Two 2025 School of Engineering and Applied Science graduates created a hat for premature infants designed to prevent long-term health risks by protecting their hearing.
The device, named the Sonura Beanie, filters out audio frequencies higher than 500 Hz to reduce infants’ exposure to hospital noises. The cofounders, Sophie Ishiwari and Gabby Daltoso, received the 2023 President’s Innovation Prize — and a $100,000 prize — to create their invention.
In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian, the cofounders said that they were inspired to create the product after shadowing in a neonatal intensive care unit during their senior year at Penn.
The graduates recognized the hospital environment as “incredibly harsh” after taking a sound engineering class, and realized “this is a problem we think we can solve,” according to Ishiwari.
Hospital beeps and alarms can emit sounds that are roughly 2,000 Hz, and ventilators can reach 8,000 Hz. The noises significant stress, causing issues such as high heart rate, poor sleep, low appetite, and a higher rate of language delays in premature babies.
One of the beanie’s key features is its ability to play prerecorded messages from baby’s parents through an app.
“We both know what it’s like to not be able to communicate with your loved ones for an extended period of time,” Ishiwari said. “That’s really where the mobile application came from.”
During the engineering process, the graduates developed five hat sizes with varying attachments to accommodate Continuous Positive Airway Pressure respiratory and feeding tubes. They also worked to ensure that the device was “integratable” into the routine of medical workers in order to avoid and “extra work” for them, according to Ishiwari.
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In November 2025, the pair began a clinical trial at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania to confirm if the beanie is suitable for clinical settings. The trial of 30 premature babies will measure markers of stress — such as the difference in their heart rates when wearing the beanie.
The cofounders collaborated with a number of Penn leaders across the Engineering School and the School of Nursing for their at HUP’s intensive care unit.
Nursing School professor Wendy Henderson, whose expertise is in pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition, is serving as the protocol’s clinical lead and primary investigator. Her scientific practice is heavily focused on her patients — making Ishiwari and Daltoso’s project the “perfect fit.”
“Their amazing thinking and putting together that engineering insight and innovation is really fabulous, and it’s fun to be a part of,” Henderson told the DP. “It feels good to see it actually making a difference in real time.”
Daltoso said that Perelman School of Medicine Emeritus Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Lee Fleisher has been a key mentor for the pair — especially when it came to selling the product.
Fleisher expressed his confidence in the “great story” behind the product, especially as a grandfather to two children.
“They sold it to me as soon as they showed me what their product could do and their vision for how positively it could impact both the baby and the parents,” Fleisher told the DP.
In hopes of launching the product to hospitals nationwide, Ishiwari and Daltoso are now working with the Food and Drug Administration to receive approval for the Sonura Beanie within the next year.
“We’ve seen just a handful of infants, and I’m really excited to feel what the impact is like when we’re able to [help] hundreds, even thousands, of families” Daltoso said.
