Dr. Caroline Kobek-Pezzarossi, a Professor of Psychology and Director of Institutional Effectiveness and Certification within the Office for Student Success and Academic Quality (SSAQ) at Gallaudet University, visited the University of Alabama NSF-supported “Radar4ASL” Team on Feb. 7, 2022.
During the course of a full-day of activities, the Radar4ASL Team, consisting of five faculty across four departments and two universities as well as three PhD students who work on related research, presented the results achieved by the team since our last meeting in 2021. In-depth technical results of the sign language processing (SLP) algorithms developed for radar were presented, including the results from the two recently published IEEE Transactions papers.
Our plans for future research, including data collection at Gallaudet University, which had been postponed due to COVID, as well as future project proposals were discussed. Opportunities for building additional collaborations with Gallaudet University faculty were discussed and resulted in the planning of a visit by the Radar4ASL team to Gallaudet University later in February.
The day concluded with a meeting organized by the UA Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, led by Dr. Christine Taylor, for a “Discussion about External Deaf & Hard of Hearing Accessibility.” Dr. Kobek-Pezzarossi presented her views on DEI as it relates to the Deaf community and led a discussion with members of the UA community and administration on ways to improve the accessibility of Deaf students, collaborators, and external community members to the opportunities available at UA.