A rehabilitation-engineering project is giving students the means to make global contributions by creating devices to help disabled people in Malawi, Africa.
For their senior project, biomedical engineering students may choose among a variety of topics, including designing instruments for businesses or hospitals, but some want to do more, said Vincent Pizziconi, an associate bioengineering professor.
“A lot of our students come into bioengineering not wanting to work with big industries, but to work with people directly,” he said. “They want to make impacts.”
With that in mind, Pizziconi started to work with Jan Snyder, an engineering education specialist at ASU, to create a project for designing rehabilitation instruments for disabled people in Malawi about six years ago.
In 2006, the project finally came together, Pizziconi said.
Though Snyder has traveled to Africa seven times, it was in 1997 when he visited his daughter in Malawi while she was working for the Peace Corps that he saw an opportunity to make a difference, he said.
“We saw the life and death of Malawian people,” Snyder said, “and took a real vested interest in their wellbeing.”
In 2006, before he headed back to Malawi, Pizziconi asked him to videotape the stories of some of the disabled Malawians, Snyder said, so students could work on devices to aid in their healing process.
This is the third year students have opted to participate in building devices for disabled Malawians, Pizziconi said, and about 40 students took part in the project.
Biomedical engineering seniors Carolyn Orosco and Kadie Gavan are two of those students.
“[Our project] involves making a device with a soccer ball at the end with a spring that kicks the ball back,” Orosco said.
She said the device, called “The Kicker,” would provide resistance, which will allow the lower extremities to be exercised, since the boy they are making it for suffers from cerebral palsy in his lower limbs. Also, the device uses materials that are easily accessible in Malawi, she said.
“The most challenging part of our project is picking materials so that [the device] can be recreated in Malawi,” Gavan said.
The replication component of the project is crucial, Orosco said, as the goal of the program is to help disabled people in Malawi get to the next step — where they are able to make a living for themselves.
And though their senior project is a lot of work, both Orosco and Gavan agree that it is worth it.
“I could have chosen any project that relates to medical devices or biology,” Gavan said, “but I really feel like I’m making a difference this way.”
Reach the reporter at abigail.gilmore@asu.edu.
