose crops like corn, the team aims to engineer E. coli to digest laminarin, a polysaccharide from brown algae.

Team members Victor Carreras and Matthew Romero (Department of Life Sciences), and Quentin Trolliet (Department of Materials) are tackling sugar-hungry microbes. Often, glucose feedstocks compete with food crops, meaning that crops that could have gone towards feeding a growing global population instead goes towards feeding microbes in bioreactors.

The team hopes that optimising an enzyme mix and engineering multiple genes into E. coli could help it break laminarin into glucose monomers, reducing their reliance on traditional glucose sources. “We’re trying to turn a marine waste product into a sustainable feedstock,” said Victor.

Sense++: Making screens more accessible to blind users

Sense++ is building a Braille tablet that connects to digital devices, translating on-screen images and text into tactile output using a matrix of pins.

Current devices like the Dot Pad cost thousands. We're aiming to reduce the cost significantly. Sevin Fernando Department of Computing

The idea, spearheaded by a team of first-year maths students — Zain Hafiz, Leonardo Wang and Leo Jin (Department of Mathematics), and Sevin Fernando (Department of Computing) — aims to make screens more accessible and affordable. “Current devices like the Dot Pad cost thousands,” said Sevin. “We’re aiming to reduce the cost significantly.”

The team’s innovation lies in a mechanical system that uses a pen-like click mechanism for each Braille pin, a cost-saving measure that retains accuracy. The software filters relevant screen content and converts it into tactile and interactive output.

Sense++ hopes that their technology provides more options for visually-impaired screen users, which may currently rely on time-intensive screen reading software.

What’s next?

Over the summer, all six teams will receive funding and support to develop prototypes of their ideas. Their progress will culminate in a final pitch to a panel of expert judges.

Stay tuned for updates on their journeys, and who will take home the grand prize.