SUNY Polytechnic Institute has received a $15,000 grant from the Health Forward Foundation to develop a physiologically realistic mechanical lung model, a project designed to give researchers a more accurate way to study mechanical ventilation and help train the next generation of biomedical engineers. The initiative brings together mechanical engineering, healthcare, and biomedical research in an effort to reproduce the complex physical behavior of the human respiratory system in a controlled laboratory environment. Led by Dr. Aarthi Sekaran, assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering, with Dr. Ahmed Abdelaal, assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering Technology, serving as co-principal investigator, the project also includes clinical collaboration with Professor Gary Nieman of Upstate Medical University. The grant is being managed by The Research Foundation for the State University of New York.
Mechanical ventilation is one of modern medicine’s most important life-support technologies, but the interaction between a ventilator and a patient’s lungs is highly complex. A ventilator delivers air through a breathing tube or mask by controlling variables such as pressure, flow, volume, and timing. Those inputs do not act on a rigid container. Human lungs are elastic, branching structures whose behavior changes with body position, disease, airway resistance, tissue stiffness, fluid accumulation, and the condition of the surrounding chest wall. A device that appears to function effectively under simplified laboratory conditions can therefore produce very different results when used with a living patient. The SUNY Poly project aims to narrow that gap by creating a laboratory model that behaves more like a real respiratory system.
The planned platform, titled “Advancing Respiratory Care Through the Development of a Physiologically Realistic Mechanical Lung Model,” will be designed to mimic the expansion and contraction of the lungs during breathing and to reproduce key mechanical responses to ventilation. Rather than relying on a basic balloon, bottle, or rigid demonstration apparatus, the researchers intend to construct a system with adjustable physical properties that can represent clinically meaningful respiratory conditions. The model could incorporate changes in compliance, which describes how easily the lungs expand, as well as resistance to airflow and pressure-dependent changes in volume. By tuning these characteristics, researchers may be able to simulate different patient scenarios and examine how ventilation settings affect the respiratory system.
A central goal is to create a test environment in which airflow, pressure, and ventilator performance can be measured with precision. During mechanical ventilation, clinicians must balance the need to deliver enough oxygen and remove carbon dioxide against the risk of damaging delicate lung tissue. Excessive pressure or volume can overdistend vulnerable regions, while insufficient support can leave patients struggling to breathe or inadequately ventilated. A realistic mechanical lung could allow investigators to observe how pressure waves move through an artificial airway and how the model responds as its stiffness or resistance changes. Sensors embedded in the system could record pressure, flow rate, volume, and timing, producing data that reveal how closely a ventilator’s output matches the behavior of a simulated patient.
The device may also serve as a bridge between physical experiments and computer-based modeling. Engineers frequently use mathematical and computational models to represent the respiratory system, but these models depend on assumptions and experimental data. A mechanical platform capable of reproducing measurable lung-like behavior could provide data for validating simulations and improving their accuracy. Researchers could compare predicted and observed pressure-volume relationships, investigate unstable breathing patterns, or test how changes in airway resistance influence ventilation. More reliable models could eventually help researchers evaluate ventilator algorithms, develop new respiratory devices, and explore strategies for delivering support more safely across a range of medical conditions.
Because the system is intended for laboratory use, it could reduce the need to rely on human subjects during early stages of testing. Human studies remain essential for evaluating medical technologies, but they require extensive ethical oversight and cannot expose patients to unnecessary risk simply to explore basic mechanical questions. A reusable mechanical lung would allow investigators to test multiple configurations under repeatable conditions before moving toward clinical research. Researchers could examine the effects of different tubing arrangements, ventilation modes, pressure limits, and control strategies while maintaining consistent baseline conditions. The platform would not replace clinical trials or patient-specific medical judgment, but it could provide an important intermediate step between theoretical design and testing in healthcare settings.
The project has also been structured as a multi-year undergraduate capstone experience, placing students directly inside the research and development process. Students will contribute to the design, construction, testing, and refinement of the model while learning how engineering concepts translate into biomedical applications. Their work may include selecting materials, designing mechanical components, integrating sensors, building data-acquisition systems, analyzing experimental results, and modifying prototypes in response to performance problems. Such tasks expose students to the iterative nature of research, in which an early design rarely performs exactly as expected and progress depends on careful measurement, troubleshooting, and revision. The experience could help prepare graduates for careers in medical-device development, clinical engineering, robotics, and healthcare technology.
The interdisciplinary structure is particularly important because respiratory care problems cannot be solved through mechanical design alone. Engineers must understand how the device behaves, while clinicians provide insight into the physiological and practical realities of patient care. Collaboration with Upstate Medical University is expected to help connect the model’s technical specifications with clinically relevant questions. A design that accurately reproduces a physical response in the laboratory is only useful if that response corresponds to something meaningful in medicine. By combining engineering expertise with clinical knowledge, the team can identify which parameters matter most, determine how the model should be evaluated, and focus student research on problems with potential consequences for real patients.
Dr. Sekaran said the project is intended to unite engineering and healthcare around a challenge with a direct impact on people’s lives. Dr. Abdelaal’s involvement adds expertise in mechanical engineering technology and prototype development, while the clinical collaboration expands the project beyond a conventional classroom exercise. The Health Forward Foundation’s president, Rosemary Bonacci, said the organization supported the initiative because its combination of engineering, healthcare, biomedical research, education, and training reflects the foundation’s mission to advance medicine. The grant is modest in size, but the research infrastructure and student participation it supports could create a foundation for future studies, additional funding, and broader collaborations.
For SUNY Poly, the mechanical lung project represents an effort to make experiential learning part of a larger research mission. Students will not simply build a demonstration for a course; they will help develop an experimental platform intended to answer questions about mechanical ventilation and respiratory care. If the model successfully reproduces important features of human lung mechanics, it could become a flexible tool for studying ventilator behavior, improving computational simulations, and evaluating new approaches to respiratory support. The project also illustrates how university laboratories can connect education with urgent healthcare challenges. By translating the physics of breathing into an adjustable, measurable, and reusable system, the researchers hope to produce both a valuable scientific resource and a generation of engineers equipped to improve the technologies that help patients breathe.
Subject of Research: Development of a physiologically realistic mechanical lung model for studying mechanical ventilation and advancing respiratory care technologies.
Article Title: SUNY Poly Awarded $15K Health Forward Foundation Grant to Advance Respiratory Care Research
Web References: https://mediasvc.eurekalert.org/Api/v1/Multimedia/a86cf8f9-0a32-410d-b1b9-18b2225eab23/Rendition/low-res/Content/Public
References: SUNY Polytechnic Institute; Health Forward Foundation; The Research Foundation for the State University of New York; Upstate Medical University.
Image Credits: SUNY Polytechnic Institute
Keywords
Artificial respiration, applied sciences and engineering, research funding, research and development, mechanical ventilation, respiratory care, biomedical engineering, mechanical lung model, medical-device research, engineering education
