About

Andrew “Drew” McPherson is a current Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley in Mechanical Engineering in The Embodied Dexterity Group as a Chancellor, Dolores Zohrab Liebmann, and the National Science Foundation Fellow. Drew’s research focuses on the design and evaluation of both active and passive assistive grasping devices for people with loss of hand function. He is also the board chair and co-founder of AbilityHacks, a nonprofit which brings together community members with disabilities and volunteers to teach and build solutions to disability-related challenges. Drew’s passion for creating assistive technology stems from his own experience of becoming paralyzed. While at Berkeley, Drew earned his BS and MS in mechanical engineering, taught as a lecturer on upper extremity prosthetics and orthotics, and served as a Design Fellow in the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation. He is most passionate about empowering those experiencing disability-related limitations to create solutions to live their lives to the fullest.