Madison Arno aspires to design medical devices that improve the quality of life for people with mobility issues. At Ohio Northern University, the honors student from Cincinnati has gotten a running start.
Madison not only graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, but with extensive research experience in the biomedical field. In the fall, she’ll begin a master’s degree program in medical product engineering at the University of Pittsburgh.
“I wanted a career in the medical field helping people, but I’m a little bit squeamish,” she laughed.
Watching her 93-year-old grandmother struggle to transition from her wheelchair to her bed, made Madison realize that engineers could solve those everyday hurdles.
“I want to take products that already exist in the medical field and make them better,” she says.
Madison’s parents and a brother are ONU alumni, but she chose ONU not because of the family connection, but because “the engineering program is so good, and I wanted a smaller college for easier access to my professors and mentors.”
That access led to amazing opportunities. Last summer, she was a research intern at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center. There, she assisted with developing a sensor-based device that alerts people with spinal cord injuries about foot placement on their powered wheelchairs. The device aims to prevent injuries by ensuring a user’s feet remain securely positioned, even on uneven terrain.
On campus, she’s assisted Dr. Louis DiBerardino, associate professor of mechanical engineering, with an innovative marker less motion system to capture human movement data. For her honors capstone, she developed a partial weight-bearing assistive device for a shoe to measure weight distribution and assist lower-limb recovery.
Looking ahead, Madison hopes to work in research and development within the private sector.
“The best feeling would be to see a device I helped design help people, whether in a hospital or out in public,” she says. “That would be so great.”
