First place in the 2009 Thomas J. and Sandra H. Malott Innovation Award in Mechanical Engineering has been awarded to the "Leg Up Design" team for their development of a custom prosthetic leg for a 12-year-old boy from Martinsville, Indiana. It was one of 25 team-based projects showcasing a semester's work of creativity, design, prototyping and testing in the ME463 senior design class. Team members David Armbrust, Christine DeWert, Dan Gorsky, Brian Schoolcraft, and Tommy Thigpen received a joint cash prize of $1500, which they donated to the boy and his family to support improvements to the prosthesis over the next two years.

More detail on the design and design process

See project summaries for the four finalists

The award judging panel consisted of Michael A. Brammer Sr., retired president and CEO of Carlisle Industrial Brake & Motion Control Industries Inc.; Ken C. Decker, an intellectual property law and patent attorney affiliated with Botkin & Hall LLP in South Bend; Han-Sheng Chuang, an ME Ph.D. student who holds six patents in microfluidics and also won fourth- and second-place awards in the 2008 and 2009 Burton D. Morgan Business Plan Competition, respectively; Early B. Denison, a retired senior engineer for Shell Oil Co.; Sally E. Kay, formerly with Dow Chemical Co. and GlaxoSmithKline and currently serving as the Cincinnati Chapter president for the Product Development Management Association; Thomas J. Malott, currently with Lutron, Inc. and previously president and CEO of Siemens Energy & Automation; and Robertson H. Short, president of R.H. Short Associates Inc.  Brammer, Decker, Dennison, Malott, and Short received mechanical engineering degrees from Purdue .