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When Emily Dinelli was growing up in West Texas, she had an aunt who took an active interest in the career choices of her nieces and nephews. Aunt Marcia encouraged all of them to think creatively about what they might want to do when they grew up and work hard towards their goals. Her aunt quickly noticed Dinelli had an early interest in math and art. As an engineer herself, she thought Dinelli might be interested in a field that embraced problem solving, art, and science. The field that came to her mind was prosthetics.
Dinelli decided to check it out. She reached out to Scottish Rite for Children, a Dallas hospital, and arranged to shadow a prosthetist. “I could see some really amazing stuff going on, a blend of science and art,” she says. One device that caught her attention was a prosthesis made for a child who had undergone a rotationplasty – a procedure that turned an ankle joint into a sort of knee for children born with a congenitally shortened femur. This solution was creative and the joint could be fitted with a prosthetic device. Dinelli was astonished by the way the process provided added mobility. She was hooked.
To lay the groundwork for a career in prosthetics, Dinelli majored in mechanical engineering at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas. While still a student, Dinelli took advantage of opportunities to work alongside classmates to design prosthetic devices to meet specific needs of individuals with limb loss. As a part of two design courses, Dinelli and her classmates developed two prosthetic devices that enabled individuals with upper limb amputations to lift weights.
While still in college, Dinelli also was exposed to the research side of healthcare. One of her professors “really took me under his wing and allowed me to be creative with my research ideas,” she says. He gave Dinelli opportunities to conduct research and speak at conferences. She further expanded her knowledge with a summer internship at Baylor College of Medicine where she worked on the engineering side of the prosthetics department.
When she graduated in 2018, Dinelli had a choice to make: Did she want to design and engineer prosthetic devices or did she want to work with patients? She chose patients, which meant she needed a master’s degree and residencies in prosthetics and orthotics. Dinelli attended the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas for her master’s degree. She completed her prosthetics residency at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago in 2020 where she worked with Levi Hargrove, PhD, in the Regenstein Center for Bionic Medicine.
Dinelli was a certified prosthetist and orthotist by the time her residencies ended, but after “a lot of soul searching and praying,” she decided to pursue a doctorate degree at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. There she met Allen Heinemann, PhD, who is Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Emergency Medicine and Medical Social Sciences and Director of the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research (CROR) at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. Heinemann has been instrumental in creating outcome measures for patients’ function and satisfaction with their prosthetic and orthotic devices. “I was very impressed with his work and definitely wanted to work with him,” she says.
Dinelli, 27, is currently taking classes while working part-time at a private Chicago orthotics and prosthetics clinic while also doing research for a CROR study on employment for people with physical disabilities. She can’t quite envision what her future holds, but for now she is very happy with her mix of patient care and healthcare research. “I love patients. Working with them fills my bucket and is a lot of fun,” she says. “But research is so important in serving patients on a larger scale. I think I would love a job where I could do both one day. I love the harmony of clinical care and research.”