Image courtesy of Tritons Prosthetic Society
At UC San Diego, mechanical engineering students seeking to apply their learning to projects first turn to the defense industry. In part, this is because UCSD currently offers no courses focusing on prosthetic design; many students do not know how to use mechanical design to improve people’s everyday lives. Recent graduate Kenny Huh identified this gap during his fourth year while looking into the school’s biomedical and robotics programs before establishing the Tritons Prosthetic Society in Spring Quarter 2025.
“I think prosthetics is something … [that is] definitely needed,” Huh said. “I think with robotics growing, there’s an opportunity to incorporate that into prosthetics, and it’s a way of helping people, too.”
When Huh graduated in June 2025, the club had one in-person general body meeting and a computer model design workshop under its belt. With increased attendance and a year-long plan for club activities, this year’s board hopes to build upon the foundation that Huh created to offer tangible opportunities to students interested in the field of prosthetic design.
“Our main goal is to build soft skills in club members and give them access to building a product they can be proud of,” Prosthetic Society co-President TJ Rothbauer said.
Rothbauer and other principal members hope to create opportunities outside of a lab or classroom for students to work on prosthetic-specific projects. This year, they established two teams for interested students.
The beginner team, which is dedicated to building basic skills in programs like Autodesk Fusion, is open to any students looking to learn more about prosthetic design.
Students with some previous knowledge and experience in prosthetic design can also join the flagship team, which is dedicated to making a physical prosthetic for competitions. In the fall, they research their perspective and approach. In the winter and spring, they design and showcase their own physical prosthetics.
To introduce students to the field of prosthetic design and help prepare members for this flagship project, Tritons Prosthetic Society is continuing its workshop programming from Spring 2025. Last year’s workshop introduced members to various components of building a prosthetic, such as EEG and EMG sensors and how they aim for device actuation, or making the prosthetic move.
Software lead and Vice President Emanoel Agbayani hopes these workshops will bring together students of all disciplines and skill levels in the club.
“I think engineering, tech majors are kind of like, even though we’re under the name of STEM, we barely know much about each other,” Agbayani said. In TPS, engineers from different disciplines are all needed.
“We have a software and hardware component,” Agbayani said. “Hardware is mainly for the engineers, so like mechanical and bioengineering. Our software is mainly for electrical engineers, any CS majors, and obviously, machine learning majors.”
TPS workshops cover skills for both the hardware and software components. The first workshop focuses on teaching the different online applications that could be used to program the device. The second workshop, coming up this week, looks at the construction and motor control of the prosthetic. In the final workshop, they will discuss actuation.
In order to observe a prosthetic in motion after all the online exercises, TPS needs to reach out to companies for materials. Agbayani explained that the club finances materials for its workshops and flagship project from sponsorships, which it can then keep.
The board members want the students to not only see their project come to fruition but to also establish a more active member base and a structured plan for future projects after they graduate. Rothbauer hopes that students can see the impact that building and designing prosthetics can have on the biomedical field and the people that could benefit from their efforts.
“The potential impact that the [prosthetics field] could have really drew me to it,” Rothbauer said. “It seems like such a promising field.”