{"id":688,"date":"2015-08-21T19:55:32","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T19:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mc.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltmedicine\/?p=688"},"modified":"2021-08-11T19:41:12","modified_gmt":"2021-08-11T19:41:12","slug":"paralyzed-by-accident-grad-student-engineers-his-future-with-exoskeleton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/paralyzed-by-accident-grad-student-engineers-his-future-with-exoskeleton\/","title":{"rendered":"Paralyzed by accident, grad student engineers his future with exoskeleton"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ph.D.<\/a>
Ph.D. student Andrew Ekelem, seated, and physical therapist Christina Durrough work with exoskeleton test subject Dustin Fleeman. Photo by John Russell.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Andrew Ekelem sits in a wheelchair at the bottom of the fifth-floor stairwell at Olin Hall, laptop balanced on his thighs, quick keystrokes making tiny adjustments for the exoskeleton that promises to change his life.<\/p>\n

If Ekelem is impatient with this process, it\u2019s impossible to tell. But he readily admits it\u2019s his impatience that brought him to Vanderbilt University for his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering.<\/p>\n

The exoskeleton he\u2019s programming could one day help him walk and potentially impact the lives of an estimated 250,000-400,000 Americans living with spinal cord injuries or dysfunction.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Walnut, California, 20 minutes east of Los Angeles, Ekelem was a smart, active kid, the son of an urgent care physician and an anesthesiologist. He earned spots on school tennis and wrestling teams and skateboarded for fun.<\/p>\n

He littered his room with pieces of remote-controlled cars, winning a Los Angeles County science fair in seventh grade with one powered by a solar panel taken from a garden lamp. By eighth grade, he knew he\u2019d be an engineer.<\/p>\n

A horrific accident shaped which kind.<\/p>\n

It was Sunday, March 7, 2010, in Squaw Valley near Lake Tahoe, the end of a long weekend of snowboarding. Ekelem insisted on one more jump \u2013 one of the highest. His friends agreed to wait.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought the worst thing that could happen was that I\u2019d break an arm,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I got to the top of the jump, and I was in the air, I thought, \u2018I may not walk after this.\u2019 I was facing the sky. When I landed on my back, I felt fine. Then I tried to get up and couldn\u2019t move my legs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was surprised how tranquil I was. I didn\u2019t freak out, which was probably the wrong reaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

A helicopter delivered Ekelem to a Reno, Nevada, hospital for emergency surgery. He was hopeful and clung to stories about people who learned to walk again after accidents like his.<\/p>\n

After two surgeries, he began to notice that his physical therapists didn\u2019t talk about what it would take to walk again. Instead, they discussed maneuvering his wheelchair and stretching to be sure his muscles didn\u2019t contract.<\/p>\n

Ekelem, 25, earned his undergraduate degree in bioengineering in 2012 from University of California-Berkeley, choosing the field so he could specialize in stem cell research for spinal cord regeneration.<\/p>\n

He spent his last year at Berkeley in that school\u2019s exoskeleton lab. So when he decided to go for a Ph.D., there was really only one lab he wanted\u2014that of Michael Goldfarb, Ph.D., Vanderbilt\u2019s internationally recognized H. Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering, whose light, portable exoskeleton is in clinical trials at five spinal cord rehabilitation centers across the country.<\/p>\n

Background, perspective earns place<\/strong>
\nEkelem\u2019s engineering background was ideal for the exoskeleton team, Goldfarb said. But his accident gave him a perspective few\u00a0graduate students acquire.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s more highly motivated and has more insight about what we want to do,\u201d Goldfarb said. \u201cWe can do the engineering, but it\u2019s impossible to get the insight that Andrew brings. If I were in his position, I would want to be in a lab with this technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Licensed as Indego, the exoskeleton weighs 26 pounds and breaks into five pieces that users easily transport and put on by themselves. Ekelem and the rest of Goldfarb\u2019s team are working on an addition\u2014 sending electrical impulses to users\u2019 leg muscles, which encourages healthy movement and conserves the battery because motors would do less work.<\/p>\n

The Indego technology is licensed to Parker Hannifin Corp. and is expected to have FDA approval and go on the market late this year.<\/p>\n

That day in the stairwell, it was Dustin Fleeman of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, wearing the exoskeleton, rising to his feet in one swift motion with the push of its blue power button. When he leaned forward to indicate he wanted to walk, the exoskeleton instantly complied. Fleeman, whose spinal cord injury is mid-waist, moved easily down the hall outside Goldfarb\u2019s lab, first with a walker, then with crutches clasped to his forearms for balance, the quiet whir of Indego\u2019s motors accompanying his every step.<\/p>\n

Ekelem rolled his wheelchair behind, his laptop tethered to the Indego by 25 feet of wire, clicking boxes marked ascent, descent, walking and standby\u2014information that will one day be stored within the exoskeleton itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy injury has given me experience I can learn from and can use to make life better for other people,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd myself.\u201d \u00ad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Ekelem sits in a wheelchair at the bottom of the fifth-floor stairwell at Olin Hall, laptop balanced on his thighs, quick keystrokes making tiny adjustments for the exoskeleton that promises to change his life. If Ekelem is impatient with this process, it\u2019s impossible to tell. But he readily admits it\u2019s his impatience that brought…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vm-around-the-medical-center","category-vm-summer-2015"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcDnub-b6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3133,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions\/3133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}