$4.7 Million to CATEA for Wheeled Mobility Research
2009-01-05 -
The Dept. of Education, through the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), has awarded $4.7 million to continue research in cutting-edge technologies for people with disabilities at Georgia Tech’s Center for Assistive Technologies and Environmental Access (CATEA).
The grant, announced in December, is the second major award made through NIDRR to CATEA’s mobility laboratory, the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Wheeled Mobility (Mobility RERC). The goal of the Mobility RERC is to promote new ways of conceptualizing and understanding wheeled mobility - from a focus on technology itself, to a focus on a broad range of interventions that impact technology use and its role in enabling human activities. In the long term, this approach will successfully enable as many individuals as possible to participate actively in everyday life.
During the five years of the first grant cycle (2003 to 2008), the Mobility RERC had become a recognized leader on issues and solutions related to wheeled mobility in everyday life. To accomplish this, the research team led by Dr. Sprigle had to chart new territory by answering research questions that had previously been unasked and by evaluating outcomes that were previously ignored. To address participation in everyday life, the team had to take research out of the laboratory and put it in the real world everyday environments in which wheeled mobility occurs. As a result, the team has studied wheeled mobility in home and community settings; studied new interventions in a therapy gym; and monitored use and disuse of manual wheelchairs by elders in long term care settings.
CATEA is one of several specialized research centers within Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture.
Funding for this five-year project (grant H133E080003) comes from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, part of the U.S. Department of Education.
For more Information contact:
David Morton
CATEA, College of Architecture
david.morton@coa.gatech.edu
404-385-0871
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