PROFILE: Tish Scolnik

Natasha (Tish) Scolnik was a mechanical engineering student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) when she took a seminar course on wheelchair design for developing countries. Her instructor challenged the class to rethink wheelchairs for people needing to navigate rough terrain and long distances to work or school. Scolnik and her student colleagues examined those use criteria and quickly learned that conventional wheelchairs are heavy, hard to navigate, and expensive to fix. They decided to start from scratch, with a special goal of meeting the unmet needs of the disabled in the developing world....