This IGERT will support PhD students at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) pursuing training and research in assistive technology. The focus of this IGERT is to support training and research that provides both a deep understanding of human needs and what technology can do to provide for those needs. This IGERT brings together a number of research institutes in CMU's School of Computer Science (Robotics, Human-Computer Interaction, Language Technology, and the Center for Automated Learning and Discovery) and departments within Pitt (Rehabilitation Science and Technology, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Nursing, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Bioengineering, and Communication Science and Disorders). A key feature of this IGERT is that, after appropriate course work and training, each student will (1a) engage in a full time clinical internship program for at least one semester or summer or (1b) produce a conference quality paper describing a clinical study that student performed, and (2) produce a conference quality paper describing the design, implementation, assessment, and/or refinement of an assistive technology. This requirement will necessarily mean that technological students have a substantial clinical experience, and clinical students have a substantial technical experience. Additional cross-over clinical and technical experiences will be encouraged.
The intellectual merit of the proposed activity includes getting technical and clinical departments to talk to each other, understand each other's thinking, and create a truly joint educational program. The IGERT program ensures that students gain exposure to basic technological research as well as the translation of research to clinical applications. Collaboration with Pitt will provide opportunities for CMU students and faculty to get exposure to real clients with real problems in real contexts, rather than the usual 2nd or 3rd hand problem descriptions isolated from context. Collaboration with CMU will provide opportunities for Pitt students and faculty to get exposure to state of the art technology, and exposure to a wider range of students and faculty who could serve as sources of expertise and collaborators. This IGERT will facilitate communication and understanding among rehabilitation and technology disciplines by bringing together students and faculty working on assistive technology in several different CMU institutes and departments at Pitt. Participants in this IGERT will work to develop online courses and open source software to make our learning resources accessible world wide.
The broader impact of increased research and training in assistive technology is to improve the lives of people with disabilities, the elderly, children with developmental disorders, and ultimately help make everyone more perceptive, smarter, and more capable. Our definition of assistive technology is quite broad, and thus we expect to have a wide impact. There are huge needs and opportunities for assistive technology. Each year the number and percentage of senior citizens in our society increases. Many need assistance to live independently as long as possible. Nursing-home care can be improved in many ways with assistive technology. The number of diagnoses of developmental disorders in children is increasing, and technology can assist these children to develop and participate in our society more fully. The use of technology to reduce the effect of disabilities in perception, reasoning, memory, and movement is rapidly increasing. The Americans with Disabilities Act mandates greater integration of people with disabilities. Rehabilitation engineering and assistive technology will need to play a substantial role in the order for the goal to be reached. Central to our research and education is outreach to individuals and groups with needs or disabilities that technology can help. Pitt's Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology (RST) has one of the highest concentrations of people with disabilities as faculty, staff, and students of any academic program in the world. In addition, we will model our diversity and outreach programs on the successful recruitment of women by Pitt's RST and CMU's School of Computer Science.
IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. In this sixth year of the program, awards are being made to institutions for programs that collectively span the areas of science and engineering supported by NSF.
