When you hear the term “bionic arm”, it’s very possible you think of something totally futuristic, or maybe even something robotic like you’d find in a factory. You probably wouldn’t think of a bionic prosthetic limb designed to fit a child and painted in a variety of bright colors. 

Well, that’s what University of Central Florida-based non-profit Limbitless Solutions does. Limbitless Solutions was founded by UCF alumni Albert Manero and John Sparkman in 2014 and has since grown from a kitchen table to a venture working toward FDA approval to make their bionic prosthetics prescription-available to patients with limb differences.

 But you can hear about it from Albert and John themselves in the podcast episode above, and stay tuned for more Engineering Heroes content!

In this seventh installment of Engineering Heroes, sponsored by Wind River, we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Karisa Schreck, an assistant professor of neurology, oncology, and neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, where she also co-directs the BRAF Brain Tumor Center.

Dr. Schreck grew up with four brothers and knew from a very young age that she had passions for learning and helping people. So it made sense that when the time came for higher education, she pursued an MD-PhD. She combined multiple interests in medicine and biomedical engineering in this pursuit, and has been implementing her knowledge of neural networks in research of mutated proteins, like the BRAF mutation, that occur in patients with brain cancer in an attempt to develop a treatment or medicine to improve their prognosis.

But you can hear from Dr. Schreck herself, as well as her mentor Dr. Jaishri Blakely, in the podcast episode above. Stay tuned for more Engineering Heroes content!

In this fifth installment of Engineering Heroes, sponsored by Wind River, we’d like to introduce you to Anton Riström, a Department Manager at Aker Solutions, an engineering company that focuses on building infrastructure for renewable energy solutions.

With the ever-present and growing threat of climate change, sustainability is a hot button topic and has been for years now — but advancements in technological capabilities are allowing innovators to finding more and more creative sustainable energy solutions. One such method you may not be familiar with is subsea compression, which is a way to draw naturally occurring gas out from the seabed.

Luckily, we have people like Anton Riström, an expert in using computational fluid dynamics in simulation technologies that helped greatly in projects like the 2015 Åsgard Subsea Compression Project, where he and a team at Aker Solutions used that tech to develop digital twins of 17-meter-tall cooling chambers.

But you can hear directly from Anton and his team member Jesper Persson in the podcast episode above, and stay tuned for more Engineering Heroes content!