Graduate student David Sengeh gives back to Sierra Leone
David Moinina Sengeh considers himself a lucky man — and one who feels the importance of living every day to the fullest. During Sierra Leone’s fierce civil war, as bands of child-soldiers roamed the country committing murder and mayhem, he and his parents and four siblings escaped unharmed.But his family and friends were not entirely unscathed: Two uncles were brutally killed, and a stray bullet killed a girl who lived next door. “Anybody who lived in Sierra Leone got affected by the war,” says Sengeh, now a doctoral student at the MIT Media Lab.At the Media Lab, Sengeh is working to improve prosthetic limbs. In Sierra Leone — where amputations were used to instill fear during the civil war — many people don’t wear their prosthetic limbs because the hard plastic sockets don’t fit well. Sengeh has been working to produce custom-fitted, yet affordable, sockets.In fact, his innovations could improve...