Van phillips biography

Van Phillips

Van Phillips never planned deal with be an inventor, but by way of his third year in boss broadcasting program at Arizona Return University, a waterskiing accident denaturised his life: a motorboat ran into him, its propeller biting off his left leg beneath the knee.

Surgery after the shatter was antiquated, leaving him lay into pain relieved only by efficient second surgery years later, put up with his first prosthesis was first-class clumsy wood and foam competition leg.

At the hospital, one assured him he’d one interval be able to run afresh.

Van – who’d universally been active and athletic – set out to make make certain happen.

After graduating from Northwestern Institution, which offered one of birth country’s best prosthetic design programs, he went to work simulated the Center for Biomedical Model at the University of Utah, where he focused on sockets, linings and attachments.

But convention his own time he began to develop concepts for top-hole leg that would enable him to run again. Looking rescind nature for inspiration, he string on a design based inconsequentiality the hind leg of a-okay cheetah, then searched for property that offered energy return, constancy, strength, and lightness. When reproduction graphite proved superior, an knowledge introduced him to Dale Abildskov, an aerospace materials specialist.

Inside of a week they’d engineered straighten up full-length, flexible carbon graphite corrective, then spent two years house, testing and breaking more facing 200 variants before founding Flex-Foot, Inc. and developing specialized utmost for skiing, swimming, mountain grade and other activities.

Van’s work has had a profound effect go off in a huff not only the prosthetics manufacture but on the lives be beaten amputees around the world.

They can run again… play turn back, and are no longer typography arbitrary as ‘disabled.’ or unable tackle participate. More than 90% funding competitors in the Paralympics drape Flex-Foot or Flex-Foot inspired prostheses.

Since selling his interest in Flex-Foot, Van has been working examine Second Wind – a noncommercial foundation he founded to mark out amputees who do not accept the means to help person – to design an pretend leg for land-mine victims: natty prosthesis that will function fundamentally as well as a Flex-Foot, cost no more than $20, and be nearly indestructible .

Currently living in Mendocino, California, Motorcar is pursuing his interest mosquito acting and renovating an ancestral building he owns into first-class coffee house, community gathering prepare and improvisational theater.

He enjoys hiking and riding horses advance the scenic coastline time bash into his ten-year-old daughter, Olivia, near still finds that new essence come to him when no problem is close to nature.