Congratulations to CREATE graduate student Andrew Dilanchian on his first publication, based on work he completed as an undergraduate honors thesis student in the CREATE lab at Florida State University! The paper, entitled, "A Pilot Study Exploring Age Differences in Presence, Workload, and Cybersickness in the Experience of Immersive Virtual Reality Environments", can be found by clicking here!
CREATE's Neil Charness represented North America at an international conference Friday on digital equity for people of all ages, part of the celebration of the UN International Day of the Older Person. The remote conference, sponsored by International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics, brings together aging experts from across the globe to discuss a variety of topics related to digital equity.
The CREATE Workshop in Bordeaux, France, was a great success! CREATE hosted a hybrid meeting from September 23-24th in which attendees learned from the Team about the aging process, issues relevant to design and implementation of technology for older adults in real world settings, and how to help foster the development of early-stage researchers in aging and technology. For a summary of the event, click here for the CREATE Workshop program! For photos of the team at the event, click here! And as always, keep an eye out for any future events or workshops hosted by the CREATE Team!
CREATE's Wendy Rogers has been named the 2021 King McCristal Distinguished Scholar in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign! Her McCristal lecture focused on designing robots that support successful aging related to the different kinds of activities older adults may need support with in maintaining or improving their quality of life. To read more about her lecture, click here. Congratulations, Wendy!
An APA Monitor article about optimizing technology for older adults and featuring the great work of the CREATE team has just been posted! To read the article and learn about the important work being done to make technologies more accesible for aging populaitons, click here!
CREATE's Dr. Wendy Rogers recently gave an invited address entitled "Designing Technology to Support Healthy Aging" at the Regenstrief Institute SAM (Scientists Advancing Medicine) Talk. The presentation was uploaded to YouTube and can be viewed by clicking here!
CREATE's Dr. Charness recently presented a keynote address at the (eng)aging! virtual conference on aging, a conference focused on technologies for active and independent living in older age. More specifically, the conference "...is organized in the frame of the long-term (eng)aging! project, which aims to foster society-wide debate about the accelerating demographic change and population aging. The project aims to stimulate a constructive discussion about these trends and to look for ways to make use of them for the benefit of the society. To learn more about the conference, click here!
CREATE is very excited about an upcoming collaboration with SMART-AGE, a German study funded by the Carl Zeiss Foundation which involves equipping two groups of older adults with a combination of intelligent assistance systems. SMART-AGE will make an attempt to replicate the CREATE team's previous and encouraging findings from the PRISM trial. Overall, the SMART-AGE platform aims to help each participant find the way of living appropriate to their needs.
In the words of Professor Wahl, a senior professor in the Network Aging Research (NAR) at Heidelberg University and one of the SMART-AGE research project leaders:
“We regard this collaboration as unique and highly promising, because it builds on an existing long-standing cooperation between CREATE and my research team at Heidelberg University. Even more important, we aim in tandem to build an international research alliance toward helping older adults to make full use of digital technology and media for their quality of life. CORONA recently has unraveled how urgent this challenge indeed is.”
CREATE PI Neil Charness was one of the first individuals over the age of 65 to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at Florida State University and was interviewed about his experience. To read more about the event, click here! Make sure to stay aware of when and where you are able to receive the vaccine in your local area so we can do our part to fight this pandemic!
CREATE PIs had a very busy fall giving a variety of conference and invited presentations to a wide-range of organizations! For a full list of citations for these presentations, click here.
Some examples include:
- Walter Boot's presentation entitled, "Aging in an Increasingly Technology-Based Society: Past, Present, and Future" presented at the 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America.
- Neil Charness' Keynote presentation entitled, "Acceptance of Transportation Technologies by Aging Adults: If you build it, will they buy it?" presented at the meeting of a NSF Smart & Connected Communities Grant at the University of Michigan.
- Sara Czaja's presentation entitled, "Cognition, Technology, and Older Adults", presented at a Neuroscience Research Seminar hosted at the University of Texas, Rio Grande.
- Wendy Rogers' presentation entitled, "Designing technology to support healthy aging", presented at Carle Illinois College of Medicine Innovation Grand Rounds Series.
