IMA Alum Yuxiang Chen (Tish ’25) was featured in an NYU news article about 7 New Grads on the Research Projects That Launched Their Careers.

Here’s the interview of Yuxiang with his project partner Jackson Kollmorgen (Tandon ’25).

Cycling for Inclusivity 

Jackson: The one-line description of our project is, we’re creating a modular, adaptive mountain bike frame for wheelchair users. Mountain bikes are specifically designed for riding off-road on dirt trails. It’s more of an extreme sport.  This is not a traditional bike that you pedal with your legs—it’s a hand pedal bike.

This is a niche product for a smaller group of people, so most adaptive mountain bikes are welded together on a specialty basis. That makes them very expensive and non-adjustable. What’s different about our design is that it’s open-source and modular. It’s also a lot cheaper to manufacture, so it brings the price down 30 to 40 percent compared to other competitors in the space.

Yuxiang: I saw the very first prototype of Project Mjolnir on the floor in my department. I really liked the idea of fabrication. I knew the professors, so I just asked, how can I contribute? 

The design for the bike has been stabilized for a year already, so we’ve been looking at next steps. Our advisors, Noel Joyce and Phil Caridi, proposed developing a way to monitor the performance of the bike. Then, we can use the data to customize the bike to fit the needs of different kinds of people with different kinds of physical abilities. And I’ve been developing an electronic module, a sensor to gather this data. We call this design research. 

A Team Sport

Jackson: I’m a transfer student. Even at my previous institution, I knew I wanted to be involved with this project. And then at NYU, when I found out it was a small team, it also felt like an opportunity to work more closely with professors, and be more directly involved with the project. This is a project that Noel started literally by himself, and he knew Phil, and Phil is also a mountain biker. And so they’re really deeply invested in it.

Yuxiang: Because we are working on two different teams within the project, we always have this little sharing session in our weekly meetings to talk about what we did over the last week. We give comments and advice to each other in that session. It’s definitely important to learn what other people are working on. And potentially, you will find something that interests you and that you can contribute to. Research has been a new thing to me. I’m definitely looking into a research career now.

The Long and Winding Road

Jackson: When I was in middle school, a teacher told me, “I think you should be an engineer.” He didn’t really explain why. I just always assumed it was because I was good at math. But engineering, or any other career, is about how you apply your skills. The process of design prototyping for the bike has taught me that I need to make a more concerted effort to work hands-on. Putting things into practice is different from just taking classes, because in a real-world design process, things are not always straightforward, and it’s not guaranteed that your efforts are headed in the right direction.

This experience has also shaped my interest within mechanical engineering. I like the designing for the disability community aspect of it. It’s something I can get really passionate about, because it feels like I’m making a difference. My next step is a one-year program at Cornell in design and manufacturing where I’m looking to specialize in ergonomics and adaptive design, and also sustainable manufacturing. Then I hope to go into the industry.