by Colton Poore ’20
The world of prosthetics is evolving every day. After one of Kevin O’Brien’s good friends—a combat rescue pilot—lost her leg, she was able to receive a prosthetic and had her wings back in only a year. Even 10 years ago, that sort of recovery time was hard, if not impossible, to imagine. Yet there is still a long way to go. O’Brien, a graduate student and Engineering Commercialization Fellow in the Robert Shepherd lab, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, at Cornell University, is working to expand the burgeoning field of soft robotics and to witness its practical applications in the world.
Ph.D. student Lainie Eisner was drawn to Cornell specifically for its relationship with Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. Read more about Investigating degenerative tendon disease and repair
Alex Cruz is a doctoral student in biomedical engineering from New Jersey. He studies tissue engineering approaches to calcific aortic valve disease under the guidance of Jonathan Butcher at Cornell. Read more about Using tissue engineering approaches to better understand cardiovascular disease
Erica Pratt's doctoral work in Dr. Brian Kirby's lab focused on investigating circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral blood system of patients with solid tumors and how these cells can be used as a noninvasive tumor surrogate, and as prognostic biomarkers for survival in advanced disease. Read more about Erica D. Pratt, Ph.D. 2015
