“MIT has so many resources and so many opportunities that you can be here for years and years and not even scratch the surface,” she says. Even though she considered other schools, MIT stood out as an obvious choice. She went on to work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but after two years, she started to feel an itch to get her PhD. When Du finished her master’s in mechanical engineering in 2016, she was ready to experience something outside of academia. She even turned a role on Discovery’s reality TV show “BattleBots” into an opportunity to inspire kids about engineering. Throughout her time here (Du also earned her undergraduate and master’s degree at MIT), she has found ways to make building things and engineering more accessible to others - from creating a student makerspace to teaching high school girls. She also shares her love of engineering in her pursuits outside of the lab. Now, as a fourth-year PhD student, Du is channeling her passion for building things into designing a prosthetic ankle that is readily accessible to people of all sizes, since current commercial designs are only suited for tall individuals. (Disney’s “eerily organic-looking” Spiderman stunt robot is a particular favorite of hers.) She participated in a robotics team in high school and has drawn inspiration from Disney movies and entertainment for many years, especially as their humanoid animatronic technology has grown. Sitting there and coding or doing math all day was never what I wanted,” Du says. “I loved building things and having tangible hardware to work on. Her affinity for making started at a young age. “The best feeling is when I get to go into a shop and make some parts, or order some parts - and the day they come in is like Christmas,” she says. She spends her work day in lab designing and fabricating prosthetics, and devotes her free time to personal projects in the MIT MakerWorkshop or inspiring other students to try their hands at engineering. Lucy Du, a doctoral student in the MIT Media Lab, has a remarkable passion for making. Graduate student Lucy Du designs novel prosthetics and seeks to inspire others to pursue engineering. Credit: Gretchen Ertl Making Her Way Through MIT PhD student Lucy Du is a founding member and leader of the MIT MakerWorkshop, which has been much more than a workplace for Du, who also uses it as a hub for connections and inspiration.
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