The Lemelson-MIT Program From: MIT Technology Review - July/August 2015 Designed next-generation wearable mechanical interfaces that improve comfort for amputees David Sengeh, an MIT PhD candidate in biomedical engineering, noted that many people he knew in his native Sierra Leone struggle with painful, ill-fitting prostheses. Even in the US, many amputees suffer pressure sores and deep tissue injury from prosthetic devices. Sengeh hopes to change that with the next-generation prosthetic devices he’s designing and building — an effort for which he received the $15,000 Lemelson-MIT "Cure it!" Graduate Prize in 2014. His process uses magnetic resonance imaging and computer-aided design to create a mathematical model of a particular patient’s prosthesis, from which the actual prosthetic interface, or socket, is then created via multi-material 3-D printing. The result is a better-fitting prosthesis that’s also highly cost-effective. Links: The Lemelson Foundation http://www.lemelson.org Learning How to Learn: A Conversation with David Sengeh http://www.lemelson.org/resources/success-stories/sengeh_QA David Sengeh http://lemelson.mit.edu/winners/david-sengeh Innovator's Prosthetic Socket Aids Boston Marathon Victims http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/innovators-prosthetic-socket-aids-boston-marathon-victims-n75386 The sore problem of prosthetic limbs (TED Talk - 4:43) http://www.ted.com/talks/david_sengeh_the_sore_problem_of_prosthetic_limbs David Sengeh, 2014 Lemelson-MIT "Cure it!" Graduate Winner (video - 4:17) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NnkWC0BiDI#t=15 EurekaFest 2014 - Lemelson-MIT "Cure it!" Graduate Winner: David Sengeh (video 21:51) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb8roUKQ050