Khaled Adjerid, Biomedical Engineering
An estimated 185,000 people have an upper or lower extremity amputated each year with a total of 1.9 million people estimated to be living with some form of limb loss in the United States. Despite the great strides in prosthetics development and amputee care as well significant effort, money, and time devoted to ensuring former service members can regain some of their lost mobility after an amputation, there is still a large gap in affordable assistive technologies aimed at helping amputees conduct everyday tasks.To address this basic but important need, Tulane University’s Biomedical Engineering (BME) department has partnered with the New Orleans Veterans Affairs Medical Center to provide students with the opportunity to work along clinicians in the prosthetics department on research projects that address needs identified by amputees.
The expected short-term outcomes are for students to research, design, test, and implement assistive devices that will aide in prosthetic wear and use, as well as daily tasks involving personal hygiene, eating and drinking, and changing clothes. This experience can also serve as the practical portion of the required undergraduate Professional Practice Experience and will likely serve as subject matter for the students’ senior honors research theses.
Time, eligibility, and other details
| Expected workload | ~10 hours a week or research, design, fabrication, and testing. Plus weekly meetings. |
| Skills required | some basic fabrication, makespace certification preferred, curiousity. |
| Who is eligible | 2nd year + |
| Core partners | Southeast Louisian Veterans Affairs Hospital (NOLA-VA) |
| Sponsoring party | Faculty organized. |
| Volunteer, Paid, or Credit-eligible? | Volunteer and Credit Eligible. |
To apply for an opportunity, click here to login with your Tulane student ID.
