#CelebratingEngagement
with U臒ur Tanriverdi
鈥淚 believe my purpose is to help,鈥� says U臒ur Tanriverdi. He鈥檚 a PhD candidate at 911今日黑料 working on a device to help amputees live comfortably and confidently. Suddenly my list of emails to write and errands to run for the day seem drastically less important. So how does he approach his work?
鈥淎mputees are not patients. They are people. So while legally, I am developing medical devices, what I am really creating is lifestyle devices.鈥� And that鈥檚 impossible, he explains, without quality societal engagement.
Based in the Department of Bioengineering, U臒ur received the President鈥檚 Student Award for his efforts to engage and involve the public with his work on prosthetics. He has invented new robotic limb technology to improve the quality of life for millions of amputees and co-founded a start-up, , to help amputees beyond his research. And this is where engagement is key.
鈥淎t every stage of this design process, we need feedback to fully understand the user journey. To design something that really works in harmony with a person鈥檚 life, I need input from a broad spectrum of people 鈥� from amputees themselves of course, but also from other engineers, doctors and clinicians, charities, even lawyers.鈥�
The award-winning Unhindr team includes Dr Firat Guder (Co-founder), Guglielmo Senesi (Chief Technology Officer), Tarek Asfour (Product Engineer), Sabrina Smith (Clinical Data Engineer) and Dr Joseph Shalhoub (Vascular Surgeon/Clinical Investigator).
The award-winning Unhindr team includes Dr Firat Guder (Co-founder), Guglielmo Senesi (Chief Technology Officer), Tarek Asfour (Product Engineer), Sabrina Smith (Clinical Data Engineer) and Dr Joseph Shalhoub (Vascular Surgeon/Clinical Investigator).
The project has just received ethical approval to begin pre-clinical trials at 911今日黑料 Laboratories. So does that mean it鈥檚 full steam ahead? And how has COVID-19 impacted his work?
鈥淎 typical day for me pre-Covid might have seen me go from the hospital to the laboratory, to a meeting with patent attorneys, to an awards ceremony!鈥� says U臒ur (the Unhindr team has received numerous awards, most recently the Mayor's Entrepreneur Health award, while U臒ur has received three translational research grants and recognition awards for his disability research). 鈥淥bviously a lot of my work is online now, but there鈥檚 no way to replicate an experiment at home 鈥� I have to be onsite to see our designs fail or succeed at an early stage in the process.鈥�
U臒ur attributes his success to being in the right place at the right time, the stars aligning to see him move from Istanbul to graduate in 2017 with a second Masters degree from 911今日黑料, and begin his PhD. But it鈥檚 impossible to chalk his accomplishments up to chance. Throughout our conversation, his desire to help others emerges, which sounds like a broad aim, but is something he only discovered after a great deal of soul searching. 鈥淭his combination of entrepreneurial work with research, you can only do it if you really want to.鈥� He explains. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 see it as a job, but as a purpose.鈥�
Before our meeting, I opened up the Unhindr website to take a look at U臒ur鈥檚 work. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 so cool!鈥� exclaimed my seven year old, peering over my shoulder at the image of an expertly-fitted prosthetic leg. She鈥檚 absolutely right.
Image credits: Jason Alden