PSYONIC moving headquarters to San Diego, California
12 years ago Whitney Akhtar and I moved from Chicago to Champaign so that I could start an MD/PhD program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Thinking we would be here for 8 years before I started residency, we decided to buy a house a year in. If there is one thing I've learned, it has been that it is impossible to predict the future. I started at U of I thinking I would graduate with a PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering and a medical degree, and instead I left with a PhD in Neuroscience and a startup company (PSYONIC). Yet, the goal has always been the same: to develop the most advanced prosthetic devices and make them more accessible than ever. Just the scale of this vision grew.
I recall having dinner with a medical school professor that told me, "Aadeel, as an MD you will make a great impact, but that impact will be very local. With PSYONIC, the impact you can make that is global." And with that, upon completing my PhD and M1, in 2017 I triggered a leave of absence from medical school to focus on PSYONIC full-time. We ended up staying in Champaign longer than the original 8 years and had 2 kids, but in that time we grew PSYONIC. And in September of last year launched our bionic Ability Hand nationwide, the fastest bionic hand in the world, the first with touch feedback, robust to impacts, and covered by Medicare. We even have Ability Hands now at Facebook (Meta) and soon NASA!
This achievement would not have been possible without the resources available to us in Champaign-Urbana. From the Neuroscience Program, to The Grainger College of Engineering, to the Illinois Technology Entrepreneur Center, iVenture Accelerator, Enterprise Works, University of Illinois Research Park, and many more, this community made PSYONIC and the Ability Hand what it is today.
And again, the goal remains the same, just the scale of this vision is growing. In August, PSYONIC will be moving to San Diego, California. After almost a year of planning and careful thought a lot of factors went into the decision. We are excited to work with the Naval Medical Center San Diego, UC San Diego
Orthopedics/Bioengineering, the Challenged Athletes Foundation, Loma Linda University School of Allied Health Professions, California State University, Dominguez Hills, and be a part of one of the largest medtech scenes in the world. We are excited to be advancing the field towards more biointegration with muscles, bones, and nerves; as well as create an Ability Leg that can do a triathlon. My ambition is to turn San Diego into the bionics capital of the world. Our new space in San Diego will be burgeoning with new bionic developments--it will be a bionics paradise. We are so excited for you all to see our space and what we will be creating.
I want to thank the Champaign-Urbana community for welcoming us way back when all of this was still an unrealized dream of mine and helping me to make it reality. I end this post with a recent picture of me on top of our house, a recreation of a picture of Whitney took soon after we had purchased it 11 years ago. We are ready to take on the world.
-Aadeel Akhtar, Founder & CEO