Alyssa M Alcorn
Alyssa is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE), within the UCL Institute of Education. She has specialised in designing and evaluating technologies to support and teach school-aged children on the autism spectrum, with a particular focus on social communication skills and on conducting research in school settings. Currently, she works on the DE-ENIGMA Horizon 2020 project on social robots as teaching tools for autism (http://de-enigma.eu/). Previously, she worked at Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt universities on an ESRC/EPSRC-funded TEL project developing virtual environments for autism (ECHOES-2, see https://bit.ly/2GEuqoO). She has been active across the autism and technology community, and was invited as the 2017 keynote speaker for the UK National Autistic Society’s Autism and Technology Conference. Alyssa completed her PhD in Human-Computer Interaction and MSc Cognitive Science at the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics, and her BA Psychology at Mills College (CA, USA).
Kevin Chapman
Kevin Chapman is a YouTuber, author and former secondary school head of computing who took a massive risk in the summer of 2017 in leaving the teaching profession to become a carer for his 13 year old autistic son who at the time had been refusing to attend school for the previous 18 months. His daily videos cover a wide range of topics including parenting a child with autism, the ups and downs of trying to support a family of five with an online income, education, gaming and geek culture, technology and anything else that takes his fancy! He doesn’t sleep.
Search for Kevin on YouTube at: youtube.com/kevinchapman1
Sylvia Lu
- Corporate Strategy, u-blox UK, Member of Advisory Board, UKTIN
Sylvia Lu is an award-winning Chartered Engineer and Non-Executive Director. Sylvia has over 15 years of experience in the Telecom industry for four mobile generations with chipset vendors, currently with u-blox at the Corporate Strategy group – a Swiss vendor of positioning and wireless communication chipset, modules, and services.
Sylvia serves on several national and global industry Boards: she is an elected board director of CW (Cambridge Wireless), and serves on the Advisory Board of UKTIN, which provides independent advice on the telecoms sector, champions the opportunities in telecoms research, development, and innovation for the UK, and helps UKTIN provide impartial input to government. She also serves on the Board of 5G-ACIA (5G Alliance for Connected Industries and Automation), and joins forces with global industry stakeholders to influence 5G development and deployment in line with industrial imperatives to accelerate Industry 4.0.
She holds a first-class Electronic Engineering degree from Birmingham University and a Master of Science degree in Communications and Signal Processing from the University of Bristol. She graduated with a Distinction from the University of Oxford in PGDip Strategy & Innovation, and an Executive MBA degree from the University of Cambridge. Sylvia is also an artist.
Jackie - I have 15 years experience of running the NAS Peterborough Branch, running family support and events for people on the Autistic Spectrum and their families, Conferences with National and international speakers, training events etc. My youngest son is a 21 year old young man with severe autism which has given me a huge amount of firsthand experience. Scott - I have firsthand experience with my severely Autistic brother, along with helping the huge amount of parents/carers that we have run support and events for. I also have a Physics Degree from the University of Nottingham. We are looking to develop autism services in the Peterborough area, to include a small college/drop-in learning centre, our own social enterprise and much more. All services and our social enterprise will have a technology focus as this is an excellent way to reach and connect with people on the Autistic Spectrum. We will be working with professionals with experience of Autism, and are always happy for other professionals to get involved with our projects.
Abhi Naha
- Digital Accelerator Director, PwC UK
Abhi Naha is the Digital Accelerator Director at PwC. He is creating and leading a new tech division for PwC. The Digital Accelerator solves innovation challenges using the power of scale ups and ecosystems for greater insights, impact and value creation.
Abhi was the CCO of CW Cambridge Wireless and CEO of the Product as a Service Consortium. At CW, Abhi initiated and lead on the 5G private network testbed in Cambridge, corporate digital innovation accelerators and high value collaborations.
Abhi was the CEO and Founder of Zone V a Cambridge start up backed by Qualcomm and ARM focused on empowering people with aging eyes and visually impairment through inclusively designed smartphone software. He held senior roles at Powermat, San Jose based Synaptics and advisory roles for Goldman Sachs and Silver Lake in the area of mobile user interface technologies. Abhi is a senior advisor to an autonomous vehicle mobility scale up Conigital, Industry Partner (Digital Infrastructure) for Arjun Infrastructure Partners with 5 Billion Euros of assets under management and an Ambassador for the United Nations Global Sustainability Index Institute. Abhi studied Electronics and Electrical Engineering, has an MBA in International Marketing and authored a book on Mobile Handset Design when approached by Cambridge University Press. More recently Abhi has created an initiative to help train widows in developing countries learn python programming, gain financial empowerment and become future leaders.
Nigel Newbutt
Nigel is a senior researcher at the University of the West of England in the fields of autism, technology and education. He has been developing lines of enquiry regarding autism and technology for over 10 years and published work in this area of study. This has lead to consultancy work with US and EU businesses in the fields of technology and autism in addition to funding to support his endeavours. He is also a trustee of a charity (autus.org.uk) that he helped to set up, and Chaired over 4 years ago.
His work has involved user-centred design, case study methodology and traditional psychology approaches to investigating this area. More recently he has identified opportunities for working with VR and head-mounted displays used by autistic groups. His work (with colleagues in the US) has recently examined the potential of VR and HMDs for autistic groups; this was some of the first evidence published on the use of commercially available VR technology in the field.
Nigel is keen, and instant, on involving autistic individuals/groups as co-researchers on the work he engages; seeking insights and perspectives from the people with whom he is researching with. In addition, he sees this ‘space’ as one where interdisciplinary approaches must be utilised to ensure the best possible impact and outcomes of autistic groups using VR HMDs. For example, working with; psychologists, educationalists, software developers, designers, neuroscientists to name a few.
