MEDICAL MARVELS
An Affordable Bionic Hand
AADEEL AKHTAR — FOUNDER AND CEO, PSYONIC
WHEN AADEEL AKHTAR WAS 7 years old, he met a little girl who changed his life. His parents took him to see family in Pakistan, where they’d been born, and they were walking into a store when he saw her. She was missing her right leg. “That was actually the first time I had met someone with a limb difference,” he says. “She was about my age, using a tree branch as a crutch, living in poverty.”
He never learned her name, never spoke to her or saw her again. But he never forgot her. He got a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and now, at 34, is founder and head of an Illinois company called Psyonic. He and his team of about 30 make prosthetic limbs that are smart, durable, responsive to their users’ needs and—this is key—affordable. In the
