From Success on the Gridiron to Success in the Lab: Jenkins County Student Mario Ball 
by Andrew Kerr
February 2006
One of my New Year's resolutions was to contact each of Georgia's school systems to learn about students past and present who are connected in some way to Georgia Tech. Jenkins High School technology instructor Willie Haynes got back to me right away. He recommended that I interview Mario Ball, an undergraduate wrapping up his Georgia Tech experience. One day later I had the conversation that I have reproduced below.
First off, in the interest of your personal security, you might be relieved to know that it's very difficult to Google you, because when I type your name into the search engine GameBoy's Super Mario Ball comes up all the time. Considering that, and also that I was made aware of your work only yesterday, I might seem a little unprepared for this interview. Let's begin with what I know. You're in New Jersey. What are you doing there?
I'm working on a cooperative with a biomedical engineering firm called Stryker Orthopedics. It's the number one orthopedic company in the world right now. They specialize in hip and knee implants. The area I work in is knee and hip engineering. My primary job in the company is to design and modify some of the newer hip implants they have on the market, and some of the instruments used to place them. I'm primarily an engineer, and I use a professional enginneering software program which can be used by many different types of engineering companies to design basically anything. These implants I work with--there are several on the market, and Stryker is always improving and modifying those implants. You may have 30 surgeons in Japan who want specific changes made to an implant--speciality implants for a particular type of patient. We'll do a conference call with the manager, make changes, and then the manufacturer will make those changes.
Does every implant require specific customizations to fit the user?
No; there is a line of generics, and then there are those we modify specifically.
What are you working on right now?
Right now what I'm working on is an instrument broach handle. What that is is it's primarily an instrument to core out the top of the femur--bore a hole into the femur. The broach handle allows the surgeons to bore out the femur to allow the implant to sit nicely into the hole. We're performing a clinical trial on a cadaver.
We'll get back to the gory details in a moment, but first, what during your high school experience got you interested in biomechanics, and which classes proved relevant to what you're doing now?
I was very focused in high school; I knew exactly what I wanted to do, "I want to go into biomedical engineering." I've known since I was a sophomore in high school. My mom was one of those moms who would send me every summer to math science programs. During one of those programs one of my mentors explained prothetics. From that point on I wanted to work on that.
I went to a very small high school, Jenkins County High School. There I was particularly inspired by Mr. Haynes's class, where we did autocad, drafting, things like that. Mr. Haynes heads the technology center there. Mr. Haynes is probably one of my favorite teachers there by far. All those classes and stuff were really relevant to what I do now.
Of course, physics is also important, understanding the range of motion, the degree of tilt in the head neck stem, degrees of freedom, motions. Depending on the patient, the patient's body frame or body type, there are different degrees of tilt.
There's also heavy calculus.
Were you influenced by anyone you knew personally whose life was positively enhanced by hip or knee implants?
Not at the time, no. It was just always an interest to me. But later my mom went through knee surgery, and my aunt went through a partial implant.
Tell me about the undergraduate program you're in now.
I'm a dual degree student from Morehouse College and Georgia Tech. The dual degree program has you dually enrolled in two colleges at the same time. I receive two bachelors degrees in five years. I went to Morehouse for 3 1/2 years and got a degree in applied physics. Now I'm a Georgia Tech student receiving a degree in biomedical engineering. And I've been in a number of intern co-ops.
Mr. Haynes mentioned that you had the opportunity to work at NASA.
I got an opportunity to work at a NASA center, Johnson Space Center in Houston. I went there two summers on two different internship programs. My first summer I designed a mock-up of a flight exercise machine. It's a system used for astronauts to exercise on. It was just a mock-up of what was already there in the center. But when you leave there your name is attached to something. I designed the mock-up, ordered the parts, met with the manufacturer. The mock-up was then shipped to Russia. The piece I designed is currently being used for the training purposes of astronauts. It's not functional, but it's good for training purposes.
Wait. You designed something that is currently being used to train Russian astronauts?
Yes.
How old were you when you designed this?
18 years old.
[Stunned silence on part of interviewer.]
I went back for a second summer. I was just so fascinated. My mentor there, she was like "We gotta have you back for a second year!" I mainly studied physiology, human anatomy and how it is affected in space.
I studied muscle and joint loading in a zero-G environment versus earth, and the biomechanics of the body in space. I worked in the astronomical exercise laboratory, working with the astronauts whenever they were training for flight or coming back from flight. They had work-out schedules and routines that they had to do every day. The ones training for flight had to get used to those schedules so that when they went into space they continued that up.
In doing the math, it seems this was around the time of the Columbia tragedy.
Yes it was.
How did that affect the people at NASA and yourself?
I felt the pressure. Everyone there felt the pressure. The Columbia disaster made us all aware of how the mistakes on the shuttle trickled down to each department. The "busy work" is actually real-life stuff. It made me value my work even more, and made me aware that the work I do directly affects people. You could just see how every person was affected.
Junior year at Morehouse I worked at MIT, a program a very prestigious program but I actually worked at Massachusetts General Hospital orthopedic engineering lab. There I measured in vivo knee joint kinematics, degrees of freedom of the knee, total knee replacement (TKR), I had my hands in so many things. I think that was one of my most interesting experiences. I actually worked with real cadavers there. First thing when I walked into the lab to greet my mentor, there was an entire leg on the table.
Did seeing your first cadaver freak you out? It seems like that would be pretty intense.
[Laughing.] I'm weird. I like gory type stuff, like the movies Saw and Saw II, so it didn't really bother me. I just thought, "Whoa! This is high-tech stuff!"
Sometimes the knee is not on straight, or you don't have the right range of motion, I used
images as a means to measure in vivo knee kinematics.
We had a robotic testing system. There are only two of them in the country, one in a hospital in Pennsylvania, and the other at MIT. There they perform some tests using a whole cadaver. I would work with an orthopedic surgeon, cut several inches above and below the knee, they would do the implant, and we would take that knee and connect it to the robotic testing system. The system would then turn and twist the leg until the implant failed.
Some readers might wince at all this, but I think it's important to note that your strong stomach for gore is actually helping make the world a better place for the living who receive these implants.
Have you been involved in any lab work at Georgia Tech?
My most meaningful experience I had was in the undergraduate research scholars program. I worked in an orthopedic lab at GA Tech with Srin Nagaraja. I was primarily measuring multi-axial stresses and strains associated with trabecular bovine...Backing up to a macro level, this is an osteoporosis study to test the validity of certain drugs.
Let's return to your background again. Where specifically from Jenkins are you from? And what did you do to pass the time, there?
I grew up in Millen. It's a very small town. I was very active, very popular.
You were popular? This goes against the stereotype of the bookish tech geek!
[Laughing.] Actually, I played football and ran track. I was an All-America football player, captain of my football team, and I played state. I won the Wendy's High School Heisman. I was a star running back. I won a Coca-Cola Golden Helmet. I was SGA president. I was on the weightlifting team, and won state in my weight division during my junior year. I was homecoming and prom king. I was offered a football scholarship to the University of Tennessee--a partial football and engineering scholarship. But I decided not to go. I didn't have aspirations to play football professionally. Mr. Haynes was instrumental in helping me make that decision.
Dude, I couldn't even invent a more impressive list of high school credentials!
The way I see it is that I had the same opportunities that everybody else in the town had. I'm never content with what I'm doing. I'm on a mission and that's how I look at it.
Turning down the football scholarship must have been tough.
It was the hardest decision in my life to not take that. But although I turned down the football scholarship, I entered Morehouse on several other scholarships; a NASA scholarship paid my full tuition, I'm currently still on the Bill Gates Milennium Scholarship, theta chi, minority scholarship program--each would give me stipends.
What about your family background?
None of my parents went to college. I was in all AP classes, never made any B's. I made one B in my entire career. If I ever made a B my mom was like "What are you doing making B's? You can do better than that!"
I come from a very large family. My grandparents were originally from Jamaica. All my aunts are very strict, very strong women. My mom was a single parent, always had two or three jobs. She worked in restaurants and hotels to make a decent living for us. She was the "You gonna make sure you get a good education, go to college" type. She was very church-going.
I presume your parents had an opinion about football as well?
Mom didn't want me to go and play football. She knew that education is more important. Football is nothing.
Settle down: Obviously he's just kidding there!
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