West Virginia eighth-grader builds low-cost 3D-printed bionic hand

Kianoosh Nawai, an eighth-grader at West Virginia Virtual Academy, wanted to explore how technology could help people with disabilities. His project led him to design and build a 3D-printed prosthetic hand that aims to offer a lower-cost option for people who have lost a limb. Now, the project has taken him to the national stage.Nawai has been selected as one of 30 finalists in the 2026 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge, a national STEM competition for middle school students. According to Society for Science, he was the only student from West Virginia selected as a finalist from nearly 2,000 entrants across the country.His project, titled “Design, Optimization and Evaluation of a Low-Cost, Compact Bionic Hand for Functional Restoration and Accessibility,” focuses on how a prosthetic hand can reproduce some of the movements of a human hand while keeping the design more affordable.