A team of NDSU students has won an inaugural OZY Genius Award for developing a pediatric prosthetic arm. The NDSU entry and nine other recipients from around the world will receive stipends of up to $10,000 to pursue their projects and will be part of an OZY Films documentary this fall that chronicles their progress.
The NDSU group, including senior Cooper Bierscheid and May graduates Andrew Dalman, Tyler Skeate and Michael Walmsley, worked on the myoelectric prosthetic arm as a capstone project. Bierscheid, who is a manufacturing engineering major from Watertown, South Dakota, wrote the competition entry for “A Truly Affordable 3-D Printed Prosthetic Arm."
The design – which includes a wrist, elbow, hand grasp and a pinch – was created for a three-year-old child and can be 3-D printed at any scale as the child grows. It will cost about $400 to print the arm's parts, compared with similar current prosthetics that can retail for more than $30,000.
"We are honored and thrilled to have received the grant from OZY. Besides the funds, this shows that other people believe in our idea," Bierscheid said. "It is a great connection for us and the networking possibilities will play a key role helping to achieve our vision of collaborating with the community."
According to Bierscheid, the stipend will be used to add final touches to the group's first model – the PAL-1, which stands for Printed Artificial Limb. The team also will set up the logistics to manufacture and test additional arms.
"They are a rather unusual team – certainly for their superior level of achievement, but also for their motivation to establish at least one new business enterprise to manufacture pediatric prosthetics. The goal is to distribute them to children in need through a non-profit organization," said David Wells, professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering and the team's adviser.
"Our hope for this project is to create a North Dakota corporation that can advance the technology of affordable prosthetic devices. Children with missing limbs should not have to tackle the great financial barrier to obtain a prosthetic arm," Bierscheid said. "Also, this product will be a great educational tool for teachers, providing a way that electronics, 3-D printing and programming can be taught in a fun, hands-on approach."
According to an OZY Media news release, the 10 award recipients span the globe, including the U.S., Kenya, Malawi, Ghana and Korea. “We had hundreds of submissions from around the world, and this inaugural class is a great cross-section of science and the humanities,” said Carlos Watson, OZY co-founder and CEO. “It’s a group of very socially conscious projects."
The international competition was sponsored by Credit Suisse and presented in cooperation with Chegg Inc. OZY Media includes such products as the OZY.com digital magazine and Presidential Daily Brief and The Daily Dose social feeds.
For more information and the full list of award recipients, visit www.ozy.com/rising-stars/and-the-winner-is/60573.
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