Dr. Tyler Clites - Build Human Cyborgs

 

"I build human cyborgs," says MIT researcher Tyler Clites. In his doctoral work, he designed a way to make prosthetic limbs that communicate sensations of joint position and movement directly to the nervous system. This involves a new way of performing amputation surgery and a robotic control system. It has been tried in 12 patients.

 

Tyler Clites builds human cyborgs. After graduating from Harvard in 2014 with a B.S. in Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering, Tyler earned his PhD in 2018 from the Harvard/MIT program in Health Sciences and Technology. As a postdoc in the Biomechatronics Group (Professor Hugh Herr, MIT Media Lab), his current research focuses on the development of novel techniques for limb amputation surgery, with the goal of improving the neural and mechanical interfaces between persons with amputation and their prosthetic devices. He is pursuing a career in academia, where he hopes to explore applications in which surgical and mechatronic design can be leveraged together in new bionic systems for physical rehabilitation and human augmentation.

 

His research in rehabilitation and augmentation technology is focused on synchronizing the efforts of surgeons and mechatronic engineers to enable co-development of body and machine, in pursuit of bionic performance that is superior to what is possible with mechatronics alone.

After graduating from Harvard in 2014 with a B.S. in Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering, Prof. Clites earned his Ph.D. in 2018 from the Harvard/MIT program in Health Sciences and Technology. He carried out his doctoral research in the Biomechatronics Group at the MIT Media Lab, where he led the development of the Agonist-antagonist Myoneural Interface (AMI), a novel technique for limb amputation surgery to improve the neural and mechanical interfaces between persons with amputation and their prosthetic devices.

Dr. Clites was named to the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 List in Healthcare, and was honored as one of the Boston Globe’s 2018 STAT Wunderkinds. His research has been featured at TED, on the front page of the Boston Globe, in the New York Times, and on 60 Minutes, Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, and CNN.

 

 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-clites-phd/

https://www.forbes.com/profile/tyler-clites/?sh=359f1b406e11 

https://leaps.org/heres-how-you-could-run-20-miles-per-hour-with-a-catch/

http://anatomics.seas.ucla.edu/people

https://www.media.mit.edu/people/clites/overview/

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.abg0656