On a warm spring evening in her Centennial Court residence hall room at Kent State University, Yariselle Andujar describes the moment everything clicked. She was a high school student in an AVID class in Cleveland when her teacher played a video about college — and something lit up inside her. Not just about higher education, but about what was possible.
That instinct for possibility has defined her life ever since. Now 19 and a first-year student in Kent State’s College of Aeronautics and Engineering — pursuing industrial engineering technology
— Andujar is already a mentor, an innovator and a humanitarian.
She is also one of the founding members of a student-led program that has delivered 3D-printed prosthetic limbs to more than 50 children in Ecuador.
A Spark in the Science Center
The project started in 2022 at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, where Andujar and fellow student Daniela Valentina Moreno Machuca were part of a FIRST Robotics team — the Argonauts, Team 8222. Working under the guidance of Timothy Hatfield, the team’s robotics leader, the two students had noticed something remarkable: the same 3D-printing technology they were using to build affordable robot parts for competition could be used to create prosthetic limbs.
The math was striking. A commercially manufactured prosthetic hand or arm for a child can cost between $5,000 to $10,000, and children outgrow them. With 3D printing, the same device could be produced for as little as $55 to $60. When a child grows, a new one can simply be printed.
“Seeing the small things that they ask for — like being able to eat or wipe themselves — we don’t understand how important that is for someone missing that in their life.”
What began as a high school robotics idea quickly evolved into a full humanitarian program in partnership with Med Access International, a nonprofit medical organization. In the summer of 2025, Andujar and five fellow Cleveland Metropolitan School District students traveled to Ecuador for nearly two weeks, where they fitted 20 children with prosthetic hands and arms at a local hospital — serving patients alongside doctors, assisting in triage and helping youth shadow physicians during surgeries.
The group also trained students and teachers at a technical college in Ecuador on 3D printing and met with the Ministry of Health for the Republic of Ecuador to share their work and advocate for STEM education.
Now a Mentor, Looking Ahead
Andujar has since transitioned from student participant to program mentor. She recently helped lead an interview process to select six high school students — drawn from Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School and other Cleveland-area schools — for the program’s upcoming trip to Ibarra, Ecuador, planned for June 22-July 2.
The group will once again work alongside Med Access International physicians, measuring and fitting new patients, completing pre-orders for returning patients and giving students the chance to shadow doctors across medical specialties. Among the adults joining the trip is Andujar’s mother, Aileen Roman, who has been embedded in the program since Andujar was in high school and serves as a parent ambassador for both the Great Lakes Science Center and the Argonauts robotics team.
The team is also working on a new prosthetic model for a returning patient named Samantha — a young woman they first served on a previous trip and have continued to support with updated devices. The newest design features a Japanese-style arm fitted with a custom sleeve socket, refined after the previous model did not perform as expected.
Finding a Home at Kent State
Choosing Kent State was a process of falling in love — slowly, then all at once. Andujar first visited with a school group, then returned for a 90-minute campus tour with her mother. Each visit deepened her connection to the university’s community and campus culture.
“Every time I came back, I fell in love with the campus more and more,” she said. “The community here is great.”
As a first-year student focused on establishing her academic footing, Andujar has focused on getting settled. She worked briefly in a campus virtual reality lab and visited the university’s combat robotics team. She plans to deepen her campus involvement in the coming year — and she’s already discovered that Kent State may offer resources to advance her humanitarian work.
Andujar was excited to learn that the College of Aeronautics and Engineering — her own college — has a design lab equipped with 3D printers that students may be able to access. She had previously looked into the printers at the university library but found the machines smaller than what she needed for prosthetic components.
“I didn’t even know there was a 3D printer [in the engineering building],” she said, eyes lighting up with the possibility.
A Passion That Keeps Growing
When asked what drives her to give so much of herself to this work, Andujar pauses. Then she speaks with quiet certainty.
“I think it gives me hope for the world,” she said. “I have this passion for helping people. When I’m there in the moment — during those long hours working with these patients — there’s this adrenaline. This feeling of need. I just fell in love with the original concept that we created, and then it became something 10 times better.”
For Andujar, Kent State is not just the place where she is earning a degree. It is the launchpad for something much bigger — a life of engineering, service and impact that, at 19, is only just beginning.
