Riding the Wave of an Idea
From: UMass Lowell Alumni Magazine - Winter 2104 - Page 32
By: Geoffrey Douglas

From Concept to Reality, to the Wider World

There were six of them, mostly engineering students. They shared some labs,
often did homework together. At some point, about midway through their
sophomore year, one of them, Jonathan de Alderete, a mechanical engineering
student, came up with an idea for a group project: a cheap, durable,
expandable prosthetic limb for amputee children. They talked it back and
forth for a while, then built a crude model:

"Somebody said it looked kind of like a sausage taped to a CD,"
de Alderete remembers today. "It was definitely pretty grotesque."
Nothing happened for a while. Then, early last winter, the group
entered their project in the University's first annual DifferenceMaker
Challenge. A creation of Executive Vice Chancellor Jacqueline Moloney
and Associate Vice Chancellor Steven Tello, the program offers cash
prizes to student teams that come up with the most innovative solutions
to real-world problems. By the time the entries closed, there would be
40 teams competing, from 25 academic departments.

Several months later, in late April, at the Saab Emerging Technologies and
Innovation Center in front of a panel of alumni judges and an audience of
100, the 10 finalists, including de Alderete’s team - which at the time was
calling itself Developing Nation Prosthetics - had three minutes each to
present their concepts. De Alderete's group was voted the best and awarded
the top prize of $5,000.

That should have been the end of it - and indeed, for a while, there was a
lull. But then, last September during the first week of classes, an email
arrived in de Alderete's inbox: His team had been named as a finalist in the
International Association of Plastics Distribution's yearly design
competition; could they make it to Miami in two weeks to make their
presentation? They did, were again voted best and received the first-place
award of $1,000. (The second place winner was a design team from Harvard.)

And it wasn't over yet. In November, Moo.com, the international online
designer of business cards, awarded the group the grand prize of $11,000 in
its yearly design competition - followed days later by a $5,000 grant from
the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance. Entrepreneur
Magazine, meanwhile, had voted them among the top 10 “College Entrepreneurs
of 2014.

"We're living a crazy life right now," says Erin Keaney, another member of
the group, which has since changed its name to Nonspec, in a nod to de
Alderete's view that every component of their creation serve more than one
function. "I never saw myself as an entrepreneur, but that’s what it's
turning into. A lot of this feels pretty alien."

Alien or not, it's no stretch to see what all the fuss is about. According to
a 2006 study, a traditional prosthetic limb for a child in a developing
country can cost as much as $1,900, and will need to be replaced multiple
times - way beyond the range of anything a typical rural family could afford.
Nonspec aims to bring its product to market at roughly $20 per unit; and
because of its telescope design, says de Alderete: "Children will need to
change their prosthetics fewer times, allowing them to develop their muscles
regularly, and enjoy a more normal, active life."

"These students may just revolutionize the prosthetics industry by using
medical-grade plastics to take the place of heavier, more expensive metal
components," reads one press account of the Miami plastics award.

The plan from here, say the group's members (the others are engineering
students Katherine Cain and Olivia Keane, MBA student Tucker Holladay and
co-op student Brendan Donoghue), is to test their device as early as this
spring—possibly with a veterans’ group—then proceed to clinical trials in a
developing country; at press time, Haiti and Rwanda were the leading
prospects. Longer term, the goal is to distribute in the US within 18 months,
with overseas distribution to follow.

Meanwhile, though, for most of them, there is a spring semester to think
about, followed by finals, graduation, employment prospects—then all the
promises and perils of Life After College.

"Yeah, we have to keep in mind that we're still students. And most of us have
research jobs, or part-time jobs we’ve got to wind up too," says Keaney,
who’s already turned down a couple of job offers for post-graduation and has
no firm plans at the moment for anything beyond Nonspec. That seems to be the
case for the others as well.

"I don't feel like there's any real choice," says de Alderete. "We've got to
stay with it. If it doesn't work out down the line - well then, hopefully
some of those offers will still be out there. But for now, we've got to go
with this. We’ve got to go where it takes us and hope for the best."  


Photo 1 caption: Nonspec's expanable prosthetic limb will cost about $20 - as
opposed to the nearly $2,000 ones currently available. 

Photo 2: Erin Keaney

Photo 3: Jonathan de Alderete

Source:
http://www.uml.edu/docs/umass_lowell_alumni_magazine_winter2014_tcm18-145504.pdf

Submitted by Kevin Appert