We are very excited to announce that we have received a Google Faculty Reseearch Award in the 2018 round for our proposal titled "Adaptive Communication Devices to Support Social Participation of People with Cognitive Impairments." Tens of millions of people with cognitive impairments worldwide strive for social inclusion, yet communication of goals and needs to others can be difficult. Communication is critical for social interaction and appropriately designed devices have the potential to assist individuals in acquiring education, jobs and to improve general well-being. A such, the goal of this project is to derive a set of design principles for human-computer interfaces to be used as augmentative and alternative communication technologies that will lead towards the development of novel cognitive orthotic devices to help people to independently solve communication challenges.
The Google Faculty Research Awards Program aims to recognize and support world-class, permanent faculty pursuing cutting-edge research in areas of mutual interest with a goal to identify and strengthen long-term collaborative relationships with faculty working on problems that will impact how future generations use technology. More information can be found at Google AI.