Growing up, Jesse Martin ’26 couldn’t easily pick up a big mixing bowl when helping in the kitchen or pull along a suitcase during a family vacation. Born with amniotic band syndrome, nearly all her fingers are shortened. Prosthetics were “insanely expensive”—so she learned to adapt without them. Now, as president of UMD's chapter of the Accessible Prosthetics Initiative, she’s leading efforts to build low-cost, 3D-printed limbs and digits.
Inspired by UMD’s selection of the U.S. Constitution as this year’s First Year Book, California-based muralist and street artist Corie Mattie ’12, known as the “L.A. Hope Dealer,” worked with students from Honors Humanities to design and create a mobile mural called “Terps Take Action.”
Built on Nvidia AI infrastructure through its Academic Grant Program, the project integrates breakthroughs in trustworthy machine learning, sequential decision-making and generative AI to create robotic systems that can reason, adapt and act in ever-changing domestic environments.
