Gallaudet faculty lead the way in research

Members of the Gallaudet University faculty have received several research grants in the last few weeks. This article contains brief summaries of four such grants, with links to more detailed articles elsewhere on the university website.

Dr. Christian Vogler and Dr. Abraham Glasser, both with the School of Science, Technology, Accessibility. Mathematics, and Public Health (STAMP), and Abraham Glasser, Assistant Professor in STAMP, have received a five-year, $4.625 million grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR).

Under this grant, Drs. Vogler and Glasser are co-directors for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Technology Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (DHH-RERC), which addresses critical needs in immersive technology and artificial intelligence (AI) for deaf and hard of hearing people through research and development of novel technologies, advanced training and educational techniques, and dissemination strategies.

Read more about the DHH-RERC grant.

Dr. Lorna Quandt (Program in Educational Neuroscience) and Dr. Alicia Wooten (School of Science, Technology, Accessibility, Mathematics, and Public Health) have been awarded a $370,522 collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for "Collaborative Research: Building Real-time Intelligent Grounding in Deaf Education."

This two-year initiative aims to revolutionize collaborative learning for deaf students in science education. The University of Pittsburgh, Northeastern University, and Gallaudet will work together to develop an AI tool to enhance collaborative learning in university biology classes for deaf students. The research team hypothesizes that AI-driven technology can significantly improve the collaborative experience and learning outcomes for deaf students.

Read more about this collaborative research grant.

Dr. Raja Kushalnagar, professor and director of the Accessible Human-Centered Computing program in the School of Science, Technology, Accessibility. Mathematics, and Public Health (STAMP), has been named a co-principal investigator on a four-year, $5,618,463 cooperative agreement award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the extension of the AccessComputing Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance. The University of Washington is the lead institute, and other collaborating institutions include Tufts University and University of California at Irvine.

This grant focuses on increasing participation of people with disabilities in computing careers, involving partners from over 100 academic institutions, professional organizations, and companies. Additionally, this grant supports faculty capacity to integrate accessibility content into computing courses.

Read more about the AccessComputing grant.

The Artificial Intelligence, Sign Language, and Accessibility (AIASL) Center, led by Dr. Raja Kushalnagar, has received a one-year grant from the National Science Foundation. This grant is part of a program that supports early research ideas that have the potential to make big changes but have not yet been tested.

This grant will be used to create a special studio, called the Panopticon studio, that uses 120 cameras to capture video of multiple people interacting in different ways. These cameras record various types of data, like high-definition video, infrared, and 3D images. The studio will process this information to create detailed 3D models of people's movements in space, showing how their bodies move and interact over time.

The AIASL team, led by Dr. Kushalnagar, is working on this project along with the Office of Campus Design and Planning, led by Richard Dougherty.

Read more about the Panopticon grant.

Congratulations to all grant recipients!