UW CREATE

Category: Faculty Profiles

Faculty members of UW CREATE.

Jon Froehlich, Associate Director

My research focuses on designing, building, and evaluating interactive technology that addresses high value social issues such as environmental sustainability, computer accessibility, and personalized health and wellness.

Affiliations:

Associate Professor, Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering

Jon Froehlich. He is smiling and sitting on a red couch. He is wearing a grey shirt.

Contact

Froehlich faculty page

jonf@cs.washington.edu

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Research highlights

Real-time captioning and sound awareness support

With advances in wearable computing and machine learning, Leah Findlater and I have been investigating new opportunities for real-time captioning and sound awareness support for people who are deaf/Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). Our work spans three primary areas: real-time captioning in augmented reality and wearables (ARCaptions), sound awareness support in the “smart home” (HomeSound), and real-time sound identification on smart watches (SoundWatch, website forthcoming). Throughout this work, we’ve engaged with over 250 DHH participants to help identify design opportunities, pain points, and to solicit feedback on our designs.

Project Sidewalk

Project Sidewalk combines remote crowdsourcing + AI identify and assess sidewalk accessibility in online imagery. Working with people who have mobility disabilities, local government partners, and NGOs, we have deployed Project Sidewalk into five cities (Washington DC, Seattle, WA, Newberg, OR, Columbus, OH, and Mexico City, MX), collecting over 500,000 geo-tagged sidewalk accessibility labels on curb ramps, surface problems, and other obstacles.

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Kat Steele, Associate Director

My research focuses upon using novel computational and experimental tools to understand human movement and improve treatment and quality of life of individuals with cerebral palsy, stroke, and other neurological disorders.

My research strives to connect engineering and medicine to create solutions that can advance our understanding of human ability, but also translate research results to the clinic and daily life. 

Affiliations

Albert S. Kobayashi Endowed Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Ability & Innovation Lab

AMP Lab

HuskyADAPT and AccessEngineering

Kat Steele, standing on a bridge and wearing a purple blouse. Her hair is down and she is smiling

Contact

Steele faculty page

kmsteele@uw.edu

206-685-2390

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Research highlights

Ubiquitous Rehabilitation

Ubiquitous Rehabilitation seeks to develop the sensors, algorithms, and data visualization techniques required to deploy wearable technology that can reduce the burdens of rehabilitation and improve outcomes. Biomechanical principles guide the design of hardware and software that integrate rehabilitation into daily life.

Open-Orthoses

Open-Orthoses leverages advances in 3D-printing, scanning, and fabrication to build innovative hand and arm orthoses (aka exoskeletons). Multidisciplinary teams of engineers and clinicians work with individuals with disabilities to co-design customized devices, rigorously test the devices, and provide open-source designs that accelerate development.

AccessEngineering

AccessEngineering was founded in 2015 to (1) support and encourage individuals with disabilities to pursue careers in engineering, and (2) train all engineers in principles of accessible and inclusive design. This program has trained over 60 engineering faculty, facilitates communities of practice for engineering professionals with disabilities, and curates a knowledge base with over 100 articles for engineering students, faculty, and professionals.

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