Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards
From: Popular Mechanics - 11/2005

Walking Man
Sophisticated devices are helping amputees walk and run like never before.
Innovator: Hugh Herr

Hugh Herr, 41, is a leader in the heady new arena of biomechatronics, a place
where biology, mechanics and electronics converge to create prosthetics that
go far beyond the false limbs of the past. Herr has a personal stake in his
work. As a 17-year-old, he was among the country’s most gifted rock climbers.
Then, following a mountaineering accident, he lost both legs below the knee.
The misfortune awoke in Herr a passion for science and engineering.
Frustration with his own prosthetics drove him to tackle what he calls the
"extremely difficult problem of using modern synthetic materials to replicate
the extraordinary systems nature has given us."  

Read the entire article at:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/specials/features/1762911.html

Links:
Hugh Herr
http://biomech.media.mit.edu/people/herr.htm

MIT Media Lab
http://biomech.media.mit.edu/

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Mind Over Matter
A brain-computer interface empowers those paralyzed by injury or disease. 
Innovator: John Donoghue

How does the brain transform thought into action? That question drives the
work of John Donoghue, chairman of Brown University’s Department of
Neuroscience and co-founder of Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems.
Recognizing that many people who have lost the ability to move their limbs
due to spinal cord, nerve or muscle damage have intact brains, Donoghue and
his colleagues devised a way to translate thoughts into computer commands. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/specials/features/1762911.html?page=6&c=y

Links:
John Donoghue
http://donoghue.neuro.brown.edu/

Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems
http://www.cyberkineticsinc.com/content/index.jsp