Riya Koya and Zaina Khan’s final high school project was quite productive.
The 2026 Carmel High School graduates won the STARTedUp Challenge innovation pitch state competition June 12 at Butler University. Koya and Khan’s project, Occlusense, is a device designed for use in a hospital setting to assess IV pump alarms and reduce the burden on nurses.
They have received a provisional patent for their prototype and have been collaborating with nurses at Ascension St. Vincent and engineers at Baxter to improve their product. They were awarded $25,000 in seed money for their startup and $10,000 each for their college tuition. Khan will attend Yale University to study molecular biology and women’s and gender studies. Koya is headed to Harvard University to study neuroscience…