Hi! My name is JJ Tellez and I am a rising Junior studying Bioengineering at Rice University. This summer I’ll be interning at the OEDK, working on a project with 2 great teammates, Shreya Jindal and Alex David. I am very excited this summer to work alongside my team, Flick the Wrist, to build a prosthetic hand for Eric Jr. to help him play basketball!

At the beginning of this week we had a project fair where our team got to see multiple different projects and chose the one we were most passionate about, creating a basketball prosthetic hand for Eric Jr. Our client, Eric Calderon, and the rest of Eric Jr.’s family are really excited to see our team’s progress throughout the summer. Our sponsor, e-NABLE, is a community of volunteers who create low-cost 3D printable prosthetic upper limb devices for kids and adults in need. We also have other great mentors at the OEDK who will help us with more technical aspects of the project, such as working with CAD files and helping with the 3D printers.

I was super excited when we met Eric Jr. and his mother, creating a mold of his small hand to help us in our future prosthetic hand designs. The best part was when Eric Jr. brought his basketball and went outside to play with him, showing off all his skills, ball maneuvers, and great shooting! Meeting Eric Jr. and seeing his huge passion for basketball was by far the highlight of this week, and I am so glad I will be working with my team to help create a prosthetic hand to help him continue his basketball journey!

Throughout the next weeks our team will go through the engineering design process, brainstorming ideas, creating design criteria, and prototyping our solution. I am very excited to see our progress throughout the summer and will keep y’all updated every week to follow with my summer experience!

See y’all next week,

JJ Tellez