Young Albert Manero is a Fulbright scholar and doctoral student in mechanical engineering at the University of Central Florida. While these are impressive credentials, they don’t begin to tell this young man’s very interesting story.

Albert’s parents instilled in him the idea of giving back, and it really stuck with him. Busy as he is working on his doctorate, he has managed to find the time to found Limbitless Solutions, an organization which builds affordable, bionic, 3D-printed arms for children. He has even made his ground-breaking designs available for free to others with access to 3D printers.

While I have no personal experience with prosthetics, I have researched them a little, and I know that a single limb can cost up to $40,000. But it never occurred to me that prosthetics for children would post a special challenge because they would continually outgrow their artificial limbs. I can’t even imagine how expensive that would be for the families of growing kids in need of such prosthetics. Albert’s version, however, costs about $350 in materials, and he and his team scrape together what they can to offer the limbs for free.

“We were all bound to the belief that no one should profit from a child in need of an arm.”

Happily, Albert’s generosity has attracted some pretty impressive fans who are helping him with his important work. On his Facebook page last night, one of my all-time favorite actors, Robert Downey Jr, posted the video below: