UoD Web Team

The Brian Cox Prize Excellence in Public Engagement Project of the Year was awarded to Outer Space | Inner Space. The project is an interdisciplinary project between Centre for Gene Regulation & Expression (GRE), Computing in the School of Science and Engineering and Leisure & Culture Dundee aimed at ensuring accessibility for all. Recent installations include Ways of Vision, A Very Fishy Tale, Build a ‘Scope – Look Near and Far and The Giant Worm. Valerie Bentivegna and Rolf Black, members of the Outer Space | Inner Space project team, were both highly commended for the Engaged Researcher of the Year award.    

The Outer Space | Inner Space project, a collaboration between the University of Dundee and Leisure and Culture Dundee, has taken off to a new dimension. A local special school for children with multiple disabilities visited recently for a multi sensory trip to the stars! The new immersive screen was filled with images and videos about everything you need from space boots to meteorite clusters. Access via switch allowed for our young space pioneers to keep control and everyone arrived safe back on earth!

Prof Annalu Waller OBE is featured in the top 100 list of people who affect life in the “Courier Country”. “PANEL VIEW: Prof Waller has made a real difference to the lives of disabled people. She has given them a voice through her research, and as a disabled person herself who has achieved so much in her own life, she is an inspiration to children, young people and adults.” Congratulations from everyone on the team! For more details, visit the Courier online at: thecourier.co.uk/impact-100/

A new interactive project demonstrating how the ‘C. elegans’, a minuscule worm that lives in your compost, helps world-leading research carried out at the University of Dundee will go on display at Mills Observatory this weekend. A massive interactive video wall will allow visitors to get up close and personal with the inner world of the 1mm long roundworm, which is widely used in experiments including those by NASA and other space agencies to test the effects of space on aging and weightlessness.

“THE UNIVERSITY IS ONE OF THE WORLD’S LEADING CENTRES FOR RESEARCH INTO AUGMENTATIVE AND ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES FOR PEOPLE WITH SEVERE COMMUNICATION DIFFICULTIES, HELPING GIVE THEM A VOICE.” Read the full story in the latest issue of the CONTACT Magazine. More issues on the CONTACT page at the University of Dundee’s Press Office.  

A great evening at the Queen Mother Building for our event that was part of the Dundee Science Festival 2016: Our researchers explore where technology delivers social and healthcare benefits for older and disabled people. In repeated short lectures and showing interactive displays visitors were able to engage with projects about how older people can use computers, people control computers with their eyes, computers can be used to view colours in a different way – and much more. Try this with your eyes! @DundeeAAC @DundeeSciFest @UoDComputing Tonight 6-9pm. https://t.co/ARBxfagLV3 pic.twitter.com/JFx8SDPe1F — Dundee AAC Research (@DundeeAAC) November 10, 2016

Computing’s Tap and Talk Aphasia iPad Group proudly presented their work at today’s premier of the shorts: “I have Aphasia” and “Aphasia in our own words”. The short animation videos were created by the group during the last 10 weeks during an animation workshop funded by the NHS Tayside Healthcare Arts Trust THAT with the help of artist and film animator Andrew Low. A documentary, Aphasia – Telling our Stories, filmed by Steve Soave informs about the background and life behind the scenes of this exiting project. More information on the groups webpage: aac.dundee.ac.uk/tap-and-talk

The pioneering User Centre at the University of Dundee celebrates a decade of bringing the benefits of modern technology to the elderly and adults with severe communication disabilities. The User Centre, based in the Queen Mother Building, commemorates its first ten years of innovative research with the unveiling of a plaque in memory of John Gibson, first chair and founding member of the Centre who passed away last year. The event coincides with the announcement of Hollywood actor Brian Cox as the Centre’s first Patron.

Our team presented our Work at the international conference ISAAC 2016 in Toronto, Canada. The conference programme is online at ISAAC 2016 Schedules. Here a list of our presentations: Aphasia iPad User Group: Establishing a Collaboration between Users, Therapists and Researchers. Rolf Black, University of Dundee; Annalu Waller, University of Dundee; Laorag Hunter, NHS Scotland; Amy Hanschell, NHS Scotland; Eddie Gasowski, Speakeasy; Helen Gowland, Speakeasy. ACE-LP: Augmenting Communication using Environmental Data to drive Language Prediction. Rolf Black, University of Dundee; Per Ola Kristensson, Dr P, University of Cambridge; Stephen J. McKenna, University of Dundee; Jianguo Zhang, University of Dundee; Annalu Waller, University of Dundee. No Further On After 30 Years, Still Can’t Speak Fast Enough. Alan McGregor, University of Dundee. Supporting Personal Narrative Elicitation: Identifying Discrete Moment of Interest Event Cues Within Digital Video Footage. Christopher Norrie, University of Dundee; Annalu Waller, University of Dundee; Douglas Potter, University of Dundee. 

A £1 million research project that aims to change dramatically the way people with no speech and complex disabilities can have a conversation with others has been launched by the Universities of Dundee and Cambridge. Computer-based systems – called Voice Output Communication Aids (VOCAs) – use word prediction to speed up typing, a feature similar to that commonly found on mobile phones or tablets for texting and emailing. However, for those with complex disabilities, including for example Professor Stephen Hawking, using typing to communicate can still be extremely slow, as little as 2 words per minute, which makes face-to-face conversation very difficult. Even with an average computer-aided communication rate of about 15 words per minute, conversations do not compare to the 150 words per minute speaking rate of people without a communication impairment.