The learners' challenges were plentiful, and most came back to resources. The school operates at the edge of making ends meet; there have even been terms when teachers volunteered without pay. Much of what's considered basic support for learners with disabilities simply wasn't there.

• Wheelchairs were poorly fitted, with no safe way to secure learners in them.
• Communication was a huge challenge. Most learners don't communicate verbally, and while some use sign language, most don't.
• Medical and developmental needs, like stiffness in joints and limbs, were beyond my scope as an engineer, so I knew right away I wanted to work closely with the county's occupational therapists to see what was possible.

After I met with the school's board of directors and principal, they were excited about the project and asked the teachers to commit three afternoons a week to the workshop. I wanted to get them making things for their learners right away, so I started with clear, step-by-step plans anyone could follow, whatever their experience with fabrication, and scaled up our activities and materials week by week.

1. Week 1

   Setting up

   Set up the workshop, got to know the school, and obtained endorsement from the local government. In Nairobi I shopped for the basic power tools I expected to need, and when I arrived the school gave me an empty room. I built a cabinet, ordered tables, and painted the room to turn it into a workshop.

   

   

2. Week 2

   Communication cards

   Our first build: stations that every teacher rotated through, each with printed instructions.

   

   

   

   

3. Week 3

   Built-up spoon handles

   Many learners struggled with independent activities like eating and brushing their teeth because of fine motor challenges, so we made large handles for spoons.

   

   

   

4. Week 4

   Sensory curtains

   PVC-pipe sensory curtains that encourage learners to reach and stretch.

   

   

   

   

5. Week 5

   Independent Projects Launch

   Kicked off independent projects, moving teachers from following instructions to solving their own learners' challenges.

   

   

   

   

6. Week 6

   Wheelchair support straps and cushions

   Learners had been tied into their wheelchairs with bed sheets, so we made proper support straps, along with improved wheelchair cushions, including pommels (abductors), for better fit.

   

   

   

7. Week 7

   Alternative seating

   Built chairs that give learners who use wheelchairs somewhere else to sit.

   

   

8. Week 8

   Engaging the learners

   Planned weekly activities for the learners, including an art club, a run club and a dance club, and brought them into the workshop activities.

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

9. Week 9

   Independent Project Push

   As people understood and embraced what the workshop is doing, new ideas arose. With the end of term approaching, we planned a big push, with assigned project teams fabricating the project queue.

   

   

10. Week 10

    Parent education for home care

    As the term wound down and parents came to pick up their learners, we met with each family to show them how to use and care for their child's braces and adaptations, and made home visits to families, so the support learners get at school can continue at home.

    

    

    

    

    

11. Week 11

    Graduation and handover

    Teachers graduated from the curriculum and received their adaptive design certificates at a ceremony at the school, and I handed the workshop off to two of them, who will keep it running after I leave. To mark the handover, everyone left a handprint on the workshop wall.

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

The structured weeks were productive, but I wanted to move teachers quickly from following instructions to solving problems on their own. I interviewed 40 teachers, met with 70 learners, and scoped an individualized project for each teacher and learner. With teachers' limited time, I knew much of the work would fall to me, so I made sure to bring them into the workshop at the critical points: ideating, designing, and making the first prototype together.

With a curriculum taught entirely through doing, I needed a way to teach design thinking implicitly. I put a simplified design cycle up on the wall and tracked every project through its stages, and for the more complex builds, like the rocking chair, I taught the teachers to make small models first.

Illustrated step-by-step guides I made so anyone in the workshop can build these devices, whatever their experience with tools. Hover over a two-page guide to flip it, or click any guide to open it full size.

Tactile Cue Cards

Custom HandlesPage 2 ↻

Sensory Play StandPage 2 ↻

Wheelchair Strap

What I've learned from resourceful fabrication in Kabarnet.

Building with cypress branches

Cutting motorcycle inner tubes into elastic straps

Using Orthoplast to make splints

Making backslabs and elbow conformers from PVC pipe

XDemics builds high-density bioreactors that grow cells for therapies. Every bioreactor has to be rotated, tilted and vibrated at precise moments to fill it with media, seed it with cells and later shake the cells free. Today that's done by hand, which limits how many can run at once, adds contamination risk and makes results vary from person to person. Our brief: design, build and test a robotic system to automate it.

The system proved that a simple, mechanically driven approach can reliably handle the key bioreactor operations. Next steps for XDemics: tune the vibrator's distance for better energy transfer, add a motor control system for full automation, and design for cleanroom standards.

• Paper only: fully paper-based materials, including cardboard, that are recyclable and/or biodegradable.
• Protective: meet Audio-Technica's standard of a 20 lb product surviving six drops from 70 cm.
• Practical: cost-competitive with EPS and mass producible.

We explored corrugation manipulation, kirigami, molded cardboard pulp, and woven cardboard. Molded pulp came first: we 3D-printed a mold and tuned the recipe, finding that cornstarch worked as a binder where tapioca didn't, and that a finer, longer-blended pulp was stronger. When client feedback made clear pulp wasn't practical to manufacture at scale, we pivoted to engineering standard cardboard. The final system combined four elements:

• Kirigami-inspired corners that fold to fit a range of box sizes, with slits so they can be reused as record display stands.
• Firm cross-sections of stacked, glued corrugated cardboard along the sides for lateral protection.
• Woven cardboard mesh above and below the turntable to spread and absorb impact.
• Gap-filling barriers to stop the turntable from shifting in the box.

We also swapped the plastic dust cover wrap for a Japanese tenugui towel, inspired by furoshiki wrapping, to celebrate Audio-Technica's heritage and give customers something worth keeping.

Using conservation of energy, we matched the 20 lb / 70 cm standard by dropping our 5.73 lb AT-LP60X turntable from 8 ft. One round at 70 cm only chipped a plastic hinge; after two rounds at 8 ft, the damage was severe enough that we stopped short of the full protocol.

• The sides protected by woven mesh took little to no damage, making it the most promising material.
• The sides relying on the firm cross-sections and corners cracked, especially near the back hinges, and the turntable had too much room to move.
• Next iteration: wrap the whole turntable in woven mesh, tighten the fit, and reinforce the hinge side.

The biggest lesson was about sustainability itself: packaging is most sustainable when people want to keep it instead of throwing it away.

Seats and supports that hold a body well when a standard chair or the floor can't.

Tippy stool

Simple wooden stool for supported sitting.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Rocking chair

Plywood rocking chair.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Two-person rocking chair

Back-to-back rocker for a learner and a teacher or friend.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Padded cypress chair

Alternative seating for learners who use wheelchairs.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Neck alignment pillow

Keeps a learner's head aligned while lying down.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Standing board

Supported standing with chest, knee and foot straps.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Freestanding cardboard chair

Removable footplates.

Adaptive Design Association

Modified school chair

Adapted for a little person.

Adaptive Design Association

Floor seater

With an attachable table.

Adaptive Design Association

Rocking perch seat

A perch seat that rocks.

Adaptive Design Association

Add-ons that make a wheelchair fit and support its rider. Before these, learners were tied in with bed sheets.

Wheelchair straps

Padded chest harness that holds a learner upright.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Foot straps

Keep feet on the footrests.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Soft footrest

Padded footrest.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Pommel / abductor

Block between the knees for better hip position.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Wheelchair table

Tray table that fits over the wheelchair.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Tools that help someone move on their own.

Parallel bars

PVC walking bars on a wooden base.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Scooter board

For a learner who fears walking but has use of his legs.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Walker scooter

A walker turned into a padded seat, so a learner who fears walking can sit securely and push along with his legs.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Toddler mobility trainer

The first time CJ moved on his own.

Adaptive Design Association

Braces and splints made from PVC pipe and Orthoplast, with the county's occupational therapists.

Elbow conformers & backslabs

For contractures in the knees and elbows, worn while sleeping.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Orthoplast wrist brace

For wrist drop caused by nerve palsy.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Dual elbow conformer & hand splint

For muscle contracture.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Clenched fist block

Keeps a fist from clenching closed.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Mermaid brace

Padded brace with two leg channels.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Adaptations for everyday tasks like eating, washing and gardening.

Spoon & toothbrush handles

Three learners now feed themselves.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Washing table

Brings washing, once done on the ground, up to wheelchair height.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Accessible garden bed

Made from a reclaimed rain gutter.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Gardening tool handle

Better grip for reduced fine motor skills.

Adaptive Design at Mudd

Weighted gardening tools

Proprioceptive feedback while gardening.

Adaptive Design at Mudd

Jar seal opener

3D-printed; no sharp object needed.

Adaptive Design Association

Tools for learners who don't communicate verbally, and for hands-on learning.

Tactile cue cards

Touchable objects that stand for daily activities.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Learning numbers

Count to five by touch with bottle caps and beads.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Speech mirror

Standing mirror for speech practice.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Communication board

Picture symbol cards learners point to for choices.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Cardboard drawing easel

Lazy Susan built into the base.

Adaptive Design Association

Accessible backgammon

Adapted backgammon set. Watch the video ↗

Adaptive Design at Mudd

Things to touch, reach for and grip.

Sensory curtains

Encourage reaching and stretching.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Beaded sensory / massage mat

Wooden beads strung on plastic canvas.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Fine motor fidget board

Bottle caps and beads on a painted board.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Texture board

Patches of different materials to feel.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Shakers

Branches strung with rattling bottle caps.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Loom

Wooden frame loom for weaving.

Kabarnet, Kenya

Garden and hamburger sensory chairs

Memory foam chairs for soothing students with autism.

Adaptive Design at Mudd

As part of the first cohort of Harvey Mudd's Desalination and Water Reuse Lab, I was tasked with completing the setup of the physical bench-scale system, including:

• System design
• Component selection
• Setup and assembly
• Debugging
• The control system

I learned a lot about what it takes to create a robust testing setup, and about the challenging reality of putting together a complex system.

Three years later, this very system is still in use, facilitating cutting-edge water research at Harvey Mudd.

Can cheap, accessible 3D printing and unconventional materials, like patterned dental resin or novel ceramic formulations, let us tune a part's abrasiveness so that its lifespan is extended?

My study tackled one piece of that question: patterning a porcelain-doped, 3D-printed dental resin surface with small indentations, which was expected to reduce wear by trapping wear debris, and measuring its effect on the metal sliding against it.

Each disk was tested in a Bruker Universal Mechanical Tester using the pin-on-disk method: a 3.2 mm hardened steel ball slid on the disk at 1 N and 75 mm/s for up to 50,000 cycles. We measured the wear scars on the ball under the microscope and profiled the wear track on the disk.

• Tutors spent 22 total hours with their buddies, about 3.5 hours per student, and the relationships they built were key to motivating reading growth.
• Progress was measured objectively with pre- and post-test running records (accuracy, errors, self-corrections and reading level) and subjectively with field notes rating each buddy's focus, motivation, confidence and independence.
• One student rose 4 reading levels in 3 months, the equivalent of 1.5 grades.

1. Summers 2018 – 2021

   Boat Biologist

   Designed and taught a place-based marine biology curriculum, and advised students' research and community service projects.

2. Summers 2018 – 2021

   Divemaster

   Coordinated dive operations for 75 students across 5 vessels, and helped teach Master Diver and Rescue Diver courses.

3. Summer 2021

   Bahamas Program Director

   Planned and led Seatrek's Bahamas Voyage.

   • Wellbeing of 20 teenage students
   • Marine science curriculum
   • Scuba diving curriculum
   • Leading the crew
   • Boat operations and maintenance

We modeled each nose shape in COMSOL with a laminar flow simulation to predict its drag coefficient.