Ralf Hotchkiss is scheduled to take a trip to Nicaragua where he will pass on new wheelchair technologies to a technical high school in Leon.

As the co-founder and chief engineer of Whirlwind Wheelchair International, the SF State professor’s trip to Nicaragua this week is his first of his biyearly trips to developing countries. The purpose of his travels is to share his innovations of durable, easily repairable and cost efficient wheelchairs.

“One of our strategies as an organization is to reach more people than we have in the past,” said Whirlwind designer Alida Lindsley. “One of the ways of doing that is working with shops that have more capacity. We’re doing it to get the technology out to people who need it.”

The idea for the Whirlwind Wheelchair manifested in 1980 while Hotchkiss – who was paralyzed as a result of a motorcycle accident – observed conditions in Nicaragua’s capital city.

“I was visiting down there just months after their war ended, the place was still smoldering, literally,” he said. “I found many people had to share chairs. Crossing Managua the chair would often come back broken, or not at all.”

The problem in developing countries is that wheelchairs are often throwaways from the north, Hotchkiss said. “The secondhand chairs tend to break down in weeks or months of normal use over unpaved roads.”

When they do break down, parts are generally not available, he said.

“Whirlwind is teaching people how to make stuff out of their local materials,” said Honora Hunter, an occupational therapist who has taught programs with Hotchkiss in Nicaragua, Mexico, and Uganda. “A wheelchair that works for someone with an office-building job living in a condo isn’t going to work for someone living in the country.”

Since Whirlwind wheelchairs are made of steel, they can be fixed with any standard welding torch, while other wheelchairs are often made of aluminum or titanium, which require very specific torches to repair, she said.

Another problem is that American chairs use imperial fasteners, which are largely unavailable to the rest of the metric-using world, Hotchkiss said. “We’ve built prototypes both ways depending on where they’re going.”

Some of the newer Whirlwind designs feature a wider wheelbase for stability and all-terrain tires.

Unimpressed with the skinny front wheels found on many wheelchairs, Hotchkiss developed the Zimbabwe wheel, which is wider and easier to maneuver over rough ground. Ten countries now utilize this type of wheel.

Hotchkiss was already teaching at SF State in 1987, when he co-founded the Rehabilitation Engineering Technology Training Program, a federally funded certificate program “designed to bring engineers into rehabilitation and rehabilitation professionals into engineering,” he said.

The program was met with positive response and is currently run by former student Ray Grott.

The establishment of the wheelchair design and construction course – part of SF State’s Urban Institute – came in 1989 after a proposal by SF State President Robert Corrigan, then-engineering Chair Peter Pfaelzer, and then-Dean of engineering Mamdouh Abo El Ata and others.

Even though the course is not required, it garners a lot of enthusiasm from students in the design and industry department, said Ryan Olson, a 33-year-old design and industry graduate student taking the class.

“It’s a great opportunity; there’s some amazing stuff here,” Olson said. “It would be a shame if I went through the program without coming up here.”

Hotchkiss encourages students to work in the chairs they are designing so they can experience them firsthand. During lunch break, students speed down to the student center, cutting through rough patches of grass without any problem.

Hotchkiss has received numerous accolades, including the SF State’s President’s Medal for Service and a Silicon Valley High Tech Museum ‘laureate’ honor. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the SF State Urban Institute and a MacArthur Fellow.