[flickr-gallery id=”72157628235278639″]<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Last spring, biomedical engineering students Kevin Franzino, Jeffrey Peterson, and Kelly O\u2019Neill often found themselves working late into the night on a very special project.<\/p>\n
Fueled by pizza and coffee brought in by a supportive parent, the trio worked into the early morning, pushing the limits of their engineering knowledge and skills to plot, design, and build three pieces of customized equipment for a little girl from Boston, then 3 years old.<\/p>\n
The girl, Samantha Gillard, has Rett syndrome, a disorder of the nervous system that occurs mostly in females and can limit a child\u2019s mobility, speech, and cognitive development.<\/p>\n
The students were introduced to Samantha through her grandmother, Jane Gillard, a program assistant at UConn\u2019s Nayden Rehabilitation Clinic in the Neag School of Education. Gillard had heard about UConn\u2019s biomedical engineering program, in which seniors tackle real-world problems and create innovative devices to fulfill their graduation requirements, and she wondered whether the students might be able to help Samantha.<\/p>\n
Gillard refers to her granddaughter as \u2018a sunny kid,\u2019 and the engineering students recall being drawn to Samantha the moment they met her.<\/p>\n
\u201cSam is very social. She likes people and she loves going to school, where she is well-liked by her peers and teachers alike,\u201d says her father Geoff Gillard, a laboratory scientist at Harvard.<\/p>\n
Geoff and his wife, Jenny, say they are grateful for the students\u2019 efforts. The family members hike and ski in the mountains of New Hampshire in their free time, activities Samantha can now also enjoy with her new gifts from UConn.<\/p>\n
After speaking with the family and meeting Samantha, the students decided to design and build for her a customized chair, a personalized ski sled, and a remote-controlled, battery-powered car. The students say the equipment gives Samantha a degree of freedom she never had before.<\/p>\n
While similar devices are available commercially, the students modified their designs so the equipment Samantha received was tailored to her specific needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe use her chair every day for a variety of functions,\u201d Geoff Gillard says. \u201cIt fits everything we asked for and more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peterson, one of the student designers, says, \u201cThe assistive skiing device is essentially a stroller on skis with a hinge that replicates the articulation of the knee. It allows the device to stand up and sit down on chair lifts.\u201d Peterson has since graduated and is now pursuing a master\u2019s in biomedical engineering.<\/p>\n
And as for the battery-powered car, Jane Gillard says Samantha could not be happier.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great. It\u2019s screaming pink. The car has room for two kids,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s remote-controlled, so her parents can control it for her. She loves it. It makes her smile. She grins like crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The car includes a five-point restraint harness to ensure Samantha\u2019s safety.<\/p>\n
The family first used the finished products at the School of Engineering\u2019s Senior Design Demonstration Day, an annual event held in Gampel Pavilion at the end of the academic year. It was a moment the family and the students will remember for some time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe day of the fair, Geoff was just learning to navigate the car, so Sammy was all over Gampel,\u201d Jane Gillard recalls. \u201cPeople were laughing and cheering.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing Samantha at Senior Design Day was absolutely the most rewarding part of the project,\u201d says O\u2019Neill, who graduated with a biomedical engineering degree and currently does clinical research at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital in Boston. \u201cWe were able to apply our knowledge base to implement a solution to a real-world problem and physically see the results.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery project has a real world function,\u201d says engineering professor John Enderle, who oversaw UConn’s biomedical engineering program for more than 20 years before stepping down from the post last year. \u201cMany of our students elect to get valuable work experience by working on a design project with local companies.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a result of their Senior Design involvement, quite a few UConn seniors are offered jobs by their company sponsors before graduation. Assistant Professor Donald Peterson currently serves as the biomedical engineering program’s interim director.<\/p>\n
Other projects UConn students have developed include digital hearing aids, assistive learning devices, and environmental control systems for individuals with disabilities. The equipment is given to the clients free of charge.<\/p>\n
Franzino says he opted for an adaptive devices project because that was where his interests lie. \u201cThe whole reason I elected to study biomedical engineering was for the opportunity to design and create parts that would help people,\u201d says Franzino, who graduated in May 2011 with a bachelor\u2019s in biomedical engineering.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill says that despite the hard work and long nights, the senior design project was the most memorable experience of her college career: \u201cBeing able to present the Gillards with projects that would make a difference in their day-to-day lives and seeing how thrilled they were was the best feeling of my undergraduate career.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Special equipment designed by three students in the biomedical engineering program has given 3 year-old Samantha Gillard a degree of freedom she never had before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":52652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1715,1,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-52624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-uncategorized","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 11:55:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52624"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52636,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52624\/revisions\/52636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/52652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52624"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=52624"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=52624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}