URI engineering students making prosthetic arms, hands for Colombian amputees

UNIVERSITY OF Rhode Island engineering students, back row, from left, Corvah Akoiwala, Cristian Witcher, Laura Parra and James Gannon, will travel to Colombia this summer with prosthetic arms and hands they have made for amputees. The project is funded by a federal grant from the “100,000 Strong in the Americas” program. In the front row are, from left, Sigrid Berka, director of the International Engineering Program at URI; Kunal Mankodiya, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at URI; and Silke Scholz, director of the Spanish International Engineering Program at URI. / COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND/MICHAEL SALERNO
UNIVERSITY OF Rhode Island engineering students, back row, from left, Corvah Akoiwala, Cristian Witcher, Laura Parra and James Gannon, will travel to Colombia this summer with prosthetic arms and hands they have made for amputees. The project is funded by a federal grant from the “100,000 Strong in the Americas” program. In the front row are, from left, Sigrid Berka, director of the International Engineering Program at URI; Kunal Mankodiya, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at URI; and Silke Scholz, director of the Spanish International Engineering Program at URI. / COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND/MICHAEL SALERNO

SOUTH KINGSTOWN – Thanks to a $25,000 federal grant, University of Rhode Island engineering students will design and make prosthetic hands and arms for amputees in Colombia.

The project, funded by the 100,000 Strong in the Americas program, will enable the students to travel to the South American country this summer.

“It’s a meaningful and enriching project for our students, and we’re honored to receive this prestigious award,’’ Silke Scholz, director of the Spanish International Engineering Program at the university, said in a statement. “The grant also affirms URI’s commitment to community service and global studies.”

According to information from URI, Colombia has the highest rate of amputees in the world due to the abundance of land mines left from years of civil conflict.

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“Our students will better the lives of those less fortunate – and learn engineering skills at the same time,” Scholz added.

This is the second grant award URI has received from the “100,000 Strong in the Americas” program, an initiative of former President Barack Obama to increase the number of American students studying in Latin America to 100,000, and bring 100,000 students from Latin America to the United States by 2020.

The university is collaborating with SENA Centro Nacional Colombo Alemán in Barranquilla, in northern Colombia, on the project. The recent competition was funded by ExxonMobil Corp.

In June, faculty and students from the SENA organization will visit URI to work on designs for the prostheses. They are expected to create artificial arms and hands with a 3-D printer, based on measurements and specifications from the patients in Colombia.

Then in August, four URI engineering students, as well as Scholz and Kunal Mankodiya, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at URI, will travel to Colombia to refine the prostheses and work with the amputees.

Three of the students – James Gannon of Coventry, Cristian Witcher of North Smithfield, and Laura Parra, who was born in Colombia and lives in Pawtucket – are in the Spanish International Engineering Program, a five-year dual-degree program in Spanish and engineering. The fourth student, Corvah Akoiwala of Providence, whose parents are from Liberia, is a biomedical engineering major.

“It’s for a great cause. These are people who can’t do the basic things we can do in life. I feel good about giving back,” Akoiwala said in prepared remarks.

The project will be presented during the 20th annual Colloquium in International Engineering Education in November in Flagstaff, Ariz.

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