11/26/2012
Jonathan Naber, of Waterloo IL, has been awarded a Marshall Scholarship. Each year, about 40 students from the United States are selected as Marshall Scholars for postgraduate study at a university in the United Kingdom. Naber is the third University of Illinios student in the last six years awarded this honor.
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Jonathan Naber, of Waterloo IL, has been awarded a Marshall Scholarship. Each year, about 40 students from the United States are selected as Marshall Scholars for postgraduate study at a university in the United Kingdom. Naber is the third University of Illinios student in the last six years awarded this honor.
“Jonathan is that special person who transformed the University in his time on our Urbana-Champaign campus," remarked University of Illinois President Robert Easter. "His passion, commitment, and creativity have raised the bar of excellence in the U of I’s already world-class College of Engineering.”
Illinois Chancellor Phyllis Wise echoed these sentiments, “I can state with certainty that Jonathan is an exemplary scholar and person of tremendous character with significant leadership skills… His appetite for social entrepreneurship has become an example to our students.”
While a fulltime undergraduate student at Illinois, Naber developed his vision of providing prosthetic arms for amputees who could not afford expensive devices. He spent countless hours experimenting and creating prototypes, gathering and managing a team, navigating regulations and submitting government paperwork to become a recognized 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, and garnering more than $140,000 in start-up funds. The result is Illini Prosthetic Technologies (IPT), an entity that is already providing artificial limbs to amputees in the developing world.
Currently Naber is working in Guatemala to further develop and test IPT’s prosthetic limbs and is creating connections to make Guatemala a production site of these prosthetic arms using locally available products.
Through the Marshall Scholarship, Naber plans to undertake an MSc in Public Health in Developing Countries at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a second MSc in Development Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science. After his studies in England, Naber envisions forming a new team and addressing some systemic failings in how amputees are cared for, as well as work to prevent future amputations.
Naber has won numerous awards through the College of Engineering, as well as the Lemelson-MIT Illinois student prize for being the most inventive student at Illinois. Naber was the first undergraduate to receive this award. Further, he received the nationally competitive Simon Fellowship for Noble Purposes in 2011 and earned a Whitaker International Fellow Grant to fund his current bioengineering research in Guatemala. Notably, he has donated over $40,000 in prize money to IPT.
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Contact: David Schug, director, National and International Scholarships Program, University of Illinois, 217/333-4710.
If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.