by Alex Porter ’13

After school, senior Craig Weiss gets in his car and heads to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (APL). Weiss is one of many students involved in Sherwood’s internship program, and spends his time at the lab working on writing code for a prosthetic arm that is in development.

During the drive to Laurel, Weiss describes how he became involved with the famous university’s laboratory. Unaware of APL’s existence before, he discovered it at a science convention with his dad. Although it was originally described as being for Howard County students, Weiss applied for the internship that he saw and was chosen.

Upon entering the campus building, all entrants are checked by security. While Weiss works on an unclassified medical project, many of APL’s projects are government projects for agencies like NASA and the Department of Defense that are classified as secret.

Weiss works on the Modular Prosthetic Limb, a new prosthetic arm for amputees, like those wounded in war, and paralysis victims. It can be used as either a prosthetic able to be attached wherever the arm was cut, or as an entirely separate arm mounted elsewhere to aid the paralyzed. Weiss participates in writing code for the eye-tracking device that identifies what the arm should grasp, while others program how the limb will interpret brain signals for how to move it. He works on virtual representations and simulations of the arm for further development at a lower cost than building new ones each time.

“Craig’s essentially writing software for some of the experimental work going on at Johns Hopkins Hospital,” said his mentor, Brock. The work he has contributed to was featured on “60 Minutes,” and has been used in other research at the University of Chicago, the University of Pittsburgh, and the California Institute of Technology. Different groups have their own ideas for what they want the Modular Prosthetic Limb to do, but Weiss and the team’s current goals are manipulating two limbs at once and more smoothly integrating the arm into moving through physical space as well as it does virtually. “In the real world, [it] is a big challenge,” said Brock.

Down the hall from Weiss and his computer rests a collection of mechanical body parts. The “Terminator”-like appendages offer a full range of movement, lifting, rotating and bending at joints. Photography is not allowed in this lab, but the ability and detail of the limb is astounding.

Weiss sees his internship as beneficial toward his future career and studies. He has gained experience in a wide range of science fields that he thinks will continue to benefit him in his eventual computer science or physics career. “The information [I learn] at APL should be applicable to many other programming positions,” Weiss attested, a career field that he says is very flexible.

Weiss finds his internship and helping others to be rewarding in a world that could be more giving. “At the same time knowing that there are a lot of brilliant minds out there, who only wish to propel our society in a positive direction, is truly humbling.”