The challenge: offer to undergraduate students at John Hopkins University to design a better way to reconnect the breastbone or sternum after open heart surgery. The reason: a half-century-old technique of using steel wires that pierced the bone and pulled the halves together poses some risks to both the surgeon and the patient.

The 11-member team’s prototype won first-place honors in the university’s recent Biomedical Engineering Design Day competition.

• Dr. Mark Sumeray, heart surgeon and co-owner of Surgical Transformations LLC