This is funding to support a doctoral consortium (workshop) of approximately 8 promising graduate students from the United States plus about 4 from abroad, for a total of 12, along with distinguished research faculty. The 2-day event will take place immediately preceding and in conjunction with the 2012 International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2012), which will be held June 18-22 at the PI's institution in Atlanta. ICAD is the premier international forum for presenting research on the use of sound to display data, monitor systems, and provide enhanced user interfaces for computers and virtual reality systems. It is unique in its singular focus on auditory displays and the array of perception, technology, and application areas that this encompasses; this includes, for example, data sonification, auditory wayfinding, auditory graphs, speech interfaces, virtual environments, and associated perceptual, cognitive, technical, and technological research and development. Many of the interdisciplinary research and development efforts are of direct relevance to persons with perceptual disabilities, especially visual impairments; for example, developing wayfinding systems for the blind requires research into effective distance cues and object identifiers used in auditory displays. Research into the efficacy of auditory graphs may be used to help visually impaired students and scientists participate more fully in science. Even household devices can have more effective auditory displays that provide richer information than the basic "beeps" they presently tend to have. A common approach in this field is Universal Design, wherein a display strategy is developed once, to be used by all kinds of users, including those with and without specific access issues. More details about the conference are available at http://icad2012.icad.org.
The doctoral consortium will bring together graduate students from diverse backgrounds (e.g., engineering, computing, music, and psychology), so that they can experience the broad spectrum of approaches to auditory displays, assistive technologies and universal design, while exploring their research interests through interaction with peers and under the guidance of a panel of distinguished experts in the field. To these ends, the ThinkTank will develop a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research, by providing participants with a friendly and open, yet rigorous, scientific forum to present their research ideas, to listen to ongoing work from peer students, and to receive constructive feedback. Student participants will make formal presentations of their work during the ThinkTank and will receive feedback from the faculty panel. The feedback is designed to help students understand and articulate how their work is positioned relative to related research, whether their topics are adequately focused for thesis research projects, whether their methods are correctly chosen and applied, and whether their results are appropriately analyzed and presented. The ThinkTank will also provide students with relevant information about important issues for doctoral candidates, whether they are considering academic or industrial career paths. The event will further offer invited speakers and discussion groups, and will involve many students as part of the audience and discussion groups, in addition to those presenting their work. Each student participant will furthermore present a poster about his/her work during the conference proper. An evaluation of the ThinkTank will be conducted and the findings will be made available to the organizers of future conferences and consortia.
Broader Impacts: This event will promote scholarship and networking among new researchers in an important emerging interdisciplinary area, and will help shape ongoing and future research projects that have clear and important implications for development of assistive technologies and universal access. The doctoral consortium will afford participants exposure to a larger community, allowing them to bond among themselves and with senior researchers at a critical stage in their professional development. Because the students and faculty constitute a diverse group across a variety of dimensions, including nationality and culture, scientific discipline, and institution (no more than one apiece), the students' horizons are broadened to the future benefit of the field.
Graduate students become the future researchers, investigators, scientists, and educators in many technical fields. In interdisciplinary fields it is particularly challenging to provide students with the variety of skills, experience, training, and mentoring necessary to develop well-rounded future leaders of the field. The field of Sonification and Auditory Display is a uniquely interdisciplinary field, pulling together data-generation areas such as physics, chemistry or planetary seismology; and the study of human-machine interfaces including psychology and human centered computing; plus music and aesthetics. Thus, it is especially important to provide opportunities for graduate students in the Sonification and Auditory Display field to receive mentoring and advising from experts in many of the contributing areas. To this end, the Graduate Student Doctoral Consortium (nicknamed a Student Thinktank) is held regularly at the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD). US-based graduate students discuss their ongoing and planned work with other students from around the world, and with a panel of experts in a range of topics (generally professors and senior researchers). The students gain important feedback on specific questions, and they also benefit from meeting and interacting with experts who are, themselves, interdisciplinary researchers. The Broader Impact of this mentoring and training activity includes a greater depth and diversity of training for graduate students. This leads to better research and more effective tools being developed. The sonifications and auditory displays being created by the students (and researchers) often help many people in their daily lives, directly (e.g., making washing machines with controls that are more user friendly) and indirectly (e.g., by supporting protein folding research which leads to better pharmaceuticals). This can have a wide impact on the lives of many people. Also, by improving the effectiveness of the educational systems, and creating a culture of concerned, well educated researchers, the whole educational and scientific endeavor is improved. This particular ICAD Thinktank, at ICAD 2012, was especially helpful in bringing together students and experts from all over the world, leading to improved educational plans and research outcomes.
