Overview
Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities
University of Colorado System
MISSION
The mission of the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities is to catalyze and integrate advances in science, engineering, and technology to promote the quality of life and independent living of people with cognitive disabilities. Over 22 million people in the U.S. alone are affected by impaired cognitive function such as intellectual disabilities, brain injury, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, and serious, persistent mental illness. An estimated 334,000 persons in Colorado have cognitive disabilities.
ADMINISTRATION
The University of Colorado established the Institute in 2001 as a result of a substantial gift from Bill and Claudia Coleman. Part of their gift established the Coleman-Turner Chair in Cognitive Disability. The Colemans also provide annual gifts to fund the operating and research expenditures of the Institute. The Coleman Colorado Foundation (CCF) was established to receive gifts from the donors. It is a 501 (c) (3) public charity classified as a 509 (a) (3) supporting organization to the University of Colorado (CU) to support the Coleman Institute.
ACTIVITIES
Principal Activities of the Institute
- Research and Development Support
- Coleman Institute Fellowship Program
- Commercialization of Intellectual Property
- Annual Coleman Institute Conference on Cognitive Disability and Technology
- Public Policy Advocacy
- Outreach and Resource Development
Research and Development Support
The primary activity of the Institute is to provide grants for cognitive disability and technology research and development to CU faculty on all campuses of the university. The Institute makes grants that provide seed funding for research that may lead to patent-protected intellectual property and ultimately, commercialization. Since its inception, the Institute has allocated approximately $7 million to over 100 projects involving more than 50 faculty and numerous students. Coleman Institute research investments have assisted faculty in securing significant grant funding from Federal and private agencies to CU.
A major investment of the Coleman Institute has been in the $1.25 million co-funding of the $5.5 million center grant from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) to create the nation’s first Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for the Advancement of Cognitive Technologies (RERC-ACT).
Coleman Institute funding has supported research and development on “smart” transportation systems, “smart” home residential care systems, a personal digital assistant (PDA) based speech training program for children with Down syndrome and patients with Parkinson’s, recreation technology adapted for people with cognitive disabilities, computer-based technology for teaching reading to students with cognitive limitations, and web-based resources for teachers, parents, and students with disabilities in the Boulder Valley public schools. Funding has also been provided for initiatives to promote accessibility to the World Wide Web for people with cognitive disabilities, including policy and regulatory issues, a single sign-on system, content adjustments, and specialized user support.
The Institute also provides funding for research and development projects on new technologies and new applications. Advances have been made in areas such as batteryless-wireless power for sensors and devices, and software solutions that map on to new open source opportunities, like Google’s Android project.
Biomedical science and technology projects funded by the Institute include a drug delivery system for conditions such as schizophrenia and epilepsy, immunological studies of AIDS/HIV with potential pharmacological interventions, the development of bio-compatible electrodes for in vivo recording and stimulation in the brain using Cellular Engineering Micro Systems and wireless telemetry, and non-human stem cell research in a mouse model of Down syndrome.
While dozens of graduate students have been supported by the Coleman Institute through the fellowship program, there has been a focused effort to provide critical funding for graduate fellowships to support the establishment of the PhD program in Geropsychology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS). The Institute continues to provide proposal-based funding to the UCCS Center for Aging, in support of its Aging and Developmental Disabilities initiative and its National Center on Aging Caregivers for People with Cognitive Disabilities.
Coleman Institute Fellowship Program
A primary activity of the Institute is to award Coleman Institute Graduate Student Fellowships. In addition, the Institute awards Coleman Institute Postdoctoral Fellowships, Coleman Institute Faculty Fellowships, and the Coleman Scientist in Residence. Currently, Clayton Lewis, PhD, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, serves as Scientist in Residence.
Clayton Lewis, PhD, (Scientist in Residence), University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB), Computer Science
Zoya Popovic, PhD, UCB, Electrical and Computer Engineering
James Sullivan, PhD, UCB, Computer Science
Regan Zane, PhD, UCB, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Wenbo Zhou, PhD, University of Colorado Denver (UCD), School of Medicine, Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology
The Coleman Institute works with faculty and the University’s Office of Technology Transfer (TTO) to encourage commercialization of research and development-generated intellectual property for the benefit of people with cognitive disabilities. Two Institute funded projects (Newell-Rogers and Stevens, Abrams, and Anchordoquy) have been leveraged with additional investments through the State of Colorado and University of Colorado Technology Office’s Bioscience Discovery Evaluation Grant Program. A third (Cole) has received a Proof of Concept grant directly from TTO.
patent generation in either the creation of new companies or licensing activities
Ronald Cole, PhD, UCB, now Mentor Interactive, Inc.
Lorraine Ramig, PhD, UCB and Gleeco, Inc.
Alex Reppening, PhD, UCB, now Agentsheets, Inc.
Karen Newell Rogers, PhD, UCCS, with license to Viral Genetics
Karen Stevens, PhD; Dan Abrams, MD; and Tom Anchordoquy, PhD,
UCD, School of Medicine and Sierra NeuroPharmaceuticals
Regan Zane, PhD, and Zoya Popovic, PhD, UCB with license to Powercast
Coleman Institute Annual Conferences on Cognitive Disability and Technology
The Coleman Institute annual conference is a major Institute activity and has a University of Colorado regional, and national following. Institute Executive Director David Braddock has organized and chaired the seven CU university-wide conferences since the Institute's founding in 2001. Research poster sessions on cognitive technology related topics are at the heart of the conferences. University faculty and students from a variety of fields including engineering, the health sciences, the humanities and the social sciences display their research and create new interdisciplinary collaboration. The academic discourse involves colleagues from many other research universities, as well as leaders in government, industry, the disability communities and philanthropy who participate in the conferences and share their knowledge with the diverse audience. The 2007 Seventh Annual Conference in Cognitive Disability and Technology Conference was held in conjunction with the RERC-ACT State of the Science conference and there were more than 400 registrants from 22 states and Canada.
Past conference speakers have included:
Ted Berger, PhD, Director, Center for Neural Engineering, University of Southern California, 2007;
John Seeley Brown, Chief Scientist, Xerox Corporation, 2002;
Vinton Cerf, Sr. Vice President of Technology Strategy, MCI (and co-designer of the protocols and architecture of the Internet), 2004;
Michael Chorost, PhD, Author, Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, 2005;
Bill Coleman, Founder and former CEO, BEA Systems, Founder and CEO of Cassatt, Inc. and Claudia Coleman, founding donors of the Coleman Institute, 2001-2007;
Jose Cordero, MD, Director, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Center for Disease Control (CDC), 2005;
Felix de la Cruz, Director, Mental Retardation Branch, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2001;
Steve Eidelman, Executive Director, The Arc of the United States, 2001, 2003;
Glenn Fujiura, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Disability and Human Development, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2007;
Temple Grandin, PhD, Professor, Colorado State University; NY Times best-selling author of Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports from My Life with Autism, and Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior; 2006;
Raymond Kurzweil, inventor and entrepreneur, 2003;
Maja Mataric, PhD, Founding Director, Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems, University of Southern California, 2006;
Patricia Morrissey, PhD, Commissioner, Administration for Developmental Disabilities, United States Department of Health and Human Services, 2005;
Lawrence Parsons, Program Director, Cognitive Neuroscience Program, National Sciences Foundation, 2001;
Robert Pasternack, Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, United States Department of Education, 2003;
Ramesh Rao, PhD, Director, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, University of California at San Diego, 2006;
Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Executive VP, Kennedy Foundation, 2005;
Timothy Shriver, PhD, Chairman of the Board, International Special Olympics, 2005;
Michael Stein, PhD, JD, Professor of Law, William and Mary School of Law and Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School, 2007;
Sue Swenson, Executive Director of The Arc of the United States, 2007, 2003, 2001;
Steven Tingus, Director, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, 2004, 2002;
Michael Wehmeyer, PhD, Professor of Special Education and Director of the Kansas University Center on Developmental Disabilities, University of Kansas, 2006;
Mary Woolley, President and CEO, Research! America, 2004.
COGNITIVE DISABILITY AND TECHNOLOGY
OCTOBER 16, 2008
ST. JULIEN HOTEL, BOULDER, CO
Distinguished Plenary Speakers
MICHAEL BÉRUBÉ, PhD, Paterno Family Professor in Literature, Science, Technology and Society, Pennsylvania State University and Author of Life As We Know It: A Father, A Family, and an Exceptional Child.
WILLIAM T. “BILL” COLEMAN III, Founder and CEO, Cassatt, Inc. and founding donor of the Coleman Institute
BRUCE BENSON, President of the University of Colorado, and RENEE PIETRANGELO, CEO, ANCOR, special guests
Additional panels/speakers include:
Health Promotion for People with Cognitive Disabilities
James Rimmer, PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago;
Holly Wyatt, MD, UCD, School of Medicine
Coleman Institute Supported Advances in Biomedical Science and Technology
Daniel Abrams, MD, UCD, School of Medicine;
Curt R. Freed, MD, UCD, School of Medicine;
Karen Newell Rogers, PhD, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Smart Home/Personal Support Technologies
Rodney Bell, Asset Consulting;
Jeff Darling, Rest Assured, LLC;
Dan Davies, AbleLink Technologies, Inc.;
Duane Tempel, Sound Response and University of Wisconsin;
Greg Wellems, Imagine! Colorado
Cognitive Accessibility and the Web
Chester Finn, Self-Advocates Becoming Empowered;
Clayton Lewis, PhD, CU Boulder;
Michael Paciello, The Paciello Group;
Paul Timmers, PhD, e-Inclusion, European Commission, Directorate of General Information, Society & Media;
Cynthia Waddell, JD, Center for Disability and the Internet;
Scot Weeres, Accessibility Directorate, Ministry of Community and Social Services, Ontario, Canada;
Cameron Wilson, Association for Computing Machinery
The conference is chaired by David Braddock, PhD, Associate Vice President, University of Colorado System and Executive Director of the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities. For more information, please contact MaryEllen at maryellen@cu.edu. To see the preliminary agenda and/or register, please visit the Institute's web site at http://www.colemaninstitute.org
The Institute co-sponsored eight additional conferences in 2007-2008 including:
1) Building a System of Healthcare for Adults with Developmental Disabilities with the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and The Resource Exchange;
2) The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 2007 Conference, Atlanta;
3) The 2007 State of the Science Conference on Aging with Developmental Disabilities: Charting Lifespan Trajectories and Supportive Environments for Healthy Community Living, Atlanta;
4) The 2007 TASH conference on “Equity, Inclusion, and Opportunity," Seattle, Washington;
5) The “Expert Workshop on the Biology of Chromosome 21 Genes” in Washington, DC;
6) "The 10th Annual Accessing Higher Ground conference on Assistive Technology and Accessible Media in Higher Education” at the University of Colorado at Boulder;
7) The Global Summit on the Health and Well-being of People with Intellectual Disabilities: Research Symposium and Policy Forum, Shanghai, China held in conjunction with the Special Olympics 2007 World Summer Games, and
8) A special themed session entitled the “World Café,” a focus on technology, disability and the future at the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 2008 Conference in Washington, DC.
The Coleman Institute has influenced funding for research in cognitive technologies not just at CU, but nationally. Specifically, Associate Vice President and Executive Director David Braddock, PhD, helped to successfully advocate for the federal government to authorize a new funding source dedicated to cognitive technologies research and development. This initiative was authorized through the federal government’s National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR). The subsequent national, peer-reviewed competition resulted in CU being awarded the nation’s first Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for the Advancement of Cognitive Technologies. This is a $5.5 million center grant with a co-funded matching commitment of $1.25 million from the Coleman Institute.
The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for the Advancement of Cognitive Technologies (RERC-ACT), which commenced operation in November, 2004, incorporates 13 separate projects on the UCB, UCCS, and UCD campuses in nine different academic units, and research partners at four other research universities in Illinois, California, Michigan and Kansas. Other collaborators include the Institute for Matching Persons and Technology, Inc., AbleLink Technologies, Inc., AT Sciences, LLC, and CaringFamily.
The RERC is administered by the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Associate Professor Cathy Bodine, PhD, serves as principal investigator. Michael Lightner, PhD, is co-principal investigator and also the chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Research and development projects include the assessments of needs, knowledge, barriers, and uses of assistive technology, a ‘digital mailbox’ for persons with Alzheimer’s disease to facilitate remote family support, and a technology forum to build industry-wide standards for accessibility. Other projects involve the design, implementation, and evaluation of the effectiveness of new software tools to enhance written expression and promote decision making for people with cognitive disabilities. There are also projects that create ‘context aware’ technologies for residential care, use perceptive animated avatars for training to increase the ability of people with cognitive disabilities to succeed in the workplace, and develop new technologies to promote physical health and well-being.
The Institute’s public policy activities have also included consultation with the federal government's President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities and congressional and agency staff. In addition, the annual Coleman Institute conferences on cognitive disability and technology include a workshop on cognitive accessibility on the web. The Institute’s scientist in residence, Professor Clayton Lewis of the UCB computer science department, serves on national and international committees engaged in technical, usability and regulatory issues related to accessibility issues for people with cognitive disabilities.
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Successfully advocated for the federal government to launch a national competition for the nation’s first “Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Cognitive Technologies.”
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Helped CU compete successfully for this $5.5 million Center, co-funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) and the Coleman Institute.
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Contributed technology recommendations for the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Reports to President Bush of the “President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities.”
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Scientist in Residence activities related to cognitive accessibility on the Web
Outreach and Resource Development
The Institute has also been an effective agent to bring constituencies together nationally and internationally to advance awareness, advocacy and resources related to cognitive disability and technology. Executive Director David Braddock speaks frequently on issues involving quality of life for people with cognitive disabilities and on the role of technology in this emerging field. Since joining CU in August 2001, he has given over 100 invited public lectures and keynote addresses in university and conference settings. Audiences have included CU alumni groups, state legislatures, international, national, state and community organizations, and disability and technology constituencies in Colorado, in 24 other states and the District of Columbia, and in six foreign countries (Japan, Canada, Mexico, China, United Arab Emirates, and Sweden).
This past year, the Institute launched on its web site the nation’s first searchable electronic database on cognitive technology research literature pertinent to persons with cognitive disabilities. The database contains entries for over 800 articles that have been published in more than 70 journals. It is designed for use by researchers, engineers, business development specialists, parents of persons with cognitive disabilities, and students.
In another form of outreach, the Institute has successfully nominated candidates for major international awards presented by the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California, an organization that recognizes exceptional leaders worldwide who “create technology to benefit society.” The Institute’s nominee in 2006, a University of Colorado industry partner, Dan Davies, founder and CEO of AbleLink Technologies, Inc. won the award in the Social Equality category. This $50,000 Tech Museum cash prize was contributed by the foundation associated with Genentech (Swanson Foundation). In 2002, the Institute’s nominee, former CU faculty member Ron Cole, PhD, who is now chief scientist at Mentor Interactive, Inc., was a semifinalist in the Education category.
A recent outreach activity of the Institute was to bring together a distinguished group of disability leaders representing the Front Range of Colorado to explore Smart Care Technology. The dialogue is based on an innovative application of simple, affordable technology to improve the quality of life for people with cognitive disabilities and their caregivers.
The Institute is advising Imagine!, Inc., the local developmental disabilities service provider, in establishing two “Smart Homes” in Boulder and Longmont. To date, over $1 million has been raised to support development of these homes from HUD, the cities of Boulder and Longmont, and from private donations. These homes will be the first smart homes for people with developmental disabilities developed from the ground up in the United States. They will be an important and unique research and development initiative for this population.
Part of the Coleman Institute’s impact within CU and nationally is through consultation. In addition to the consultative activities of the executive director, Enid Ablowitz, the Institute’s associate director and director of advancement, provides consultative services related to resource development through private fundraising. At the national level, the Coleman Institute designed and hosted development workshops and provided consultations for executive directors of most of the nation’s University Centers of Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. At CU, resource development services are provided regularly to academic leaders at each of the campuses and to multiple departments and units working in academic and professional disciplines related to cognitive disabilities.
Also complementing the Institute’s activities is the research enterprise of the Executive Director David Braddock, PhD, who continues to secure federal grants through his academic appointment in CU's School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. One of these grants is the State of the States in Developmental Disabilities Project which has been continuously funded by the US Government for 30 years.