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t m c » p u l s e | s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 9 16 Shifting Gears A former competitive cyclist finds a new passion leading a medical device startup that diagnoses bacterial infections to fight sepsis B y S h a n l e y P i e r c e Sinead Miller, a former elite cyclist, poses with her bike at Memorial Park. S inead Miller walked away from competitive cycling after a serious brain injury left her unable to compete on a world-class level. Motivated by her own trauma, she decided to pursue a career in neuroengineering. "I wanted to make some impact in the health care space to help peo- ple like me," Miller, 29, said. After earning a B.S. in chemistry from Marian University and a B.S. in biomedical engineering from Purdue University, Miller began graduate school at Vanderbilt University in 2014. While working on her doctorate, she focused her research on the use of iron core nanoparticles to magnetically extract bacteria from blood. That research laid the ground- work for her next move—combating sepsis, a life-threatening infection to which the body has an overactive, outsized response. She picked up funding from the Department of Defense to help treat soldiers return- ing from Iraq and Afghanistan with drug-resistant bacteria. At least 1.7 million American adults are affected by a sepsis infection each year, resulting in nearly 270,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One in three hospital deaths are due to sepsis. "It's the biggest killer in our hospitals right now," Miller said. "I had this idea for a device that doesn't use nanoparticles but uses kind of a similar technique to bind bacteria and pull them out of blood. I used the knowledge that I had to