In 2021, he was named one of MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35[1] and was featured in Newsweek’s “America's 50 Greatest Disruptors: Visionaries Who Are Changing the World.”[2] Akhtar earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience and M.S.

[5] It is also the first hand on the market to give users touch feedback, so they can feel what sensors in the fingertips are experiencing,[6] and it is covered by Medicare.

[9] He says that he was first inspired to work on affordable and accessible prosthetic limbs when he met an amputee as a child on a family trip to Pakistan.

[10] The company offers a research version of their bionic hand that is used by organizations like Apptronik, NASA, and Meta.

Akhtar and PSYONIC also develop artificial tendons and collaborate with Northwestern University’s John Rogers on flexible patches that provide haptic feedback through the skin for augmented reality applications.