[Nfbsatx] Fwd: [Nfbnet-master-list] White House Highlights STEM Innovators in the Disability Community as "Champions of Change"

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Riccobono, Mark <MRiccobono at nfb.org>
Date: Fri, May 4, 2012 at 9:37 PM
Subject: [Nfbnet-master-list] White House Highlights STEM Innovators in the
Disability Community as "Champions of Change"
To: nfbnet-master-list at nfbnet.org



THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of Communications

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 7, 2012



White House Highlights STEM Innovators in the Disability Community as
"Champions of Change"

WASHINGTON, DC - On Monday, May 7th, the White House will honor 14
individuals as Champions of Change for leading the fields of science,
technology, engineering, and math for people with disabilities in education
and employment.

"STEM is vital to America's future in education and employment, so equal
access for people with disabilities is imperative, as they can contribute
to and benefit from STEM," said Kareem Dale, Special Assistant to the
President for Disability Policy. "The leaders we've selected as Champions
of Change are proving that when the playing field is level, people with
disabilities can excel in STEM, develop new products, create scientific
inventions, open successful businesses, and contribute equally to the
economic and educational future of our country."



The Champions of Change program was created as a part of President Obama's
Winning the Future initiative. Each week, a different sector is highlighted
and groups of Champions, ranging from educators to entrepreneurs to
community leaders, are recognized for the work they are doing to serve and
strengthen their communities.



To watch this event live, visit www.whitehouse.gov/live at 1:30 pm ET on
May 7th.



The White House "Champions of Change" are:



Ralph Braun is the founder and CEO of The Braun Corporation. Diagnosed with
Spinal Muscular Atrophy in 1947, he began using a wheelchair for mobility.
Determined to maintain his independence, he engineered the world's first
motorized scooter and followed with the first accessible vehicle a few
years later. The company grew substantially over the next decades, and
today, The Braun Corporation is the worldwide leader of wheelchair
accessible vehicles and wheelchair lifts in the mobility industry. What
started as a part-time business operated from his parents' garage has grown
into an international corporation with over 800 employees. Ralph is now 71
years old and is the father of five adult children. He still lives and runs
The Braun Corporation from his hometown of Winamac, Indiana with his wife,
Melody.



Joseph Sullivan is president of Duxbury Systems, Inc., a small company that
has specialized in software for braille since its founding in 1975, and
which now employs two blind people and which provides braille translation
software for more than 130 languages worldwide.  He has also served on many
braille-related committees, including the Literary Braille and Computer
Braille Committees of the Braille Authority of North America, was chair of
the technical design subcommittee of the Unified English Braille (UEB)
project of the International Council on English Braille (ICEB), and
currently serves on the UEB Maintenance Committee of ICEB.  Joe believes
that braille is the key to literacy for blind persons, that literacy is the
key to an informed citizenry, and that an informed citizenry is essential
to civilization.



University of North Texas (UNT) Biochemistry graduate student Nasrin Taei
is developing a model peptide system to investigate the effects of
mutations that cause sudden cardiac arrest in young adults. Her model
system will be used for testing potential candidate drugs that ameliorate
the structural effects of heart disease causing mutations. Nasrin is a
member of Phi Theta Kappa an international honor society. As a STEM model,
she tutored at the community college and mentored high school students,
which led to her recognition at UNT as a Soaring Eagle. Nasrin is being
honored as a Champion of Change for her humanitarianism and contributions
toward discovering a treatment for heart disease and making a better future
for people around the globe.



Maria Dolores Cimini, Ph.D. is the Assistant Director for Prevention and
Program Evaluation at the University at Albany Counseling Center and has
served as the Principal Investigator for over six million dollars in
behavioral health projects funded by the National Institutes of Health, the
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the U.S.
Department of Education during the past decade. As a
scientist-practitioner, Dr. Cimini has been active in promoting access to
STEM for students with disabilities, particularly young women with
disabilities, through her work with the American Psychological
Association's Women with Disabilities in STEM Education Project for which
she serves as Co-Chair and her mentoring of students and early career
scientists on a national scale. Through her own experience as a scientist
with a disability, she is helping our nation identify and enhance
facilitators and address barriers to STEM education and career success for
people with disabilities. Dr. Cimini is being honored as a Champion of
Change for her work in enhancing access to the STEM disciplines by students
with disabilities through her research, leadership, and mentoring efforts.



As a professional and a parent, Virginia Stern has been working for more
than four decades to raise expectations of persons with disabilities, their
families, educators, and employers, especially employers in science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Since 1977 she was a
guiding force of the Project on Science, Technology and Disability of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She recognized
that talented students with disabilities needed more than legislation and
STEM degrees to gain employment in their chosen fields. In 1996 Mrs. Stern
and her colleagues developed the flagship program, Entry Point!, to provide
paid internships and develop career skills in the private and public
sectors for students with disabilities in STEM. Hundreds of Entry Point!
alumni have joined and continue to advance in the STEM workforce of the
nation.



Steve Jacobs is President of IDEAL Group. Steve is dedicated to enhancing
the accessibility of STEM curriculum for students with disabilities.
Steve's company offers software that translates printed STEM materials into
digital formats for conversion into speech and Braille.  Steve's company
also developed fully-accessible STEM-enabled eBook reading software. Over
the past 3-1/2 years, Steve's company has become one of the world's largest
developer of mobile accessibility applications with five million
installations in 136 countries. Steve is also working with many
institutions to tech-transfer their STEM-related work to mobile platforms.
These institutions include Smith-Kettlewell's Video Description R&D Center,
University of Oregon's Mathematics eText Research Center, and Georgia Tech
wireless RERC and sonification lab. Steve is a 1973 graduate of Ohio State
University. Steve and wife Pauline have been married for 37 years. Pauline
and Steve have two daughters, Shana and Jessica, and a granddaughter Brooke
Christine... who is Steve's boss.



Rafael San Miguel began his career at NASA working on the Space Shuttle
program, and has spent the past 23 years as a scientist for The Coca-Cola
Company.  He also serves as a board member of the Atlanta Speech School, an
80-year old private institution focused on meeting the needs of those with
speech and language based disabilities.  Rafael, who has been profoundly
deaf since infancy, creates awareness about disability by focusing on
ability as he inspires young people to pursue education in science and
math. Using his unique format that presents science in an exciting way, he
has volunteered at schools both locally and in communities where he travels
by connecting with underserved schools through the volunteer network of
Points of Light. Rafael is now turning his energies toward a call to action
and creating an initiative called the U.S. Science Project focused on
inspiring individual scientists, businesses, legislators and community
leaders to scale efforts for engaging in impact-driven volunteerism to
begin to fill the science deficit in our nation through a volunteer Science
Corps.



David H. Rose, EdD, is a developmental neuropsychologist and educator whose
primary focus is on the development of new technologies for learning. In
1984, Dr. Rose co-founded CAST, a not-for-profit research and development
organization whose mission is to improve education, for all learners,
through universal design for learning (UDL). Dr. Rose also teaches at
Harvard's Graduate School of Education where he has been on the faculty for
more than 25 years. He is the author or editor of numerous books and
articles on UDL, and the winner of awards from the Smithsonian Museum, the
Tech Museum, and others.



Christine Reich is Director of Research and Evaluation at the Museum of
Science, Boston, one of the world's largest science centers. The Museum of
Science brings science, technology, engineering, and math to about 1.5
million visitors a year through its dynamic programs and interactive
exhibits. As Director of Research and Evaluation, Christine oversees a
department that conducts research and evaluation studies related to various
aspects of the Museum experience, but her passion and expertise focus on
researching ways to advance the inclusion of people with disabilities in
museum learning. Prior to her current position, Christine worked as a
museum educator and an exhibit planner, specializing in the development of
museums exhibitions and programs that are inclusive of people with
disabilities.



George Kerscher began his IT innovations in 1987 and coined the term "print
disabled."  George is dedicated to developing technologies that make
information not only accessible, but also fully functional in the hands of
persons who are blind or who have a print disability. He believes properly
designed information systems can make all information accessible to all
people and is working to push evolving technologies in this direction. As
Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium and President of the
International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), Kerscher is a recognized
international leader in document access.  In addition, Kerscher is the
Senior Officer of Accessible Technology at Learning Ally in the USA.  He
chairs the DAISY/NISO Standards committee, and serves on the USA National
Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) Board.



As a child in the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind in
1949, John Boyer found that contemporary scientific material in braille was
almost non-existent. John has never lost the sense of frustration he felt
when the braille resources available to him were insufficient to satisfy
his hunger for more science education. John believes that is the motive for
his life's work. He obtained a master's degree in Computer science, with a
minor in electronics engineering at the University of Wisconsin in 1980.
His first company was a Braille publishing enterprise which served an
international client base. Abilitiessoft, Inc., his current company,
creates open source adaptive software which makes Web pages available to
blind persons through a Braille display. The current project,
BrailleBlaster, will allow the integration of text with Braille graphics
such as maps and graphs into a format accessible to blind people.



Dr. Dimitri Kanevsky is a Research staff member in the Speech and Language
Algorithms Department at the IBM T.J.Watson Research Center. Prior to
joining IBM, he worked at a number of prestigious centers for higher
mathematics, including the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the
Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1979, he
invented a multi-channel vibration based hearing aid, and founded a company
to produce and market this device. He also developed the first uses for
speech recognition as a communication aid for deaf users over the
telephone, for which he received an award from the National Search for
Computing Applications from John Hopkins to Assist Persons with
Disabilities. In 1998 Dr. Kanevsky introduced the first remote
transcription stenographic services over the Internet, and created the
ViaScribe product speech recognition concept and system that allows
automatic transcription of lectures in real-time and the creation of
multimedia notes. At IBM he has been responsible for developing the first
Russian automatic speech recognition system, as well as key projects for
embedding speech recognition in automobiles and broadcast transcription
systems. He currently holds 152 US patents and was granted the title of
Master Inventor IBM in 2002 , 2005 and 2010. His conversational biometrics
based security patent was recognized by MIT, Technology Review Magazine, as
one of five most influential patents for 2003. His work on Extended
Baum-Welch algorithm in speech, another initiative for embedding speech
recognition in automobiles and his work on conversational biometrics was
recognized as science accomplishment  in 2002 , 2004 and 2008 by the
Director of Research at IBM . In 2005 Dimitri Kanevsky received an Honorary
degree (Doctor of Laws, honoris causa) from the University College of Cape
Breton.  He was elected a member  of  the Word Technology Network in 2004
and was a Chairperson of IT Software Technology session at Word Technology
Network Summit 2005 in San-Francisco, Calif. He also organized a special
session on Large Scale Optimization at ICASSP 2012 in Japan.



Henry Wedler is a graduate student at the University of California, Davis,
working towards his Ph.D. in organic chemistry. Inspired by programs
offered by the National Federation of the Blind in high school and with
encouragement from professors, colleagues and others, Henry gained the
confidence to challenge and refute the mistaken belief that STEM fields are
too visual and, therefore, impractical for blind people.  Henry is not only
following his own passion; he is working hard to develop the next
generation of scientists by founding and teaching at an annual chemistry
camp for blind and low-vision high school students. Chemistry Camp
demonstrates to these students, by example and through practice, that their
lack of eyesight should not hold them back from pursuing their dreams.
Henry was nominated by Douglas Sprei of Learning Ally, a nonprofit that
produces accessible audio textbooks for blind and learning disabled
students, which is an indispensable resource that allowed him to excel in
school.



Sina Bahram is a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at North
Carolina State University.  His field of research is Human Computer
Interaction (HCI).  Sina's primary interest is the dynamic translation of
interfaces, with an emphasis on innovative environments being used by
persons with visual impairment (PWVI) to facilitate learning, independence,
and exploration.  His other research interests focus on using AI inspired
techniques to solve real-world user-centric problems.  When he is not busy
with his academic pursuits, Sina enjoys staying on the bleeding edge of
technology and working with small, high-tech startup companies.  Sina's
passion for his field originally stems from the fact that he is mostly
blind and uses assistive technologies such as a screen reader to navigate
computer systems and technological devices.  After experimenting in the
fields of bioinformatics, privacy policy/law, and systems security, Sina
discovered that his heart lies in helping users of all capabilities use
computer systems more effectively and efficiently.  He has worked in HCI
full-time ever since.


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