Education & Training:

Elias Abou Zeid received a Bachelor in Computer Engineering, with great distinction, from Concordia University, Canada, 2006. Masters in biomedical engineering from McGill University, Canada, 2009.  After working for almost three years at Ericsson Research Canada and CAE Healthcare as R&D Engineer, he joined University of Toronto to pursue a PhD. in Biomedical Engineering.

Elias’ research interests include Signal and Image processing, computer vision, biomedical signal processing, medical imaging, assistive and medical technologies, rehabilitation engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and pattern recognition.

Current Research:

In his research project, Elias is researching and developing a technology for visual lip reading to allow people with vocal speech impairments to communicate. At a later stage of the project, he plans to look into multi-modality speech recognition, more specifically at synchronized behavioral (visual lip reading) and physiological (brain waves) speech recognition to permit later cognitive communication for people with locked-in syndrome. During the project, this technology will be clinically assessed.

Other interests:

Outside work, Elias enjoys nature, playing soccer, biking, swimming, travelling to discover new cultures, volunteering, guitar, history and psychology.

Associate Professor, Graduate coordinator, Clinical Engineering Program, Leader, NSERC CREATE: Academic Rehabilitation Engineering (CARE) Program, Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto

Tom Chau, Ph.D., P.Eng., received his education at the Universities of Toronto (BASc, MASc) and Waterloo (PhD). From 1996-97, he worked on a number of consulting contracts with KPMG Management Consulting and subsequently joined IBM Canada as a consultant in the Enterprise Resource Planning practice (1997-1999). In 1998, he was awarded an IBM Special Achievement Award as one of the highest grossing technical consultants in the Canadian practice. In 2000, Tom received the Duncan L. Gordon post-doctoral fellowship from the Hospital for Sick Children Foundation. He was appointed Canada Research Chair in Paediatric Rehabilitation Engineering at the University of Toronto in 2004 and a Scientist and Theme Leader at the Bloorview Research Institute in 2005.

Tom occupies his time with a combination of research, teaching, advocacy and fund raising. He draws motivation from witnessing the courage and tenacity of children with disabilities and their families. Tom cherishes the multidisciplinary milieu of health and allied health professions at Bloorview and within the University of Toronto community. In particular, he is inspired daily by the passion of his graduate students to make a difference through excellence in applied science and engineering.

Siva received her Bachelor of Arts with a joint major in Psychology and Criminology from Simon Fraser University. She joined the PRISM Lab in 2010, and brought with her over 8 years of administrative experience and extensive exposure to the field of paediatric disability.

Siva is responsible for coordinating student-related activities and meetings, overseeing all the research accounts, maintaining laboratory organization, and providing operational, organizational, and administrative support for the PRISM Lab team.

Siva enjoys cycling and volleyball. She is also an avid traveller, having visited 19 countries to date.

Education

Amanda received her Bachelor of Engineering in Biological Engineering from the University of Guelph in 2009. While completing her undergraduate studies, she had the opportunity to complete a design project for children with cerebral palsy and developed an interest in rehabilitation engineering. As part of her Master’s resaerch, she pursued research studying fractal dynamics and their relation to motor difficulties in children with ASD.

Other interests
Amanda enjoys staying active, running and cycling in the summer and snowboarding in the winter. She loves to travel and enjoys outdoor activities like hiking and white water rafting. She is passionate about young people in science and engineering and participates in various activities promoting science to youth.

Education & Training
Bassma Ghali received her B.Eng. degree in Computer Engineering at Ryerson University and M.A.Sc. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at McMaster University. After getting her M.A.Sc. degree, she gained industry experience by working as a system engineer in Honeywell and Aversan Inc. She chose to work on biomedical engineering projects for her undergraduate and master theses. She has experience in modeling and simulation of soft tissues using Finite Element Method. Also, she had gained experience in building devices and developing algorithms to create a handy mouse for the paralyzed.

Research Title
Biometric authentication using handwriting biomechanics: a focus on grip kinetics

Research Abstract
Signature authentication has had a great attention in the field of biometrics since it is a traditional method to personal verification. Most of the work available in the literature use kinetic (e.g. axial and normal forces), kinematic (e.g., position, velocity, acceleration, inclination angle) and spatiotemporal features (e.g., stroke durations, stroke length, in-air time) for the signature authentication and have ignored the writer’s biomechanics. Therefore, Bassma’s project studies the grip patterns that people use when writing in order to use these features to identify a person’s identity. She is proposing to use the biomechanics of handwriting for signature authentication by using a special instrumented pen while writing the signature on a digitizing tablet. This pen measures how hard you press on the page. It also measures how you hold the pen. This information will help to describe the uniqueness of each person’s writing pattern and be able to identify an authentic signature from a forged signature. This research could lead to the development of a new device that will recognize signatures and be used as a new anti-fraud tool that can improve security and privacy.

Funding
NSERC CGSD3

Education and Training
Song received an Honours B.Sc from University of Toronto in Biology in 2011. She was involved in molecular biology and physiology research at University of Toronto for 3 years, participating in projects exploring jumping genes in yellow fever mosquitoes as well as serotonin receptors in Rhodnius prolixus to find a way to hinder the transmission of tropical fevers and Chagas disease, respectively.

Current Research
Song’s passion in both physiology and music in combination with her extensive volunteering experience for people with disabilities led her to take on a research that combines all of these areas.

Song’s research aims to understand the physiological synchrony in salivary cortisol level, EEG, EDA, and ECG between non-verbal, severely disabled children and their therapists/parents in a music therapy context. The ultimate goal of this research is to better inform clinical best practices in enhancing nonverbal communications for these children whose momentary needs and preferences are often misunderstood.

Other interests
Outside of her study, she is actively involved in organizing concerts with other 600 musicians across Canada to motivate youths to bring relief to people in suffering through benefit concerts and fundraisers. They recently purchased the automobile that is being used to carry the sick to hospitals in Uganda. She also enjoys travelling, improvising on the piano, and playing the violin in orchestras.

Education & Training
Brian holds a BASc (Computer Engineering, 2006) and a BSc (Honours Mathematics, 2007) from the University of Ottawa, and a MASc (Biomedical Engineering, 2009) from the University of Toronto. His experiences in industry include J2EE web application development with the Software Engineering Group at the National Research Council of Canada and ASIC verification with Tundra Semiconductor. In 2006, he took on a part-time research opportunity with the VIVA lab at the University of Ottawa, in the research area of Bayer demosaicking of digital colour images.

Research Title
Inferring user interaction context during single-switch access by individuals with severe physical disabilities

Research Overview
Single switch remains the predominant method of physical access for individuals with severe and multiple physical disabilities. Moreover, almost all practical user interfaces have multiple interface elements, with some elements having multiple states. Therefore, many of the software and devices that are adapted for single-switch use implement single-switch scanning to realize selection of one item out of several choices. With single-switch scanning, the user interface automatically visits the user interface elements sequentially. The user triggers his or her switch whenever scanning arrives at the desired item.

Single-switch access is susceptible to false positive (the switch triggering on its own) and false negative (unresponsive switch) errors. Typically, false positives are more frustrating to the user because the user must undo the effect of the erroneous activation and then wait for the desired item to arrive again.

This research strives to enhance the accuracy of single-switch access to true user intent by suppressing false positives. Specifically, it pertains to the analysis physical and physiological responses of users during single-switch tasks. The analysis shall lead to the development of a single-switch interaction context classifier, secondary and auxiliary to the individual’s access pathway, that will determine when (or not) the user can be expected to make a selection. In particular, this may be able to suppress false positives by providing a means for single-switch users to withdraw from interaction, through the identification of instances when they are not engaged in single-switch interaction.