An innovative concept to restore communication for ICU-intubated patients earned the top prize in the 12th Annual BEAR Cage Competition on Monday afternoon at the ATS 2026 International Conference.

Emily Mitchell, MD, a co-investigator at the University of California, San Diego, presented a special communications software, which can be used on devices with gaze-tracking, during a “Shark Tank”-style pitch session where she and the two other finalists, Xiang Gao, PhD, and Keziyah Yisrael-Gayle, PhD, also answered questions from a panel of expert judges and audience members.

After judges selected her proposal, “Breaking the Silence: Eye-Tracking for Restoring Patient Agency and Communication in the ICU,” for the competition’s grand prize of $10,000, Dr. Mitchell said she intended to reinvest the funds into the project. She hopes to hire a developer to improve the user experience on specific devices. Thanks to the feedback portion of the competition, she explained she has a new list of items to add to testing before a possible rollout to hospitals later this year.

“By giving [these patients] the agency and autonomy and ability to communicate, we’re restoring a sense of humanity, and that has potential for benefits like reducing sedation, reducing ICU days, and potentially reducing fatality, while improving patient experience,” Dr. Mitchell said.

Drs. Gao and Yisrael-Gayle will be awarded $2,500 each. These prizes are not grant funding, so winnings can be used for the projects that the finalists are most passionate about.

Dr. Gao, chief scientist at Scientific Horizons Consulting, presented the proposal, “A Precision Intranasal Nebulization Platform (PIN) for Targeted Nasal Drug Delivery.” Dr. Yisrael-Gayle, postdoctoral fellow at UC-Riverside, as well as founder and CEO of TollRAir, presented “Development of an Extended-Release Aerosol Formulation of Toll-like Receptor 4 (TLR4) Inhibitors to Protect Against Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Non-Allergic Asthma.”

Dr. Mitchell said the BEAR Cage experience wasn’t as nerve-wracking as expected, thanks to the palpable enthusiasm for all of the finalists’ pitches.

“It’s super exciting, because people believe in an idea that you are really passionate about, and you believe in yourself,” she said. “The funding just gives you an opportunity to actually pursue that and put it out into the world.”