As a Crieff schoolgirl, Caitlin Edgar was a gifted a book by her grandmother about soldiers and civilians injured in Afghanistan.
It was a weighty read for the Morrison’s Academy pupil but Caitlin was already fascinated by how science and engineering could help casualties.
She was inspired by the stories of medicine on the front line. Surgeons helping rebuild blasted hands and enabling amputees to walk again.
Now Caitlin, 26, is a biomedical engineer whose work emulates the heroes she read of in A Heavy Reckoning.
A prosthetic knee joint she has designed could soon transform lives of children across the world who have lost limbs to bombs, disasters, accidents and birth defects.
Among those set to benefit are kids injured in the 2023 Turkey earthquake and road collision victims in Cambodia.
How Caitlin Edgar went from schoolgirl to biomedical engineer
A PhD student at Imperial College London, Caitlin is part of the Centre for Paediatric Blast Injury Studies established with Save the Children.
Her prosthetic is being trialled in the UK for use in what she calls low resource environments.
And it all started with that gift from her biology teacher grandmother, Mary Leitch, as she was considering her next steps after Morrison’s Academy.
She says: “I’d just read the book that my granny got me, A Heavy Reckoning by Emily Mayhew, who is the historian in residence in our bioengineering department at Imperial.
“It was all about from point of injury in Afghanistan for military men through rehabilitation and prosthetic rehabilitation.
“The department of bioengineering at Imperial was at the forefront of the all the research there and I was just completely sold.
“It was such an interesting mix of medicine and engineering.
“I’m very lucky that I actually now work with Emily Mayhew, who wrote the book, and that was very much a pinch me moment!”
Working with Paralympian injured in Afghanistan
Caitlin lived near Crieff until she moved to London to study for her degree in bioengineering at Imperial.
She was then awarded a research placement with Paralympian Dave Henson, who lost both legs to an IED in Afghanistan.
Her work with him on amputee biomechanics led to her own masters project developing her paediatric prosthetic knee.
She explains: “I’m designing a new affordable prosthetic knee joint for children in low resource environments.
“That is either conflict zones, post-conflict zones, low to middle income countries, or disaster affected areas.
“So potentially earthquake affected areas, such as recently in Turkey and Syria.”
Prosthetics currently available to these children are mostly from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Building a knee that grows with the child
Caitlin says: “This is a really good basic solution but it was designed in the 1980s so we really need to improve upon that and bring up the quality of life for children in these environments.”
Key to her design in the tiny (for children weighing up to 30kg) and mini (up to 45kg) versions of her knee joint is flexibility to grow with the child.
The prosthetics also need components which are easy to source and repair.
And they need to provide stability for challenging environments.
Caitlin says: “We want to ensure access to higher functioning technology so these children can do more in their daily lives; different activities, climb stairs easier, walk faster, play more easily with other children, access education.
“One of the features we focus on is stability. In low resource environments you often have a lot of debris, uneven ground and you need a really stable knee joint. So this one is more stable.
“It also has features for improving walking speed and is adjustable with growth. So the knee itself has the capacity to grow in height by about two centimetres.”
Meeting the children she is helping
Caitlin has worked with NGOs and clinicians in the countries likely to use her product to ensure it is suitable and sustainable.
“We’ve looked at how we can design it to fit in with the environment so it is easily repairable, really durable, using parts that are accessible globally. Not really complex parts you can only manufacture in the UK. That wouldn’t be useful if the supply chain was to break down.”
Perhaps most importantly, Caitlin has spoken to the children themselves.
She has visited both Cambodia and Turkey to aid her research into what kids need and want from their prosthetics.
“We’re passionate about providing a voice to children with disabilities. We don’t want to be making decisions based on proxy information from other stakeholders.
Returning to Morrison’s Academy
“We need to listen to the children themselves because they are the ones experiencing the disability but they also have the capacity to call for actionable change.”
It’s also crucial, she says, that biomedical engineering recognises children are not just small adults.
“We can’t just scale down solutions and make smaller versions of adults ones.
“We need to tackle this as a distinct issue and provide tailored solutions and we need to do this across medicine and engineering.”
Caitlin returned to Morrison’s Academy earlier this month to help inspire future scientists.
She was among guest speakers and demonstrators at a STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) event hosted by the school with the charity SmartSTEMs.
She says: “My STEM journey began at Morrison’s Academy, and it was wonderful to return to speak at their recent STEM outreach day.
“Throughout my education and PhD journey I have been primarily inspired by the people I meet and their dedication to positive change.
“If in doubt get in contact with the person who inspires you; in my experience just asking the question can open doors you didn’t even know existed!”
Conversation