Thanks to this amazing group of UW students for helping package  ASSETS t-shirts for sending to our student volunteers and organizing committee members who cannot travel to Athens. And thanks again to Liang He for the awesome ASSETS'22 logo and t-shirt design. From left-to-right in the photo below, Judy Kong, Kelly Mack, Jon E. Froehlich, Zhuohao (Jerry) Zhang, Chu Li, Xia Su, and Jaewook Lee.

We started off the 2022-2023 academic year with a kickoff BBQ at my house. Thanks Chu, Jae, Xia, and Daniel for coming. (Mikey, we missed you!). If you look closely, you can see the special sign that one of my children made for the festivities.

Congratulations to Maryam Hosseini on their successful PhD defense on semi-automatic sidewalk assessments. Wonderful work. Terrific presentation. Beautiful slides. Our work together played but a small role in this incredibly impactful research: Hosseini, M., Saugstad, M., Miranda, F., Sevtsuk, A., Silva, C. T., Froehlich, J. E. (2022). Towards Global-Scale Crowd+AI Techniques to Map and Assess Sidewalks for People with Disabilities. CVPR2020 Workshop: Accessibility, Vision, and Autonomy (AVA). DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2206.13677 Congratulations Maryam!

Dhruv Jain just announced that he has accepted an Assistant Professorship in CSE at the University of Michigan (Twitter link).  Congratulations Professor Jain! To celebrate the announcement and the completion of his dissertation, I was honored to go on a celebratory walk + tea with Dhruv. Wishing you all the best in Ann Arbor!

Congratulations to Dhruv Jain who was selected for the prestigious Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant for his work on “Sound Sensing and Feedback Techniques for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users.” The MSR Dissertationg Grant aims to "increase the pipeline of diverse talent receiving advanced degrees in computing-related fields by providing a research funding opportunity for doctoral students who are underrepresented in the field of computing."

Read more on the Allen School news page.

Congratulations to Dhruv Jain who was selected for the Google-CMD-IT LEAP Alliance Fellowship. CMD-IT stands for the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in IT and is dedicated to "promoting innovation that enriches, enhances, and enables our target communities, such that more equitable and sustainable contributions are possible by all communities."

Both of our ASSETS'19 papers were nominated for 'Best Paper' at ASSETS'19:

1. Weld, G., Jang, E., Li, A., Zeng, A., Heimerl, K., Froehlich, J. E. (2019). Deep Learning for Automatically Detecting Sidewalk Accessibility Problems Using Streetscape Imagery. Proceedings of ASSETS 2019.
2. Jain, D., Desjardins, A., Findlater, L., Froehlich, J. E. (2019). Autoethnography of a Hard of Hearing Traveler. Proceedings of ASSETS 2019.

We were honored that both of our papers submitted to ASSETS'19 were accepted for publication:

• Autoethnography of a Hard of Hearing Traveler led by UW CSE PhD student, Dhruv Jain, and co-authored by Jain, Audrey Desjardins (School of Art + Art History + Design), Leah Findlater (HCDE), and Jon Froehlich
• Deep Learning for Automatically Detecting Sidewalk Accessibility Problems Using Streetscape Imagery led by UW CSE PhD students, Galen Weld and Esther Jang, and co-authored by Weld, Jang, Anthony Li (UMD ugrad), Aileen Zeng (UW CSE ugrad), Kurtis Heimerl (UW CSE prof), and Jon Froehlich.