I am chuffed to announce that I have been awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship! 🎉🎉🎉
It is lovely to see accessibility work such as mine getting funded by UKRI. Access to technologies which increasingly shape our communication vital and will continue to grow in importance as technology pervades society.
This ~£2M fellowship will support my research over the next four years, with the possibility of additional funding to extend it for a further three. It is also backed by around £300k of in-kind contributions from charities, industry, and public sector partners.
I will be hiring four people:
The postdoc salaries are highly competitive. The whole team will benefit from exceptional opportunities for mentorship, collaboration with charities and industry, and career development. The budget for travel and equipment is equally strong. I have also been awarded a budget specifically intended to support researchers with dependents. I will shortly share more details about the speciifc posts I am hiring for.
The TACT team will be supported by an amazing Co-Investigator, Prof. Madeline Cruice (City St George's, University of London), a leading speech and language therapy expert. We are also fortunate to be working with an exceptional network of partners, collaborators, and advisors, including Microsoft Research, Tobii Dynavox, Transport for London, Hidden Disabilities, Aphasia Re-Connect, Dyscover, Speech and Language UK, Prof. Jonathan Lazar (University of Maryland), and Prof. Karyn Moffatt (McGill University).
The fellowship is called Total Communication Technologies (TACT) to Support Accessible Communication. Its vision is to fundamentally re-imagine technology-mediated communication through the lens of users with communication disabilities.
The focus is on enabling total communication – both verbal and non-verbal – across assistive technologies and mainstream platforms such as videoconferencing. I am particularly interested in both the potential and the risks of emerging AI models in assistive technology, as well as the role of discreet, wearable devices like smartwatches and smart glasses in supporting real-world communication.
Given the growing role of AI in shaping how we interact, I am grateful for the chance to influence its development in ways that prioritise accessibility and inclusion.
This fellowship would not have been possible without the incredible support of my colleagues at King’s and beyond, who offered practical, emotional, and intellectual help during what has been an extremely long and challenging year for me.
In no particular order, I would like to thank: Cecila Rossiter, Rameez Subhan, Tomasz Radzik, Petr Slovak, Yulan He, Elena Simperl, Carmine Ventre, Andy Blustin, Sara Heitlinger, Mike Cook, Rita Borgo, Michael Berthaume, Elizabeth Black, Luc Moreau, Delphine Van Der Pauw, Jonathan Lazar, Karyn Moffatt, Seray Ibrahim, Humphrey Curtis, Filip Bircanin and Madeline Cruice.
Over the coming months, I plan to share a short reflection on my process – covering proposal preparation, responding to reviewer comments, and preparing for the interview.