Elena García Armada

Garcia cofounded Marsi Bionics in 2013 as a spin-off of CAR. It builds adjustable paediatric exoskeletons that incorporate small motors to mimic muscle movements and provide the person with the strength to walk.

In 2009, Garcia met Daniela, a six-year-old girl who had become tetraplegic as a result of a traffic accident. Garcia became determined to engineer paediatric robotic exoskeletons, which were not available in medicine at this time. The goal of these exoskeletons was to provide gait assistance to contribute to the rehabilitation of injured children or children suffering from degenerative neuromuscular diseases.

Elena Garcia Armada (b. 1971 Valladolid, Spain) is a Spanish researcher, roboticist and business founder who has conducted extensive research on prosthetic exoskeletons to aid people in walking.

Elena Garcia Armada was born in Valladolid, Spain in 1971. She received a doctorate in robotic engineering in 2002 from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and began a career in industry-orientated robotics. She began work at the Center for Automation and Robotics, (CAR) CSIC-UPM, as a postdoctoral research fellow. She Received her PHD in “Optimizing the speed and stability of legged robots in natural environments”. She completed her training at the Leg Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.