PhD trainee Lucy Du is an establishing member and leader of the MIT MakerWorkshop, which has been much more than a work environment for Du, who also utilizes it as a hub for connections and inspiration. Credit: Gretchen Ertl
Making Her Way Through MIT
Graduate student Lucy Du creates novel prosthetics and seeks to motivate others to pursue engineering.
Lucy Du, a doctoral trainee in the MIT Media Lab, has an amazing passion for making. She spends her work day in laboratory designing and making prosthetics, and devotes her free time to individual jobs in the MIT MakerWorkshop or motivating other trainees to try their hands at engineering. “The best feeling is when I get to enter into a shop and make some parts, or buy some parts– and the day they are available in is like Christmas,” she says.
Her affinity for making started at a young age. Sitting there and doing or coding mathematics all day was never ever what I wanted,” Du says.
Now, as a fourth-year PhD student, Du is funneling her enthusiasm for building things into designing a prosthetic ankle that is readily available to people of all sizes, since current commercial designs are just suited for tall people.
She likewise shares her love of engineering in her pursuits beyond the laboratory. Throughout her time here (Du likewise earned her undergraduate and masters degree at MIT), she has actually discovered ways to make structure things and engineering more accessible to others– from producing a student makerspace to teaching high school women. She even turned a function on Discoverys reality TV program “BattleBots” into an opportunity to inspire kids about engineering.
Producing prosthetics.
When Du finished her masters in mechanical engineering in 2016, she was all set to experience something outside of academic community. She went on to operate at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but after two years, she started to feel an itch to get her PhD. Despite the fact that she thought about other schools, MIT stuck out as an obvious choice. “MIT has many resources and so lots of opportunities that you can be here for years and years and not even scratch the surface,” she says. “I think it was where I was meant to be.”.
Du understood she wanted to work on animatronic robotics. Discovering the right lab was not without bumps, but she eventually ended up in the Biomechatronics Group under professor of media arts and sciences Hugh Herr. Housed within the Media Lab, it is an interdisciplinary laboratory broadly focused on prosthetics, exoskeletons, and the human-robot user interface. She understood Herrs lab was the right suitable for her since of its focus on hardware design. “It is actually really hard to discover robotics labs that focus on hardware building,” she keeps in mind. “A great deal of robotics labs will purchase the hardware for a job and focus solely on the software application. I believe in creating your hardware with the end application in mind, as this can make the entire process better.”.
To that end, Dus research project concentrates on developing the hardware for a robotic ankle that functions much better than what is available now. “I hope the design will be able to fully imitate biological movements, including fast walking, strolling up and down stairs and ramps, and some other typical motions that you would make throughout a day,” she describes.
Presently, there is only one commercial powered prosthetic ankle that supplies adequate force for walking. It has significant restrictions, Du states. Due to the fact that the design is large and bulky, “you either require to be an individual of tall stature or you need to have a very brief recurring limb after amputation in order to wear the item.”.
On the other hand, her prosthetic ankle has a smaller sized profile that would enable more people to utilize it. She keeps in mind, “The design itself is implied to be scaled, so you can have the exact same design and scale it down for children or other individuals who dont need as much power, and after that scale up to larger grownups.”.
Motivating other makers.
Du has actually devoted considerable time and energy over her years at MIT to helping others explore making and engineering. As a masters student, she served as a trainer for the Womens Technology Program in Mechanical Engineering, a summertime program for high school girls that intends to motivate them to pursue engineering. During a month-long crash course, she served as among 3 graduate trainers for the mechanical engineering curriculum, teaching 20 high school ladies the fundamentals of dynamics and kinematics, and dealing with them on cool, hands-on experiments.
Mentoring, she states, is “probably the most gratifying thing that Ive done”– specifically watching some of those trainees attend MIT and stand out. She has continued to cultivate her love of mentor and mentoring as a mentor assistant during her PhD program.
Du is also a founding member and leader of the MIT MakerWorkshop, among the couple of student-run makerspaces at MIT. As a masters student, she saw an unmet requirement for a makerspace where students could work on their individual projects, at hours that were practical to them and did not conflict with class time. Despite the fact that there were currently a lot of shops on school, she says, “It was “pretty hard to get access to a maker shop and for the majority of them, you were only supposed to deal with class jobs or research projects.”.
The MakerWorkshop has actually worked as much more than a work environment for Du; it has also been a center for connections and motivation throughout her graduate profession. “A lot of times, I have an engineering issue or a life problem and I just desire to speak with someone. I might wander around the space, somebody would be there, and you might simply talk with them about their experiences or have impromptu style reviews on the board.”.
The connections that Du formed through MakerWorkshop led her in an unanticipated instructions: reality TV. She was among a group of MakerWorkshop members who formed a team named SawBlaze for the Discovery program “BattleBots,” a revival of an old Comedy Central show from the early 2000s. In the show, teams build 250-pound robots to “battle to the death” in an arena. The SawBlaze team has completed in four seasons to date, starting in 2016 with season 2. “It is actually different from the things we usually style and develop [for research study or class], due to the fact that you are creating to material failure,” Du states. Far, the experience has actually taught her how to create and plan for the most severe cases of impact, often relying on instinct, experience, and empirical testing, due to the fact that these scenarios are usually beyond the limits of modeling.
Du is less than interested in the screen time that the “BattleBots” function has actually brought her. Although she is thrilled about the programs upcoming season 6, she prefers the outreach occasions, termed maker faires, where awe-struck kids excitedly explain their favorite robotics and she has the opportunity to share how she began in engineering.
This fall marks the 10th year of Dus MIT career. “The more time you put into mentor, the more fulfilling it is,” she states. “To see your trainees get it and enhance, that simply implies the world to me.”.
Lucy Du, a doctoral student in the MIT Media Lab, has an impressive passion for making. Throughout her time here (Du likewise earned her undergraduate and masters degree at MIT), she has actually discovered ways to make structure things and engineering more available to others– from developing a student makerspace to teaching high school women. Du has devoted considerable time and energy over her years at MIT to assisting others explore making and engineering. Du is also an establishing member and leader of the MIT MakerWorkshop, one of the few student-run makerspaces at MIT., due to the fact that you are creating to material failure,” Du states.
By Olivia Young. MIT Office of Graduate Education
December 10, 2021