Video: “Your Dreams Have a Lot of Power,” Says 2026 Graduate Mark Lucas
Engineering major says BU taught him the skills and provided the community he needed to launch a start-up inspired by his late mother’s illness
Video: “Your Dreams Have a Lot of Power,” Says 2026 Graduate Mark Lucas
Video: “Your Dreams Have a Lot of Power,” Says 2026 Graduate Mark Lucas
In the video above, Mark Lucas (ENG’26) discusses his invention inspired by his late mother’s illness and what he’s learned about himself on his college journey.
After the death of his mother, Mark Lucas sought to build something meaningful. And, at Boston University, he found the tools and community to make that happen.
When Lucas (ENG’26) was 11, his mother began falling at work and suffering bouts of nausea and vomiting. She was eventually diagnosed with hydrocephalus, a neurological condition uncommon in someone so young. Over the next several years, she underwent multiple surgeries as her motor skills and cognition steadily worsened. Lucas and his grandmother shared caretaking duties until his mother died when he was 14.
“Seeing the decline in motor skills firsthand really made me empathize with people who have family or their own experience with that restriction, and that overall reduction in their quality of life,” Lucas says.
After transferring from a college in Georgia to BU’s College of Engineering biomedical engineering program as a sophomore, Lucas began designing the NeuroBrace, a device to help people with tremors.
Approximately 30 million people worldwide live with tremors, conditions that can interfere with eating, writing, self-care, and careers. That number will likely grow as the population ages, Lucas says. Existing treatments, including medication and surgery, can be invasive and expensive and are not always covered by insurance, he notes.
“With the shaking, people can have a reduction in quality of life. They can have a higher stigmatization of their condition. They struggle with cooking and cleaning, and cannot always care for themselves,” he says.
Growing up in rural Georgia and witnessing his own community’s limited access to healthcare also shaped Lucas’ commitment to patient advocacy and ensuring healthcare accessibility. Those experiences continue to influence how he approaches building his start-up Antioch Technologies.
Antioch’s NeuroBrace device uses machine learning to detect tremors and deliver targeted compression to affected muscle groups. The compression minimizes tremors in real time for people with Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders. The NeuroBrace, which looks like a combined bracelet and arm brace, and can be worn under clothing, is designed to help patients regain independence in their daily lives, he says. He is now preparing to test the device in clinical trials.
Throughout the process, Lucas has consulted with subject-matter experts and been involved with BU innovation programs and workspaces—including ENG’s Robotics & Autonomous Systems Teaching and Innovation Center (RASTIC), the CDS Duan Family Spark! Initiative, and, most recently, Innovate@BU. He was a finalist in the 2026 New Venture Competition, Innovate@BU’s major pitch competition, and is participating in the program’s Summer Accelerator.
Lucas says his experiences caring for a sick family member showed him both the possibilities and shortcomings of medical technologies and strengthened his determination to see the project through.
BU’s location within a medical and biomedical hub was one of the main reasons Lucas chose the school, he says. Being surrounded by innovative classmates, mentors, and professors—many working on medical breakthroughs of their own—proved deeply inspiring, he says. Another important source of inspiration was the community he built at BU’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE).
“Coming into BU, I was an engineering student who had an idea,” Lucas says. “I think your dreams have a lot of power. And I feel like as long as you know what you want, find the right people, and have an idea of how to get there, you can accomplish it and make the world a better place.”
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