Biographies

Senior Scientist in the Bloorview Research Institute of Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation hospital, Canada’s largest teaching hospital focused on paediatric disabilities and  Professor in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto. Research interests focuses on the development of assistive technologies for children and adults, including prosthetic and orthotic design and bio sensing and biofeedback systems for rehabilitation; current research includes work on understanding the global need for prosthetic technology and impact on mobility, physical function and quality of life; co-founder and Chief Technical Officer at Legworks Inc., a social for-profit enterprise focused on improving prosthetic technologies and care for individuals with amputations worldwide.

Eisa Anwar, Postdoctoral Research Associate, King's College London. Eisa’s research focuses on improving prosthetic socket comfort and developing better ways to scan and monitor residual limbs. He also explores robotics and works on making specialised healthcare and bioengineering technologies more accessible to people from a wide range of backgrounds.

Senior Lecture/Associate Professor, King’s College London. Research interests include accessible and affordable assistive technology, with a special focus on limb difference.

Cleveland Barnett, member of academic staff within the School of Science and Technology at Nottingham Trent University. His research focuses on human movement, particularly when using prosthetic and orthotic devices, and issues associated with populations of assistive technology users. Dr Barnett is a member of the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics, where he is also a member of the Scientific Committee.

Reader in the Department of Engineering, King's College London. Research works at the interface of anthropology and engineering (i.e., anthroengineering) and is interested in the provision of culturally relevant, sustainable prosthetics in low-and middle-income countries;  works primarily in Sri Lanka, but has conducted work in Cambodia, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

David A. Boone, BSPO, MPH, PhD, co-founder and former CEO of Orhtocare Innovations. Since 1984, Dr. Boone has focused on rehabilitation research, biomechanics, and prosthetic orthotic design and was in the team that developed and commercialized one of the first CAD/CAM suites for mobility aids. He was instrumental in establishing a US State Department supported clinical R&D center in Hanoi.

Director of Research and Innovation, Reading Central PCN; Professor of Clinical Biomechanics, University of Malta/ Staffordshire University. Research interests and responsibilities include translational and interdisciplinary research across biomechanics, rehabilitation, assistive technology, and public health; leads and supports research spanning clinical practice, engineering, digital health and policy and works to mentor researchers, build capacity in applied research and enable real-world impact through collaboration with academic, clinical, and community partners.

Professor of Prosthetics Engineering at the University of Southampton. Alex has 20 years’ experience in medical device research and development and is motivated by multidisciplinary work with clinicians, health scientists and industry, on applied research for patient- and clinician benefit – he co-founded the PeoplePoweredProsthetics research group to deliver this. Since 2023 he co-directs the FortisNet interdisciplinary musculoskeletal health research group, supporting the community to transform MSK health across the life course. He held an RAEng Research Fellowship (2015-2020) and has led a number of projects between partners in the UK and Exceed Cambodia. As a proponent of open data science he was a Turing Fellow (2021-2023) and has published the OpenLimb and OpenHands datasets.

Laura Diment, Engineering Lecturer (prosthetics/orthotics), Flinders University, Australia. Laura’s research focuses upon using technology to improve access to prosthetics and mobility device services in remote and low-resourced regions.

CEO, Nia Technologies Inc. Responsibilities and research interests include corporate finance, partnership development, innovation oversight, research & clinical integration, advocacy & representation; digital health & assistive technologies, equity in global health, cross-sector collaboration and capacity building.

PhD, Executive Director, Northwestern University Prosthetics-Orthotics Center, Research Health Scientist, Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, Associate Professor, Dept. of Phys. Med. & Rehabil.,Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. Research interests concern mobility and rehabilitation, related to the use of prostheses and orthoses, with focus on the biomechanics of able-bodied and pathological gait. Steven’s goal is to better understand normal walking and use that knowledge to evaluate and improve the gait of persons who walk with prosthetic or orthotic devices, to develop more functional lower-extremity prosthetic and orthotic components.

Lucy Gates, Lecturer in Medical Technology and Design (Global Health), School of Healthcare Innovation & Enterprise, Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton. Lucy, has 15+ years’ experience working in musculoskeletal health and disability and extensive experience of working in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia on lower limb conditions, prosthetic access and assistive technology innovation. She collaborates with local organisations to co-design inclusive and sustainable rehabilitation services and is part of a 5-year Wellcome Trust funded study named Epidemiology, Economic impact and Ethnography within which she leads Rapid Assistive Technology Assessment, to understand unmet AT needs in The Gambia, and on vertebral imaging analysis to determine the prevalence of vertebral fractures and osteoporosis.

Ritu Ghosh, Prosthetist Orthotist and Academics and Technical Director & Associate Professor of Mobility India (MI), Rehabilitation Research and Training Centre affiliated to the Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS), Karnataka, Bengaluru. Ritu holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration in Health Care Services and 29+ years of experience in the field of rehabilitation and assistive technology. She established the Bachelor’s (ISPO accredited) and Master’s degree P&O programmes at MI and is advocating for India’s first P&O PhD programme. Ritu’s research interests focus on prosthetics, orthotics, absorbent products, manual wheelchairs, education and training in the P&O sector and the role of telehealth in advancing access to AT and rehabilitation services. She has spearheaded collaboration with leading research institutes in India and internationally and is a member of the Academic Council of the National Institute for Empowerment of Persons with Multiple Disabilities (NIEPMD), Government of India. She has also served on the Board of Studies for Allied Health Sciences in India’s University of Health Sciences and on a P&O Expert Committee of the Rehabilitation Council of India for over two decades.

CEO Exceed Worldwide – Prosthetist Orthotist with many years’ international development and business experience in Southeast Asia; developed and implemented strategy to found the Prosthetic and Orthotic (P&O) sector in SEA; led the development of a P&O social enterprise in Southeast Asia and is currently working, with partners, to establish a self-sustaining P&O sector in Cambodia and has received the Gold Award for Humanitarian Development from the Royal Cambodian Government.

Aoife Healy, Lecturer Sport and Exercise Biomechanics, Ulster University. Aoife’s research centres on clinical biomechanics, with particular expertise in diabetic footwear, mobility assistive technologies, gait analysis and plantar pressure measurement. She has a keen interest in policy development and telehealth, exploring their roles in enhancing patient care and service delivery. Alongside her academic work, Aoife holds the position of Education and Practice Development Consultant for the British Association of Prosthetics and Orthotics, to support the advancement of education and training within the prosthetics and orthotics workforce.

Professor of Social Work and Disability Studies and Director of the Centre for Inclusion, Transformation and Equality (CITE) and the Disability Research Network (DRN) at Queen’s University Belfast. Research interests are disability studies and social care, youth transitions and participatory disability research.

Professor of Rehabilitation Technologies, University of Salford. Research focuses on the design of prostheses, as well as techniques to understand their use in real-world contexts, including in low resource settings; has published over 90 journal articles, holds 2 patents and work has contributed to the development of three novel CE-marked medical devices and the establishment of a spin-out company in China; Academic Lead for the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Prosthetics and Orthotics.

Cambodia Country Director, Exceed Worldwide. Prosthetist Orthotist who  leads the Cambodian School of Prosthetics and Orthotics and the delivery of Exceed clinical and community services in Cambodia; research interests include the development of P&O education and the development of new models of Prosthetic and Orthotic service delivery; has recently completed her PhD on the impact and potential of social enterprise in the P&O sector. 

Peter Lee, Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Melbourne. Peter is Director of the Australian Research Council Training Centre for Medical Implant Technologies, leading an extensive industry-university-hospital partnership focusing on orthopaedic and maxillofacial implants. The Centre aims to train a new generation of interdisciplinary engineers in biomechanics, materials and medical device manufacturing. His research focuses on the biomechanics of the human body, organs, tissues and cells, contributing to a wide range of interdisciplinary research fields in biomedical engineering. Peter has made significant translational impacts, including personalised 3D-printed implants that have undergone the entire value chain from design to implantation. He joined the University of Melbourne in 2008 and now leads the Cell and Tissue Biomechanics Laboratory and the Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment (CAREN) Laboratory, where his research aims to better understand the behaviour of biological cells, tissues, and the musculoskeletal system under mechanical forces. Peter has authored more than 150 publications in journals, conference proceedings and books, is currently Deputy Editor of the Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery and Research and is a Member of the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration Advisory Committee on Medical Devices.

Prosthetist Orthotist and Clinical Manager at Sophies Minde Ortopedi, Oslo, Norway. Board members of Norwegian NGO RESCIO (Rehabilitation Science Organisation). Service and research interests include prosthetic and orthotic rehabilitation and spinal cord injuries in lower and middle income countries.

Consultant Clinical Academic Physiotherapist and Clinical Lead for Research, Portsmouth University NHS Hospital Trust, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare and University of Southampton. Responsibilities and interests include patient focused applied research in prosthetic rehabilitation which improves clinical care and research capacity building within the NHS and through the UK based Amputation Rehabilitation Research Network (ARRN).

Cody McDonald, CPO, MPH, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Washington, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Seattle. Cody is a prosthetist orthotist with clinical and research expertise in prosthetic rehabilitation, post lower limb amputation. Her research focuses on advancing equity in orthotic and prosthetic clinical access, care and outcomes using qualitative methods, community-based participatory research, and the development and application of population-specific outcome measures.

Head of School of Healthcare Enterprise and Innovation in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton. She has an international reputation in healthcare innovation and technology and works specifically on the user-led design of innovation in health systems and technology. Much of this work has been within the amputation rehabilitation and mobility sector, spanning UK and Lower- Middle-Income Country contexts.

University Fellow with the Centre for Human Movement and Rehabilitation at the University of Salford, working on projects at the intersection of rehabilitation technologies and global health, with a particular interest in innovation and personalisation in upper-limb prosthetics, musculoskeletal modelling, compensatory movements and activity tracking for real-world monitoring and evaluation. Vikranth obtained his DPhil in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Oxford, has a Master’s degree in Product Design and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. He worked on the ‘Purak’ affordable prosthetics project at Oxford University and as a Postdoctoral Researcher on the ‘Airbender’ project, to develop an affordable, paediatric upper-limb prosthesis powered and controlled by breathing.

Prosthetist/orthotist and professor at Jönköping University, Sweden, working in the School of Health and Welfare and the President’s office, where she is the Presidents Advisor for Internationalisation. Nerrolyn is very active within the international prosthetic and orthotic community, has contributed to the development of many key policy documents for the profession and has a particular interest in the development and provision of sustainable prosthetic and orthotic services for people living in limited resource settings.

Christian Schlierf, founder and CEO of Human Study, a humanitarian organisation based in Nuremberg, Germany. Inspired by his work training Prosthetist/Orthotists in Iran after the 2004 earthquake and in the Balkans post-conflict, he established Human Study, in 2005, to make high-quality prosthetics and orthotics education accessible worldwide. An experienced Prosthetist/Orthotist (Orthopädie Techniker Meister), Chris holds a Master’s in Non-Profit Management and specializes in education design. He is a long-standing member of the ISPO Education Committee and the ISPO GEM Sub-Committee and has contributed to the development of ISPO and WHO standards for prosthetic and orthotic education.

Head of Research and Business Development, Exceed Worldwide, Coordinator of the Exceed Research Network. Responsibilities and interests include international development, market research, marketing, business strategy and planning, sustainable business and service development and fundraising.

Project manager at STAND and a PhD researcher. At STAND, Matt oversees community partnership, grassroots community based organisational development, in-country advocacy, local manufacturing and STAND’s growing research collaborations. At the University of Bristol, Matt studies local prosthetics manufacturing in Africa from a systems perspective: mapping stakeholders, analysing policy, and researching the power dynamics between “local implementers” and the international community. 

CEO of STAND, a charity that supports people with limb loss across sub-Saharan Africa to access prosthetic legs and regain mobility. He’s been with the organisation since its early days in 2014 and has helped shape its journey from a small, grassroots initiative into an international charity that supports around 2,000 people each year. With a background in evolutionary biology, a mixed career spanning travel, small business ventures and a variety of hands-on roles, Phil is passionate about building a world where access to life-changing assistive technologies isn’t dictated by where you’re born.

Lecturer, Head of Research and Community Service Sub-unit and Supervisor of the Special Prosthetic-Orthotic Clinic at Polkesjasa Primary Clinic, Department of Prosthetics and Orthotics, Polytechnic of Health Sciences Jakarta 1, Ministry of Health, Indonesia.

Research interests include disability-inclusive healthcare systems, preventive strategies for diabetic foot complications, technological innovations in P&O devices and TVET curriculum development for P&O education and professional training.

Professor Sir Saeed Zahedi OBE FREng, is among the leading designers of prosthetics. He is Chair of the Product Advisory Board of Chas A Blatchford & Sons, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Institute of Mechanical Engineers in United Kingdom, Royal Designer for Industry, in 2011 received a Special Commendation in the Prince Philip Designer prize and BHTA life time achievement award in 2013. With 40 years of experience in P&O, Saeed has won several prizes for scientific papers, has developed new generations of lower limb prosthesis and is the author and presenter of over 125 papers, books and scientific publications. He was responsible for commercialisation of first Intelligent Prosthesis and led the team which developed the first Integrated Biomimetic lower limb Prosthesis for lower limb amputees utilising microprocessor control ankle/foot and knee joints acting in synergy resulting in increased efficiency and independent living.