EDINBURG — The final year of college can be a whirlwind of exams, projects and exhaustion for most. But what kept four mechanical engineering students at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley focused were letters from a local resident asking for help recovering what most people can take for granted, writing by hand.
“Our focus was on just passing the class, but once we got this project we were like ‘You know what? We need to make sure this actually works because we are going to do this for someone who needs it,’” said Misael Martinez.”This was our priority, we were here most days… trying to make it work.”
Martinez, 22, and his classmates Carlos Hernandez, 22, and Rodolfo Becerra, 22 – all mechanical engineering graduates now seeking their master’s degrees at UTRGV – and undergraduate student Arnoldo Ventura, 21, took on the challenge last year after being approached by their professor Karen Lozano, who received the request for help via email.
The request came from local writer and former educator Chris Ardis, who said her mother, Sue Ardis, 83, who loves sending handwritten letters and cards, has had to stop doing this and many of the things she loves due to the disease.
“My mom is living with Parkinson’s and about a year ago she had to give up driving… She made the decision on her own and she needed to, but it’s a huge impact on a person’s independence,” Aridis said. “Shortly after that she started saying things here and there like ‘I’d send you a note, but I’m sorry if you can’t read it.’”
Sue was diagnosed with Parkinson’s about 10 years ago after noticing a twitch on her thumb. But it wasn’t until about two years ago that she started noticing more impactful changes such as increased trembling, loss of balance and micrographia – a symptom in which handwriting abnormally shrinks over time.
That’s why Ardis decided to reach out to Lozano, mechanical engineering professor and expert in nanofiber and nanotechnology, who then talked to the group of students mentored by her about switching their final project to develop a device that could help patients like Sue.
“I came across Dr. Karen Lozano who has won major awards for nanotechnology and manufacturing engineering,” Ardis said. “So I sat down and wrote her this lengthy email and basically laid my heart on the line and about 30 minutes later I got a response… ‘We are going to find a way to help you.’”
Rather than have her students just work on a project for a grade, Lozano said she saw the opportunity to let them experience what the impact of their work can do for the world.
“That’s our whole function, right?” she said about engineers. “We need to listen to the problems and then try to find a solution to those problems. And these students are extremely talented and very capable.”
With very basic knowledge of Parkinson’s, the students first hit the books to learn as much about it as possible. They began searching for other products that help patients with the tremors and found wristbands and even spoons, they said, but nothing that focused solely on handwriting.
The students came up with the idea of a handheld base that allows the person to rest their hand and pen on it and glide it along the paper to write.
The device would be engineered to read the frequency of the individual’s tremors and counter these with a similar frequency motion on the opposite direction.
“We understand that the tremors are like vibrations so from then we knew that the way to cancel this motion was to add another source that was acting opposite to it,” Becerra said. “The idea was there, we understood how it worked and how to solve it, but the problem was to come up with the design of the base.”
To come up with this, the project was divided among the students. The three graduate students split the design for the base, the coding aspect, and electronic components and mechanical systems, while Ventura worked on presentation and timelines.
“For all of us it was something that we needed to learn, something that we needed to actually do a lot of research,” said Becerra, who focused on coding.
After several strikes, there was a winning design that was able to encompass all of the mechanical components into a small heart-shaped base that could also include other helpful commodities such as a magnifying glass.
“Right now this is a basic prototype,” Martinez said. “Our next thing to do is get more funding so that we can do more research.. Once we get more funding we can make more of these. We can decrease the price. Maybe shrink the electronics and even test it with people with Parkinson’s to get more data.”
The students have been applying to compete in business competitions and are in the process of solidifying one presentation that could bring them not only exposure, but hopefully funding opportunities to continue working on the prototype.
“That would open the door to finding key partners that would hopefully provide funding that way they can troubleshoot the issues that they have and finalize it,” Lozano said.
Once they get past the technical aspects of the prototype, she said there are others steps and learning opportunities that will follow including figuring out a way to make this available to Sue and others that need it.
“This opportunity will also give them all the spectrum of what it takes to do a startup, and what it takes to put a product in the market,” Lozano said. “It’s a whole new area.”
For Ardis, even as she knows there are months or more before this prototype can actually help her mother, there is renewed hope in knowing it was three students from her community that decided to not only listen but step up to the plate and help.
“If something can be created that could bring them even a touch of their independence back, to me that’s huge,” Ardis said.
