Two students selected for the 2024 Husky 100 exemplify CREATE’s mission to make technology accessible and make the world accessible through technology while involving people with lived disability experiences in their research.
Kianna Bolante
Kianna Bolante is an undergraduate student studying computer science who has deepened her understanding of accessibility needs and computing education research through her work in the Social Futures Lab run by Dr. Amy Ko, a CREATE and Allen School faculty member. As the Chair of the Computing Community in the Allen School, Bolante advocates for diversity in computing and has discovered deep connections between these endeavors and her commitment to service.
Bolante says she intends to center her future on creating community-minded and accessible resources that meet ongoing needs in computing, working towards a mission of equity and empowerment for others.
Ethan Gordon
Ethan K. Gordon earned his doctorate from the Allen School 2023, studying robot-assisted feeding for people with mobility impairments. Through the work, he says, he developed a greater appreciation and understanding of community-based participatory research, ensuring that his work can improve people’s lives. As a CREATE Ph.D. student, Gordon co-led a team that created a set of 11 actions a robotic arm can make to pick up nearly any food attainable by fork. To read about the project, see How an assistive-feeding robot went from picking up fruit salads to whole meals. At the UW Gordon honed in on a successful research ethos, including: “Start with the simplest solution and build complexity as the need arises.”
