When Dr. Aadeel Akhtar was seven years old, he visited Karachi, Pakistan—his parents’ hometown—and met a young girl his age who was missing her right leg and using a tree branch as a crutch . That encounter planted a seed that would eventually grow into a mission: to build affordable, advanced bionic limbs for amputees worldwide .
Today, Akhtar is the founder and CEO of PSYONIC, a Silicon Valley-based robotics company that has developed the Ability Hand—a bionic prosthetic that moves all five fingers, is the fastest on the market, impact-resistant, and provides users with a sense of touch .
From Academia to Entrepreneurship
Akhtar earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and an M.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . His original plan was to remain in academia—working at a hospital lab, seeing patients once a week, and building prosthetics on the side . That trajectory changed dramatically during a 2014 trip to Ecuador, when a patient named Juan used an early prototype to make a pinch with his left hand for the first time in 35 years .
“[Juan] told us that he felt as though a part of him had come back,” Akhtar recalled. “That’s when I realized that if I stay in academia, this just ends up as a journal paper. If we want everyone to feel the same way that Juan did, we had to commercialize this tech” .
Global Recognition and Impact
PSYONIC’s Ability Hand is now covered by Medicare and is being used by humans and robotics companies globally—including NASA, Meta, Mercedes, and Google . In 2021, Akhtar was named one of MIT Technology Review’s top 35 Innovators Under 35 and America’s Top 50 Disruptors by Newsweek . In 2024, he appeared on Shark Tank, securing a three-shark deal for $1 million .
Through PSYONIC’s Ability Fund, the company works with the Range of Motion Project to provide prosthetics to those who cannot afford them in Guatemala and Ecuador—staying true to the mission that began with a young girl in Karachi .
