In 2017, a team of MIT seniors in course 2.009 (Product Engineering Processes) built a prototype wristband that used targeted mechanical vibration to send patterned signals through peripheral nerves to the brain regions responsible for motor coordination. When a Parkinson's patient named Michael put it on and pressed a button, his tremors stopped like a light switch. His wife and daughter cried. A week later, he repeated the demonstration at Kresge Auditorium to a roaring ovation. The device was a foamcore box with a Raspberry Pi chip and some wires. The founding idea came from Daniel Carballo '18, SM '20, who drew on MIT robotics coursework about neural control of movement. He was the sole dissenting vote when the 17-person team selected his concept — he thought it was too far-fetched for a single semester. The team lagged behind other groups at every milestone until the final week, when Michael's dramatic response to the prototype changed the calculus entirely. Classmates and strangers immediately asked where they could buy it. The team leveraged MIT Sandbox, MIT FUSE, and the MIT Venture Mentoring Service before incorporating as Encora Therapeutics in 2020. They pivoted from Parkinson's disease to essential tremor after discovering a larger unmet need — essential tremor lacks the drug-development pipeline that Parkinson's attracts. The mechanism targets the same brain regions as deep brain stimulation surgery, which requires drilling holes in the skull to insert electrodes, but does it through mechanical vibration applied to stretch receptors in the wrist. The clinical pathway was rigorous but not enormous. A 20-patient Parkinson's trial with MassGeneral Brigham ran in 2022. A 47-patient randomized controlled trial for essential tremor followed in 2024. A 59-person home-use trial ran last year. In both essential tremor trials, more than 70 percent of patients experienced meaningful improvement. Seventy-eight percent reported benefits after 90 days of home use. That was enough for 510(k) clearance from the FDA in February 2025. The science is straightforward in concept: tremor is caused by malfunctioning pulsed signals in sensory-interpretation and movement-coordination brain regions, driven by neurotransmitter deficiencies. Encora's device applies patterned mechanical stimulus to wrist stretch receptors — the proprioceptive sensors that tell your body where it is in space — which activates peripheral nerves carrying the corrective signal into the central nervous system. Some patients use it 12 to 14 hours a day. Encora is now building a national sales force and working to secure insurer coverage. The company views the wristband as a platform technology with applications across neurological movement disorders and the broader field of wearable neuromodulation. Co-founders Carballo, Allison Davanzo '18, and Kyle Pina '18 remain with the company. The original Parkinson's application — the one that started this — is still on the roadmap. The trajectory here is genuinely generative: a university-born device addressing a real clinical gap with a non-invasive alternative to brain surgery, validated through real trials, cleared through the standard FDA pathway. The risks ahead are commercial — insurance coverage, manufacturing scale, competition — not scientific. Nine years from foamcore box to FDA clearance is slow by startup standards but fast by medical device standards, and every step involved real patients.
