Girton Grammar Student Viran Dhanapala selected for Top Designs exhibition

The year 12 student has had his unique design, an automatic COVID-19 ventilator, lauded at the Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority's Top Designs exhibition.

Completed as part of the Systems Engineering subject, he said he first had the idea for the project in late 2021, when he noticed a shortage of ventilators used to aid breathing in COVID-19 patients at hospitals.

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"During the pandemic there was quite a big coverage of the ventilator shortage," he said.

"I inquired more into ventilators and I was shocked, I guess it wasn't too shocking, but they cost anywhere between $25,000 to $50,000 per unit, so they're not very financially accessible to a lot of countries and also they take quite a while to manufacture.

"I was inspired to make a solution to this, to make it more accessible to countries and also hospitals with lower budgets."

Viran said he noticed hospitals were being overwhelmed with patients and staff were having to turn to resuscitation bags to manually pump breaths.

"There just weren't enough ventilators, so my thought was, 'is there a way to automate this?'," he said.

"You're hiring out a lot of staff and they're having to just compress this bag when they could be doing other things; they've got so many other patients to care for and you see a lot of overwork of health care workers on the front line."

Viran's solution; a 3D printed, laser cut automatic ventilator with an LCD display, heart rate display and oxygen level monitor.

"Essentially what my system did was it had a mechanism which allowed it to compress this bag, but what it also did was it gave them a lot of settings," he said.

"What that meant is I could control the number of breaths accurately, so I might be able to tune between 10 to 15 breaths per minute, and also the volume levels of air delivered.

"It allows you to set very specific conditions as opposed to just a human just compressing a bag for a certain amount of time."

While the ventilator wasn't fully operational, the design saw him named one of the top engineering students in the state.

He said it was "surreal" to have his creation on display at Melbourne Museum.

"I went with my mum, my friends and my teacher, and I just couldn't believe that I had my work, which I've been working on for the past year, in the museum for everyone to see," he said.

"It was great seeing other people look at it and then ask me questions about it; it was amazing."

The VCE student said he went into the project knowing almost nothing about electronics or coding and little 3D printing knowledge, but under the guidance of his teacher, Rod Smith, the project came to be.

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The project had inspired him to think about a career in engineering, he said.

"I've definitely considering a career into engineering and maybe even a health engineering similar to this project," he said.

"I would love to continue to pursue something in engineering where I'm constantly problem solving and solving real world issues, using the skills and working with teams in collaboration. I love that innovation side of it."

Top Designs 2023 was presented as part of the VCE Season of Excellence, which includes Top Acts, Top Arts, Top Class, Top Screen and Top Talks.

For more information on Top Designs 2023, visit the Melbourne Museum website.

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