To celebrate Elon University’s Spring Undergraduate Research Forum on April 29, and to celebrate Undergraduate Research Week, Today at Elon is highlighting several students presenting their research at the annual campus tradition.
As Cassidy Parrish ’26 was thinking about a project for her ‘Research Methods for Engineering” course, her father, who has struggled with hand pain and mobility for years, came to mind.
“It’s gotten a lot worse as he’s gotten older to the point where his fingers are triggered in certain positions, so it’s made it difficult to hold things. He still wants to help with dishes but has broken a ton of casserole dishes just from it slipping out of his hands,” said Parrish with a laugh. “I knew I wanted to do something that would help improve his quality of life.”
Parrish, an engineering major, and her mentor Jonathan Su, associate professor of engineering, began researching what they could do to help, discovering that soft robotics can be a tool for rehabilitation. They found a wearable robotic glove already on the market and adapted it to her father’s hand. The glove has individual fingers that can be placed on the hand with different settings that fill it with air, helping the hand expand and flex.
“The device is helping a little bit, at least with some of that triggering because the biggest thing is if you don’t move it, you lose it,” said Parrish. “When his doctor was pushing on his hand, he said my dad was still feeling some pain with the fingers, and apparently, according to the doctor, since you can still feel that pain, that means, there’s room for the fingers to go back further and straighter.”
As her research has developed, Parrish said her father is proud and enthusiastically checks in on her work.
“He’s loved being part of this to help in any capacity that he can,” she said. “It really helped me keep my passion for it because I knew I’m working on this to help my dad.”
Parrish will be presenting a poster at the Spring Undergraduate Research Forum on April 29, an Elon tradition where hundreds of students present their work throughout the year. It will be the first time Parish is presenting.
“I’m excited to get to share it with others and just see what others have to say about it,” said Parrish. “It’s a really cool experience and I like that Elon offers the opportunity to do research in this way. At some universities, you’re just tacking your name onto something a professor is doing, but this is really your research.”
Originally from Portsmouth, Virginia, Parrish always knew she wanted to help people and study engineering. But the Pixar movie “Big Hero 6” sparked her interest in soft robotics, while B’Elanna Torres, the chief engineer of the USS Voyager on “Star Trek Voyager” served as an inspirational figure.
“It was cool to see not only someone who was powerful and an engineer but also a woman in STEM,” said Parrish.
As a tour guide, Parrish shares her love for engineering with prospective students and now, after doing this research, she is more confident in her ability to take on big challenges.
“It’s cool to see what you’re capable of on your own, that’s something I’ve always struggled with,” she said. “Engineering is hard and going into a male-dominated field is hard too. So (I know) I am capable of doing this.”