McGill BioDesign team 'A-Levo' celebrates success at 2026 SensUs competition

The Department of Bioengineering is proud to announce that the McGill BioDesign team were on the podium for all categories in the 2026 SensUs competition! The team, who competed as A-Levo, won 3rd place in Analytical Performance, 3rd place in Innovation, and 2nd place in Translation Potential.

SensUs is an international student competition on molecular biosensors hosted annually at Eindhoven University of Technology. Each year, a theme is announced and teams from around the world design, build, and demonstrate a biosensor that addresses it.

The 2026 challenge focused on continuous levodopa monitoring for people with Parkinson's disease. Because levodopa levels can fluctuate throughout the day, a wearable biosensor could give clinicians and patients a clearer picture of treatment response and support more personalized dosing.

A-Levo is a multidisciplinary, multi-departmental team focused on developing a wearable biosensor that can continuously monitor levodopa levels, helping make treatment more personalized, precise, and responsive. Their project brought together molecular recognition, sensor engineering, hardware integration, data interpretation, and user-centered design for the competition. Team leads on the project were Syphax Ramdani and Siqi Mi.

Team members who went to the competition included: Syphax Ramdani, Siqi Mi, Jung Hao Cau, William Prato-Deriet, Julianna Farias, Lucy Wiggers, Gabriel Linaje-Ferrel, and Juan Manuel Rocha Angel. Other members of the team who were not in Europe but helped throughout the year are Ruo Lin Hu, Naia Kim, Lanyun Wu, Yuzuha Isetani, Daniel Tang, Yazan Abu-Al-Failat, Tesnim Obey, Olivia Del Degan, and Ellie Griffiths-Barnhart.

A special thank you to Marinieve Montero for providing access to the lab space in MC 707, as well as Professor Sebastian Wachsmann-Hogiu, the BioDesign team's supervisor. Thank you as well to all other collaborators, mentors, professors, students, and supporters who have helped A-Levo along the way. The department is incredibly proud of the team’s dedication and achievements!

Photo credits: Epix Visuals (Matthias Eijgenraam), Levi Baruch