David Moinina Sengeh

Sengeh was offered a scholarship to study in Norway, and joined the UWC Red Cross Nordic College in 2004.[3][4] His uncle was a surgeon.[5] He studied biomedical engineering at Harvard University. He researched aerosolised vaccines for tuberculosis and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 2010.[6][7] During his time at Harvard University, he was cofounder of Lebone Solutions, a start-up that developed inexpensive batteries from microbial fuel cells.[8] He was listed in the 2013 Wired magazine Smart List. Sengeh joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his postgraduate studies, working under the supervision of Hugh Herr.[9][10][11] He was inspired to work on prosthetics because he grew up surrounded by victims of civil war.[12][13] He used MRI to map amputee's limbs, then assessed where artificial materials could create pressure points, and used 3D printing to generate new sockets.[4][9] His prototypes were tested by veterans and amputees from the Boston Marathon bombing.[14] He was named as a TED fellow in 2014, delivering a talk entitled The sore problem of prosthetic limbs.[15][16] He was selected as one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2014.[17] He won the 2014 Lemelson–MIT Prize for his innovations in healthcare.[14] He was selected as one of Face2Face Africa's Young Africans Committed to Excellence.[18] He completed his PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2016.[5] After completing his PhD, Sengeh toured makerspaces in America talking about his work on prosthetics.[19]

During his PhD research, Sengeh founded the NGO Global Minimum Inc, a program that supports the Innovate Salone entrepreneurship program in Sierra Leone, Kenya and Cape Town.[20][21][22] He wanted to change 'aid to Africa' to 'Made in Africa'.[23] The "A De Mek Am" Innovate Salone program supports teams from secondary schools to develop solutions to local problems.[24] It was created in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab and MIT Public Service Center and modelled on the MIT innovation competitions.[25][24] Sengeh supported the winning student projects to travel to the United States, where they spoke at Maker Faire.[5] He supported Kelvin Doe, a thirteen year old inventor who had never left a ten-mile radius of his house in Sierra Leone, to join the MIT Visiting Practitioner's Program.[26][27] Sengeh became Kelvin Doe's mentor.[28] He returned to the TED stage in 2015, speaking to Kate Krontiris about innovation and inspiration.[29] He has spoken at the NextEinstein Forum.[30]

Sengeh was offered a position at IBM in Africa, working on data driven healthcare.[31] He worked with IBM Research in Nairobi, as well as in their newest lab in Johannesburg, designing and developing healthcare technologies in Africa.[32] There are fewer than 50 doctors for every hundred thousand citizens in Africa, so Sengeh is exploring the use of artificial intelligence.[32] He worked with Waheeda Banu Saib from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.[33] He partnered with Port Loko Health Management Team to design a web-based tool that allows districts to monitor Ebola.[34] He writes for HuffPost.[35]

In May 2018 Sengeh joined the Office of the President of Sierra Leone, working as chief innovation officer.[7] In 2019 he was named Minister of Education of Sierra Leone.[36] He ensured that each child in the Pujehun District had access to a laptop.[37] He spoke at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and was described as a trailblazer.[38][39] He is a prolific musician.[40]