Professor Alan Newell from the University of Dundee is to give the keynote address on Information Technology at one of the top computing countries in the world this week - Japan.
Alan Newell will speak at the 66th annual conference of the Japanese psychological society in Hiroshima on his division's work developing computer systems for older and disabled people and how psychologists can contribute to this activity. He will also tell the conference of the plans the University has to establish the Queen Mother Research centre - to investigate how IT can help older people in their every day lives.
As academic supervisor to the Scottish Higher Education Disability Team, he will give a lecture on the support for students with disabilities within Higher Education in the UK to staff and students of the School of Education at Hiroshima University. He will also lecture in Tokyo on assistive technology for people with disabilities involved in technology industries in Europe.
The University of Dundee plans to establish the Queen Mother Research Centre as a base for research and development of IT support for older people. The late Queen Mother lent her name to this timely and important venture and the University hopes to quickly establish the centre as an international centre of excellence of computing research.
Alan Newell joined Standard Telecommunications Research Laboratories in 1965, working on speech recognition and perception. He was appointed a Lecturer in Electronics at Southampton University in 1970, where he developed NEWFOR, a television subtitling system, the Talking Brooch for speech impaired people, and the Palantype speech transcription system used in the House of Commons and in Law Courts in the UK. In 1980 he moved to the University of Dundee. He has been Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and was Deputy Principal of the University between 1992 and 1995.
Professor Newell is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the British Computer Society, Institution of Electrical Engineers, and an Honorary Fellow Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to IT and communication for people with disabilities in the 2000 Queen's Birthday Honours list.
By Jenny Marra, Press Officer 01382 344910 j.m.marra@dundee.ac.uk