Check it out! The Prosthetics program that I was a part of in MD has made it to the cover of National Geographic! How awesome is that?!?I have to say that I have mixed feelings about that project. I have never before, and most likely never will again, had an opportunity to be involved in such an important project. Imagine the number of lives that can and will be changed with this new "bionic arm"?!? As an engineer, you can not ask for a more rewarding program.
Or can you? I was only involved at the beginning of the game. I helped design one of the nodes that moved the wrist and the node that would provide tactile feedback to the patient - way back when the Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 program started in 2006. Unfortunately it was such an aggressive program that it burnt out a lot of fantastic engineers. I "got out" just in time because Ellie was born the Spring of 2007 and we moved back to Colorado to be closer to family in early 2008.
I didn't get burnt out. It's a shame when I think of the effect that this program had on some of my amazing colleagues, but what do they think now? They're on the cover of National Geographic! Look at what their hard work has resulted in?! People said it couldn't be done. I'm not sure how many of us engineers believed we could actually do it, but we did. Or they did - finished what I started.
Part of me wishes I had stayed to the end of the project, but I know that I would have been burnt out too. Who knows what kind of effect it would have had on my family life. A demanding project like that does not mesh well with starting a new family. But I can not express how proud I am that I was involved, even if just at the beginning, and how proud I am of those I used to work next to for pulling it all off. There are some amazing engineers out there and I had the honor of being in their presence, and possibly even considered as one of them.
I hope my daughters are proud of their Mommy. I'm sure they'll be proud of their Daddy because he does all sorts of things for NASA (the only way you can get cooler than that is if you're an actual astronaut), but maybe they will look at this one piece of technology and know that once upon a time, their Mommy wasn't too shabby either.
2 comments:
Fantastic! I am thrilled. Looking through the images, I noticed that the arm being used for training Amanda at RIC is the proto 1 arm - the one we worked on. I don't know the engineer shown in one of the images.
Recently I visited APL and had lunch with Michelle. I'll give you the scuttlebutt in another forum.
I think I'll be going to the store to buy an issue of NG soon...
You SHOULD be very proud! The beginning of the project is every bit as important as the middle or the end. I am very proud of my beautiful daughter-in-law (and smart too!)
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