Jon Naber, Ehsan Noursalehi, Adam Booher, and the entire Illini Prosthetic Technologies (IPT) team for their Social Entrepreneurship Award presented at the 2011 Innovation Celebration! This ceremony, which was held on February 24, 2011, recognized 8 individuals or groups that have utilized innovation, creativity, and leadership for an entrepreneurial endeavor aimed at bettering a community. The Social Entrepreneurship Award recognizes IPT as: “…individuals who have served as change agents in our community by incorporating innovative approaches, improving systems and processes, and creating sustainable solutions to reshape society and benefit humanity, successfully implementing entrepreneurial principles to address social concerns”.

IPT, which was started by Jon Naber (class of 2011) his sophomore year, aims at providing affordable prosthetic arms to amputees around the world. Aided by Jon’s receipt of the 2010 Lemelson MIT-Illinois Student Prize, the team was able to fund a summer trip to Guatemala so they could test their products on-site. The IPT Journal, published in Fall 2010 and found on their website, details more of the trials, accomplishments, and growth of the team. Please click here to learn more about IPT or here about the Innovation Celebration.

Jon is a student leader and iSA in our iCommunity, and a number of his teammates have been students in User Oriented Collaborative Design.