UofG students win award for co-designed kidney health innovation
Published: 9 September 2025
A multidisciplinary team of University of Glasgow students has won recognition at the prestigious international SensUs competition for their innovative, patient-centred approach to kidney health monitoring.
A multidisciplinary team of University of Glasgow students has won recognition at the prestigious international SensUs competition for their innovative, patient-centred approach to kidney health monitoring.
The 10-strong GLAsense team won third place in the Translation Potential Award for their co-designed concept, Nephros. Using optical techniques, the prototype offers at-home testing of the levels of biomarkers in blood linked to kidney health, designed to complement existing blood tests and give people the choice of how to integrate this measurement into their care.
The SensUs competition, now in its 10th year, is organised and run by students from the Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands. It aims to raise awareness of the benefits that biosensing can bring to patients and healthcare, focusing on a different health challenge each year.
This year’s competition, held during the Innovation Days in Eindhoven from 25–29 August 2025, brought together 18 student teams from across Europe, North America, and Asia to develop biosensors for continuous creatinine monitoring, a key marker of kidney health.
Unlike many teams that focused primarily on technical development, GLAsense placed co-design at the centre of their project. With support from the National Kidney Federation and Kidney Research UK, the team collaborated closely with nine people living with CKD, who shared their experiences and helped shape the design from the earliest stages. The outcome showed how listening to patients early in the process can lead to solutions that are technically feasible, more promising than other approaches, and meaningful for those affected.
(l-r) Jiaqi Fan, Cong Liu, Morris Mcdiarmid and Leo Jonathan Beck of GLASense. Photo courtesy Bart van Overbeeke
Team captain Jonathan Beck said: “This award is a testament to the patients who generously shared their experiences with us, and it would not have been possible without the invaluable support of the charities involved. Their contributions shaped our project and made this achievement possible.”
The project was supported financially by Kidney Research UK and the University of Glasgow’s Chancellor’s Fund. The team was supervised by Dr Julien Reboud and Dr Chunxiao Hu of the James Watt School of Engineering.
Dr Reboud said: “The unique co-created approach that the team implemented this year could certainly serve as a template for future research studies in the field of biosensing. Working in the labs of the University’s Mazumdar-Shaw Advanced Research Centre, they built a novel sensor that has the support of a wide range of stakeholders in kidney health and thus has great potential for impact. This would not have been possible without their enthusiasm and professionalism, as well as the curiosity across disciplines from engineering to product design, biotechnology and biomedical sciences.”
Following on from the success of last year’s GLAsense team, which won both the Innovation and the Translation Potential Awards, this year’s students have once again brought an award back to Glasgow. Their achievement demonstrates the continued strength of University of Glasgow students in tackling complex, global healthcare challenges through creativity, collaboration, and innovation.
The GLAsense team are Morris Mcdiarmid, Cong Liu, Jiaqi Fan, Jonathan Beck, Amelia John, Baitki Shilla, Jana Alimam Alhusseini , Shriraghav Sivakumar, Siddhesh Pranav Jadhav, Aayushi Mahesh Kasture and Vivienne Awumee.
First published: 9 September 2025