Associate Professor Eelke Folmer from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the College of Engineering won a competitive Google Research Award for his proposal, "An Indoor Navigation System for Blind Users using Google Glass," it was announced recently.
Google Research Awards are one-year awards structured as unrestricted gifts to universities to support the work of world-class full-time faculty members at top universities around the world. Out of the 550 applications, only 105 projects were funded. Folmer's project was one of the three projects mentioned in the official announcement of these awards.
This award will support a single Ph.D. student to investigate how wearable computing (Google Glass) can help blind people navigate in indoor environments; a timely research project with a high social impact, as the number of blind people is expected to double in the next decade.
This award will further strengthen Folmer's research collaborations with Google researchers and open up internship opportunities for University students.
