ABILITY PROJECT - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Senior Lecturer, in Technology Culture and Society, ( Tandon ) NYU Tandon School of Engineering Senior Lecturer Allan B. Goldstein
NYU Tandon School of Engineering Senior Lecturer Allan B. Goldstein connects student innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs with community members living with disabilities in his experiential Disabilities Studies course. A core course for the NYU cross-school Disability Studies minor, and the subject of the award-winning documentary The Ability Exchange, student/consultant teams create person-centered digital stories. Goldstein, the older sibling and guardian of a survivor of the notorious Willowbrook State School, explores with his personal experience writing the social barriers impeding an inclusive society. He has received NYU Tandon's 2012 Jacobs Excellence in Education award, the 2016-17 NYU Martin Luther King, Jr. award and the 2018-19 NYU Distinguished Teaching Award. WPIX featured him as a Changemaker and the Chronicle of Higher Education included him on its inaugural list of teaching innovators.
Job Titles:
- Library / NYU College of Dentistry
Beth is an education consultant who works with educators, technologists, academics, parents, families, schools, teachers and students. She has worked on strategic development, program outreach, interpretive educational exhibition materials, partnerships and collaborations between cultural organizations, community organizations and schools. Beth has worked on special needs and technology projects for: The New York Hall of Science, The Seidenberg School of Computer Science at Pace University, The New York Transit Museum, The New York City Department of Education and many others. She was previously the Founding Director of Education at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center. She holds an MS Ed in Educational Technology-a dual degree in the School of Education and the Computer Science department and an MA in Art History.
Amy Hurst works closely with end users to understand accessibility challenges and the potential for novel assistive technologies to address them. She has been working in accessibility research since 2001, and is interested in how to empower others to "DIY" and build their own assistive technologies through designing accessible tools or training materials for digital fabrication machines. She has a doctorate in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon and a joint appointment in the Occupational Therapy Department and the Technology, Culture and Society Department.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder / Clinical Professor, Occupational Therapy ( OT ), Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
Anita Perr, PhD, ATP, FAOTA, is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy. Anita uses collaborative teaching to encourage students to explore the best ways to approach clinically relevant issues. Her extensive clinical experience informs her classroom teaching. Students appreciate the problem-based, practical nature of her courses. Anita teaches and helped develop the Developing Assistive Technologies, and Museum Accessibility classes.
Dr. Claire Kearney-Volpe, is an art therapist, researcher, designer and maker interested in the participatory development of technologies for promoting health and well-being.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder / Associate Professor, Integrated Design & Media ( IDM ), Tandon School of Engineering
Luke DuBois is a composer, artist, and performer who explores the temporal, verbal, and visual structures of cultural and personal ephemera. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University, and has lectured and taught worldwide on interactive sound and video performance. He has collaborated on interactive performance, installation, and music production work with many artists and organizations including Toni Dove, Todd Reynolds, Jamie Jewett, Bora Yoon, Michael Joaquin Grey, Matthew Ritchie, Elliott Sharp, Michael Gordon, Maya Lin, Bang on a Can, Engine 27, Harvestworks, and LEMUR, and was the director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra for its 2007 season.
Job Titles:
- Technology Specialist
- Adjunct Instructor, Integrated Design & Media, ( Tandon )
Gus Chalkias is an assistive Technology Specialist with nearly twenty years of experience in the field. He is a graduate of Hunter College, earning Master's degrees in both Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling. He began his work in assistive technology at the Computer Center for Visually Impaired People at Baruch college in 2001 and ran the Demo Center project there from its inception in 2009. He currently works for Helen Keller Services for the Blind as Program Director of Assistive Technology Services. Over the course of his career, Gus has developed a number of training programs for both pre-vocational students as well as vocationally oriented clients. These programs include working with both Windows and Mac operating systems as well as for many mobile platforms, using various types of assistive technology. He teaches the Looking Forward course on blindness related assistive technology at New York University through the Ability Project, which he created and developed. Starting summer 2019, he taught the assistive technology course for the TVI (Teacher of the Visually Impaired) and VRT (Vision Rehabilitation Therapy) programs at Hunter College. Gus currently sits on the advisory board of the Hunter College Rehabilitation Counseling Program, and more recently gave the Key Note at the 2019 Annual NYS AER conference in Syracuse, NY. Gus teaches Looking Forward.
Job Titles:
- Adjunct Instructor, Rusk Rehabilitation, ( Langone )
Holly Cohen OTR/L, ATP, SCEM, CDRS is an occupational therapist and assistive technology practitioner at Rusk Rehabilitation and teaches Rehabilitation courses at NYU Steinhardt's Department of Occupational Therapy.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder / Arts Professor, Interactive Technologies Program ( ITP ), Tisch School of the Arts
Marianne Petit has been teaching classes in assistive technology since 2003. As a full-time faculty member at ITP, Marianne, in collaboration with Anita Perr, initiated a cooperation between ITP and Steinhardt OT, leading collaborations with many organizations, including Montefiore Children's Hospital. Having received funding for several years (2005-2009) from the Nathan Cummings Foundation to support student projects for deployment into clinical sites, Anita and Marianne finally found a home for their multidisciplinary classes within the Ability Project. Marianne has taught and developed the graduate level course, Developing Assistive Technologies, as well as "Introduction to Assistive Technology" and "Adapting Everyday Items" on the undergraduate level.
Job Titles:
- Experience Designer
- Industry Assistant Professor, Integrated Design & Media, ( Tandon )
Regine Gilbert is a user experience designer, educator, and international public speaker with over 10 years of experience working in the technology arena. She has a strong belief in making the world a more accessible place-one that starts and ends with the user. Regine is Visiting Industry Assistant Professor at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering, teaching User Experience Design to students in the Integrated Design & Media Program. In 2020, Regine's first book, ‘Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind (Design Thinking) will be released through Apress publishing. Regine teaches Looking Forward.
Job Titles:
- Project Graduate Assistant
Spandita is a present NYU IDM graduate student and an experienced design technologist. Her work has emphasized on human computer interaction and assistive technology. Most recently, she has been focusing on researching ways to make computer usage easier for people with physical disabilities. She designed and developed an application that could use gestures to feed input to computers. At present, she is working on making tactile maps to improve navigation in public spaces for people with visual impairments.
Job Titles:
- Designer
- Researcher
- Project Research Fellow
Themis García Cádiz (she/her) is a designer, researcher, and hands-on prototyper.Her recent research has focused on alternative and playful kinesthetic experiences for children, employing machine learning and augmented reality technologies.As a designer, she has worked on affordable parametric insurance for farmers, and a community-driven website for the ITP/IMA Code of Conduct project, emphasizing community participation.Themis is passionate about creating experiences that support, enhance and care for our relationships with our ecologies. Accessibility and inclusivity are at the core of her principles as a designer.Themis holds a Master's Degree from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, as well as a BA in Humanities from the University of Puerto Rico.
Verónica Alfaro Arias is a Design Technologist who works in the intersection between Accessibility and Healthcare through the fields of Human-Centered Design, UX/UI Design, and Information Visualization. She is passionate about the use of technology and design for social good and strives to create projects that serve as conversation starters around ethics in Tech. Her most recent work focuses on the design of frameworks for developing customizable Assistive Technologies for people with disabilities and reimagining the use of technology and design to improve the relationship between patients and providers as part of her work in the HiBRID lab at NYU Langone Health.