Reporting in Portuguese, Correio Braziliense highlights researchers at MIT who have developed a new technique that uses light stimuli to benefit people with paralysis or amputations. “Our work could help bring the use of optogenetics closer to humans in the realm of neuroprosthetics that control paralyzed muscles and other functions of the peripheral nervous system,” says graduate student Guillermo Herrera-Arcos.
Scroll.in reporter Deepa Gahlot reviews “Srikanth,” a biopic highlighting the life of Srikanth Bolla '13, the blind founder of Bollant Industries. Bolla is “by any measure a poster boy of unflinching determination and never taking no for an answer,” writes Gahlot. “The film is so earnest, so sunshine-y, [and] the hero so inspiring.”
GBH reporter Megan Smith spotlights Open Style Lab, a nonprofit founded at MIT that aims to make fashion more accessible. Yasmin Keats, executive director of Open Style Lab, notes that the organization was founded in 2014 at MIT’s International Design Center to “show what was possible in fashion. We also looked at the importance of design and style and how it can change not only the way that you see yourself — but also looked at how it can be a vehicle to change the way that the world views disability.”
MIT researchers have developed a new magnet-based system to monitor muscle movements that could help make prosthetic limbs easier to control, reports Brianna Silva for WHDH.
Open Style Lab, a nonprofit initially started as a summer project at MIT in 2014 that is aimed at making fashion more accessible for people who are disabled, designed clothes for “Double Take,” a fashion event dedicated to raising awareness about the lives and needs of people with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), reports Matthew Herper for STAT.
New York Times reporter Amanda Morris speaks with Eric Baker, an avid outdoorsperson with chronic debilitating joint diseases, about the GRIT Freedom chair, an all-terrain wheelchair invented by MIT researchers. “With the new chair, Mr. Baker hops curbs, hunts, visits the beach, and can cross mud, rocks and gravel,” writes Morris.
Open Style Lab, which started as a project at MIT's Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center, designs tech-based clothes for people with disabilities. "Technology is a big part of the design process at Open Style," reports Magdalena Petrova for CNBC, and the lab looks to "expand its reach by partnering with tech companies and hospitals to bring its designs to life.”
In an article for The New York Times, Prof. Jonathan Gruber writes that proposed cuts to Medicaid will impact a large number of Americans, as the program provides financial resources for elderly and disabled adults. “Nearly two-thirds of [Medicaid] spending is focused on older and disabled adults — primarily through spending on long-term care services such as nursing homes.”
The Guardian’s DG McCullough highlights MIT’s Open Style Lab, which merges design, engineering and occupational therapy to create clothes for people with disabilities, and the International Design Center, which creates clothes with “fewer sensory triggers such as fraying, rough zippers and scratchy tags children and adults with autism because of their sensitivity to certain textures and colors.”
Researchers at the MIT Open Style Lab are creating products for people with disabilities in an attempt to fill a void in the clothing industry, writes Dana Guth for Boston Magazine. “More people suffer from these problems than you would ever realize looking at the market,” says Grace Jun, the lab’s executive director.
Hae Young Yoo writes for The Boston Globe about MIT spinoff GRIT (Global Research Innovation and Technology), which creates wheelchairs with hand-operated levers for rough terrain, particularly in developing countries. The founders got the idea for using hand-operated levers after studying research “that showed the bench press motion is very efficient and makes good use of upper body muscles.”
Grace Jun, education director of MIT’s Open Style Lab, speaks to Marisa Dellatto of The Boston Globe about the lab’s work developing clothes designed to empower individuals with unique needs and their fashion show at the MIT Museum. Jun says she was inspired to develop inclusive clothing designs when she saw the potential wearable tech had to help people.
MIT alumna Tish Scolnik speaks with Forbes reporter Susan Adams about her startup, Global Research Innovation and Technology, which develops wheelchairs for rough terrain. Scolnik recalls that she was inspired to develop wheelchairs in an MIT course. “I thought the class would hit my interest and give me an opportunity to understand what engineering was all about.”
In a Wall Street Journal article about designing clothing for people with disabilities, Christina Binkley highlights the MIT Open Style Lab. The program brings together students to create apparel for varying needs, including “flat seams that don’t irritate the skin of children with sensory disorders and rain coats that cover wheelchair users’ laps more effectively.”
Prof. Hugh Herr has been named the recipient of Spain’s 2016 Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, according to the AP. Herr’s achievements “have had a major impact on people with disabilities, through adaptive knee prostheses for femoral amputees, and ankle-and-foot orthopedic prostheses for those with clubfoot or disabilities caused by cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis.”