Portland Magazine
Alumni
June 9, 2020
By Roya Ghorbani-Elizeh '11
ENGINEERING ALUM Evan Fontaine ’18, ’19 works in the prostheses lab at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) with a clear mission in mind: to make better prosthetics for growing and active children. Case in point: he and his team are working to set up a young patient to throw the first pitch at the National Softball Championship.
Fontaine is both senior research assistant to OHSU trauma surgeon Dr. Albert Chi and mentor to four Donald P. Shiley School of Engineering seniors.
“My projects and research are very important to me because we are aiming to bring bionics down to an approachable level, both in price and complication, so that the average person could use the device in their day-to-day lives,” Fontaine says. “Being able to give someone some of their dexterity back, or enable them with it for the first time, is really an amazing experience.”
Fontaine is also currently working on a cable-driven hand system—a myoelectric prosthetic hand—that has six degrees of control, one for each finger and two for the thumb. This prosthetic, which uses nerve-reading circuitry, will have a variety of grip types and motions for the user.
“I love that my job has a fantastic mix of theory and practice as well as the freedom that this design process gives me,” Fontaine says. “It’s very satisfying to work for a positive goal instead of a bottom line.”
This past semester the four Shiley School of Engineering students worked in Dr. Chi’s lab for their senior capstone project. The team—Kristen LeBar ’20, Jacob Apenes ’20, Alexis Peltier ’20, and Claire McKinnon ’20—worked to develop and design a 3D-printed lower arm myoelectric prosthesis that will be given to a specific user at the end of the project.
“This kind of project allows us to apply what we have learned in the classroom and to grow as engineers, team members, and people,” Peltier says. “It has given us a better idea of where our interests lie for a successful and meaningful engineering career.”
Fontaine and Dr. Chi met regularly with the student team to go over iterations of their design, ensuring all com-ponents were compatible and capable of performing the required tasks.
“It’s been fantastic working with the University of Portland students. They are so inspiring and really push and elevate the designs,” Dr. Chi says. “We are all learning together on how to bridge patient clinical care and engineering.”
A self-described inventor and “tinkerer,” Fontaine has always enjoyed taking things apart and putting them back together. He now finds himself doing just this on a big and important scale. In the future, Fontaine plans to continue tinkering and to one day start his own company.
“I feel like I have a lot to give to the world in the bionics field.”
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