Founder and director of the Human Engineering Research Laboratories (HERL), Rory Cooper
One of the University of Pittsburgh’s own will have his name listed among other pioneering, world renown innovators such as Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison. The School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS) distinguished professor and founder and director of the Human Engineering Research Laboratories (HERL), Rory Cooper, will be one of 16 new inductees into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) as part of their 50th year celebration.
Cooper, who holds 25 U.S. patents, is being recognized for his innovations in manual and electronic wheelchair technology. His advancements have proven to be breakthroughs for people with disabilities in finding independence in their daily lives and becoming more integrated into society. He and the other award winners will be honored at a gala at The Anthem in Washington, D.C., on October 26, 2023.
An Unexpected Trajectory
A lifelong tinkerer, problem solver and athlete, Cooper joined the U.S. Army after high school to leave his small California hometown and see the world. His time in the Army was cut short, however, when a bus collided into him as he was on a bicycle ride while stationed in Germany. The spinal cord injury left him paralyzed from the waist down at the age of 20, yet it also set him on a path to becoming one of the most influential leaders in the field of bioengineering and assistive technology over the next four decades.
Even as he stayed in Germany to undergo initial rehabilitation, he was working on ways to improve his heavy and unwieldy hospital-issued wheelchair. “When I got injured, wheelchairs unfortunately had not changed much since World War II,” he remembers. Cooper had been active in running for the Army and was used to putting himself through strenuous routines, so he was determined to improve his own health, function and mobility by redesigning the devices he was given.
Once back in California he pursued engineering degrees and earned a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1989. He credits his time in academics for learning how to be an inventor. “It allowed me to expand my knowledge,” he says, “and made it possible to make some broader contributions and solve some really difficult problems.”
His continued passion for athletics was channeled into designing advanced, lightweight racing wheelchairs and becoming a world class athlete. Cooper represented the United States and won a bronze medal in the 4×400-meter wheelchair relay at the 1988 Seoul Paralympics in addition to winning more than 200 medals in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office included Cooper in its Inventor Collectible Card Series
The Human Engineering Research Laboratories
By 1994, Cooper had left California for Pittsburgh and founded HERL, a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the University of Pittsburgh and the UPMC Health System that is considered the nation’s leading assistive technology research laboratory.
The lab in the Bakery Square complex is a short distance from Pitt’s Oakland campus. Cooper designed it to be a “soup to nuts” facility where ideas not only become reality, but are implemented into clinical practice. It includes an 11,000 square foot prototyping facility, utilizing state of the art technology to support the design, fabrication and other technical aspects of the rehabilitation and assistive technology research projects underway at HERL. Students and researchers can design and engineer components and devices found nowhere else and put the prototypes through an array of standardized technical and human testing to meet national and international standards.
With all his accomplishments, Cooper says that the research and people of HERL are what he’s most proud of. “It’s the engine that’s fueled our research and created our inventions. I’m equally proud of the people who have contributed to our research, my colleagues, our staff and of the students we’ve trained and the people who have participated in our research. They’re just as important as everybody else, because without their contributions to what ideas are needed and challenges they’re facing, we wouldn’t be able to succeed.”
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Published February 1, 2023