As part of a senior capstone project, BSE students recently designed and finished fabricating a prosthetic leg prototype for Olive, a young tabby cat missing the lower half of her left foreleg. The students used a 3D printer at Nebraska Innovation Studio to complete the project. The team consisted of Harrison Grasso, Lexi Jensen, Jaden Schovanec, Abby Smith, and Rachael Stanek.
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Olive may have nine lives, but she had just three legs.
Until the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Abby Smith, Harrison Grasso and three fellow seniors in biological systems engineering put in the legwork that gave her another to stand on, that is.
With the help of a 3D printer at Nebraska Innovation Studio, the Husker engineering students recently finished fabricating a prosthetic leg prototype for Olive, a young tabby cat missing the lower half of her left foreleg.
“Olive was delightful,” said Grasso, a Lincoln native who will earn his degree in December.
“She’s a wonderful cat,” agreed Smith, who came to Lincoln from Kansas City and graduated in May. “I think most of our group was more dog people. We’re like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna be working with a cat…’ But Olive was a trooper throughout the entire process.”
The prosthetic was the culmination of joint capstone courses — Biological Systems Engineering 470 and BSEN 480 — that have seniors put to use, and put to the test, much of what they’ve learned in their previous three years. At the start of the fall 2020 semester, the BSEN 470 students completed a survey of their career goals and engineering interests. Following that survey, Smith and Grasso found themselves teamed with Jaden Schovanec, Rachael Stanek and Alexandra Jensen continue reading...