Assistive Sociotechnical Solutions for Individuals with Special needs using Technology Lab (ASSIST)

Sri Kurniawan, UCSC Professor Computational Media

The long term research agenda of ASSIST Lab is to help people with special needs (PSN) maintain a high quality of life through technology. PSN include people with disabilities, older persons, young children, people in the developing countries and people with low socioeconomic status and education; in general those who require special accommodation when learning and using technology.

They believe in looking beyond their own area of research to identify compelling research topics and potential solutions. They also believe that cross-discipline and cross-cultural collaborations expose us to new perspectives. These new perspectives allow knowledge previously isolated to our field to be leveraged to produce high-quality research. 

ASSIST lab had collaborated with fellow computer scientists, psychologists, nursing midwife, speech pathologist, plastic surgeons, software developers, and industrial engineers among others. Our collaborators come from North America, Asia (Malaysia and Japan), Europe (Czech Republic, Italy, UK), Mexico and Australia. We intend to continue this multidisciplinary and multicultural research work for the foreseeable future.