By Lucy Wang
Hearing aids are rarely thought of as health monitoring devices, but through a capstone partnership with Starkey Hearing Technologies, a team of UC Berkeley Master of Engineering (MEng) students explored whether they could do more than assist with hearing by measuring heart rate as well.
MEng students Zaira Adrianwala, Yihua Zhang, and Karisma Vyas worked with Starkey to investigate a hearing aid’s capacity to capture cardiac acoustic signals from inside the ear canal and convert them into heart rate measurements. This collaboration gave students the opportunity to work through a real industry challenge while allowing Starkey to explore new possibilities for the future of wearable health technology.
“There are many people who need hearing aids but do not want to use them because of the stigma associated with them or the lack of additional features,” Vyas explains.
“What we did was create a proof of concept to see if hearing aids could be used to record physiological signals, specifically heart rate.”
The team used a microphone placed inside the ear canal to record cardiac acoustic signals. From there, they applied signal processing methods to convert the recordings into measurements of heart rate.
For the students, this experience was an introduction to the realities of engineering outside the classroom.
“For me, the most surprising part of working on this project was actually how much I was able to learn,” Vyas says.
“I have a background in bioengineering and not a lot of coding or signal processing, but while working on the project, I learned a lot of different new signal processing methods.”
The project also exposed the team to the kind of collaborative work environment found in the industry. According to Vyas, Starkey provided consistent guidance throughout the process while also giving students the independence to navigate technical problems and make decisions on their own.
“I learned a lot about what the workflow is like when working with an industry partner,” she says. “Starkey was really great and provided a lot of guidance to help us get to the final design stage. It was a really great experience, and I am happy with where we ended up.”
Because Starkey’s headquarters are located in Minnesota, much of the collaboration happened remotely through video calls. Adrianwala reflected that this dynamic helped the team become more independent throughout the development process.“There was not a lot of hands-on work that they were able to help us with, but they were able to guide us through video calls and emails and things like that,” she notes.
“It really taught us how to work on these things on our own while still having a little bit of that guidance with us.”
The project also changed how some team members thought about engineering itself. For Zhang, this experience filled the gap between theoretical optimization and building something that can function in the real world.
“For me, this project gave me a big takeaway that made me focus more on real-world engineering, especially how to build an actual product prototype,” Zhang says. “Before this, I was more focused on software, optimized data, and optimized models. But in reality, there are a lot of constraints, so learning how to balance real-world limitations with optimization and theory was a really valuable lesson for me.”
Beyond the technical lessons, the collaboration also broadened the students’ understanding of innovation in the healthcare industry. Adrianwala says the project expanded the way she thinks about improving people’s lives through engineering.
“I entered bioengineering hoping to work in medical devices and prosthetics, something that could really have an impact on people’s lives,” Adrianwala says. “But working on this project with Starkey also made me realize that I do not necessarily have to work in medical devices or prosthetics to make that kind of impact.”
“This project showed me that adding health and wellness features to hearing aids can also improve people’s lives in meaningful ways.”
This partnership reflected the ultimate goal of Berkeley’s capstone program: giving students the opportunity to work directly with industry partners on practical engineering challenges and gaining valuable insights for both sides. The collaboration offered Starkey the chance to explore emerging applications for hearing aid technology. For the students, it provided an experience that can only be offered outside the classroom.
Interested in learning more about the MEng Partnership Program that helped bring this project to life?