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.
Congratulations to CREATE's Dr. Sara Czaja on being the 2020 recipient of the M. Powell Lawton Award! The award "recognizes outstanding contributions from applied gerontological research that have benefited older people and their care. It is "presented at the GSA's Annual Scientific Meeting to an individual who exemplifies Dr. Lawton's personal and professional qualities, and whose contributions in gerontology have led to innovations in gerontological treatment, practice or service, prevention, or amelioration of symptoms or barriers." We are proud of your contributions, Dr. Czaja!
Come learn about CREATE's 20 years of advancing technology to support older adults by streaming the CREATE symposium from this year's International Society of Gerontechnology conference! You can watch the video at our YouTube channel by clicking here!
The CREATE Team is presenting their 20 years of research and experience at two virtual conferences this week! On Monday, October 5th at 4pm (CDT), the team will be presenting a symposium entitled, "Human Factors and Aging: A 20-year Retrospective and Prospective from CREATE" at the 64th International Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. The symposium will provide an overview of CREATE research in the domains of health, leisure, work, and social engagement, and in the context of current and emerging technologies. For more information about event and this symposium, click here!
The team is also presenting at the ISG’s 12th World Conference of Gerontechnology on Wednesday, October 7th at 9:20am (CDT). Their symposium is entitled, "The Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE): Twenty Years of Advancing Technology to Support Older Adults" . For the GSA schedule and presentation information, click here!