What if artificial intelligence could predict surgical consequences in real-time?
That’s the question that Arish Shahab, an undergraduate student in McMaster University’s Integrated Biomedical Engineering & Health Sciences (iBioMed) program, explored at a recent competition hosted at Princeton University.
Shahab’s project, Synovia, landed him and his teammates the top award in the health care category, taking home a 3D printer, a cash prize, and an internship opportunity at Daylight Health, a digital mental health company in New York.
The software product creation event, HackPrinceton, is an annual “hackathon” that provides hundreds of students from around the world with an opportunity to collaborate and build out brilliant, innovative, and impactful ideas over the course of a weekend. It’s the Ivy League’s largest hacking competition, offering students free workshops, lecture series, mentorship, and thousands of dollars in prizes.
“Competing at Princeton pushed me far outside my comfort zone. Building Synovia in 36 hours with people I had just met was intense in the best way,” says Shahab, who is working towards his Health, Engineering Science, and Entrepreneurship (HESE) degree in the iBiomed program.
“Winning the health care prize and earning an internship felt surreal. It showed me that ideas built under pressure can still create real impact,” he adds.
Synovia is a tool that performs automated segmentation of the brain and early-stage surgical planning directly from brain scans. It allows neurosurgeons to test multiple what-if scenarios instantly before making the first incision and using AI, it can predict neurological consequences of brain tissue removal in under 10 seconds. In their presentation, the team described it as a “flight simulator for brain surgery.”
“We built Synovia around a vision of what surgery could become. A future where every operation has already been practiced and perfected before a patient enters the operating room,” he says. “The name Synovia comes from the fluid that allows smooth, precise movement in the body. We wanted our platform to feel the same way. Something that lets neurosurgeons explore ideas freely and plan with confidence before a single cut is made.”
Shahab teamed up with two students he met at the event, Sanjavan Ghodasara from Stevens Institute of Technology and Keira Wong from the University of Washington. Their team was judged for their creativity, the utility of the project, its service of humanity and their overall passion.
Arish Shabab with his teammates Sanjavan Ghodasara and Keira Wong.
“I always partner myself with people I don’t know as it puts me in unfamiliar situations and broadens my network,” he says.
The team had 36 hours to collaborate and build the platform before presenting the finished work to the judges. Their two-minute presentation focused on the problem Synovia attempts to solve and its functionality.
“Arish has impressed me since day one in our program,” says Michelle MacDonald, co-director of the iBiomed program and associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Biomedical Sciences. “He has the mindset of an innovator and entrepreneur that we hope to cultivate in our students, and his successes this past year speak to a lot of dedication and hard work. His future is bright and we are so proud to watch him grow.”