Using information technologies to face the challenges of autism

Invited Speaker: Prof. Gregory Abowd, CS, Georgia Tech
Date: July 10, 2007
Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Venue: CENS Main Conference Room, 3551 Boelter Hall, UCLA

Abstract

n 1999, my oldest son was diagnosed with autism. Four years later, our second son was also diagnosed. In both of these situations, the early signs of developmental delay were missed by me and my wife. In 2003, I somewhat accidentally noticed the changes in my older son while reviewing family videos. This launched a research agenda in the use of technologies for automatically capturing live experiences to support the challenges of autism. In this talk, I will give a brief overview of several of the projects that have explored how to use capture technologies to support families, professionals and researchers in tracking developmental progress. This work, associated with the Aware Home Research Initiative, also benefits from low-cost sensing technologies in the home, two examples of which will be revealed in this talk.

Biography

Gregory Abowd is a Professor in the School of Interactive and a member of the GVU Center at Georgia Tech. He directs the Aware Home Research Initiative and conducts research in Ubiquitous Computing, with specific interest in applications of sensing and capture technologies. In the past four years, he has explored the use of technologies to support the challenges of autism and received the 2007 ACM SIGCHI Social Impact Award for these efforts.