Michael Anthony
Microsoft
Michael is a deaf software engineer at Microsoft developing the core commerce platform services that drives our e-commerce. A graduate from RIT with a dual BS in Computer Science as well as Game Development & Design, he is always looking at incorporating technology in our daily lives as well as unexpected places. Michael also services on the steering committee for Gaming and Disability (a Gaming4Everyone community).
Mary Bellard
Microsoft
Mary Bellard is the Senior Accessibility Architect at Microsoft. There, she leads the accessibility innovation program to bring more inclusive and revolutionary ideas to market, and helped launch the Microsoft AI for Accessibility program (opens in new tab). Previously, she strategized the overall accessibility training curriculum for employees and external partners to drive progress in usable experiences for everyone. Mary played a key role in developing the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk (opens in new tab) when she joined the company in 2014 and has worked as an advocate for the disability community for more than 11 years.
Larwan Berke
Rochester Institute of Technology
I am a 4th year PhD Candidate in Computing and Information Sciences at RIT studying Human-Computer Interaction, specifically Automatic Speech Recognition as an accessibility tool for DHH individuals.
Danielle Bragg
Microsoft Research
Danielle Bragg is a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research New England (opens in new tab). Her research focuses on developing systems that expand access to information for people with disabilities, in particular sign language users and low-vision readers. Her work is highly interdisciplinary, combining Accessibility, Human-Computer Interaction, and Applied Machine Learning. She takes data-driven approaches to address accessibility problems, striving to help make the world a more equitable place. Her diverse past research projects have spanned computational biology, computer music, applied mathematics, data visualization, and network protocols. She recently completed her PhD in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington (opens in new tab), advised by Richard Ladner (opens in new tab). Before starting her PhD, she received her AB in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University.
Lance Forshay
Department of Linguistics, University of Washington
Lance was born Deaf and has at least five generations of Deaf family members. (30-35 Deaf relatives around the country) He graduated from Kansas School for the Deaf and Gallaudet University. He has a BA in Mathematics and Secondary Education. He also has a MS in Ministry from Southern Christian University (Now Ambridge University), Montgomery, AL. Lance came to the University of Washington when it started it’s ASL program in 2007. Since that time the program has expanded into a three-year ASL and Deaf Studies Minor Program. He played a big role in UW ASL Club’s affiliation with the national ASL Honors Society and the establishment of the D-Center, a student center with collaboration between students in the Disability Studies program and the Deaf Culture/ASL Studies program, which is the first of its kind among American universities and colleges. He was promoted to the rank of Senior Lecturer in 2013 and was a recipient of the 2014 UW Distinguished Teaching Award. He has 30 years of ASL teaching experience.
Lance is a past president of the Washington ASL Teacher Association, a member of the national ASL Teacher Association, Washington State Association of the Deaf, Deaf Ministry Director at Lighthouse Christian Center in Puyallup and Deaf Political Action Coalition to fight for Deaf rights in the state of Washington. He has given many workshops and presentations on ASL grammar, Deaf culture topics and issues related to cultural and language oppressions in the Deaf world for interpreters, ASL teachers and the Deaf community. He has been on the board for several agencies and organizations and is currently on the board for Deaf Missions in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He lives in Puyallup with his wife, Joan. Their kids, Matthew and Samantha, are college students at Seattle Pacific University and Gallaudet University respectively. His hobbies include yogafaith, hiking, bike riding and gardening.
Matt Huenerfauth
Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)
Professor Matt Huenerfauth directs the Center for Accessibility and Inclusion Research (CAIR) at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where he directs a research group of 29 students, who operate bilingually in English and American Sign Language (ASL). His research focuses on the design of computing technology to benefit people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing (DHH) or with low levels of literacy. He is editor-in-chief of the leading journal in computer accessibility (TACCESS) and has served as general and program chair for the ASSETS conference, the premier research venue in computing accessibility. He has secured over $4.5 million in research funding, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2008, and he has authored over 75 peer-reviewed journal articles, chapters, and conference papers. Huenerfauth is a four-time winner of the Best Paper Award at ASSETS (more than any other individual in the conference history) and is author of a CHI’18 honorable mention paper. In 2018, RIT awarded Huenerfauth the Trustees Scholarship Award, which is the university’s highest research award for a faculty member. In 2017, the Association for Computing Machinery recognized him as a Distinguished Member for his contributions to the computing field, and he was twice elected Vice Chair of the ACM SIGACCESS special interest group on accessible computing (2015-2021). He received a Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006.
Deniz Ilkbasaran
Center for Research in Language, UCSD
Deniz Ilkbasaran (opens in new tab) is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego, where she is jointly appointed at the Mayberry Laboratory for Multimodal Language Development (opens in new tab) and the Padden Lab (opens in new tab) at Center for Research in Language (CRL (opens in new tab)). She works with Rachel Mayberry on her NIH funded project investigating the consequences of late sign language acquisition in deaf people, particularly regarding their language abilities and neurolinguistic organization as adults. With Carol Padden, she is involved with comparative research on emerging and established sign languages around the world.
Ilkbasaran received her Ph.D. in Communication (opens in new tab) from UC San Diego in 2015, and her M.A. in Educational Technology (opens in new tab) from Concordia University in 2007. She has been involved with sign language research since 2002, working with sign languages and their communities across Turkey, Canada, Israel and the United States. Her main research interests include deaf people’s social and communicative practices and their intersection with technologies.
Leah Katz-Hernandez
Microsoft
Currently serving as Manager, CEO Communications, for Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Leah is a dedicated communications and community engagement professional.
Prior to Microsoft, Leah was known as the celebrated ROTUS, Receptionist of the United States, for President Obama. The first ever deaf person to hold the position, she was appointed to the West Wing after serving in First Lady Michelle Obama’s communications office and for the Obama campaign during the 2012 election cycle. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Leah’s groundbreaking grassroots digital communications resulted in an award-winning blog and international attention. She has also has served in the offices of the United States Congress for both Republican and Democratic Members. BA in Government from Gallaudet University, MA in Strategic Communication from American University.
Oscar Koller
Microsoft
Oscar Koller is an applied scientist at Microsoft. His research covers statistical modeling of sign and spoken languages, encompassing audio and video signals. Before joining Microsoft, Oscar was a PhD candidate following a dual supervision by Prof. Ney (RWTH Aachen, Germany) and Prof. Bowden (University of Surrey, UK) with whom he worked on non-intrusive vision-based continuous sign language recognition. Oscar received his MSc from TU-Berlin, Germany and also volunteered 12 months in the Ashanti School for the Deaf, Ghana.
Meredith Ringel Morris
Microsoft Research
Meredith Ringel Morris (opens in new tab) is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, where she is also the Research Manager of the Ability (opens in new tab) team. She is also an affiliate Professor at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on human-computer interaction and accessibility. Merrie earned her Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University.
Noah Smith
University of Washington / Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Noah Smith (opens in new tab) is a Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering (opens in new tab) at the University of Washington (opens in new tab), as well as a Senior Research Manager at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (opens in new tab). Previously, he was an Associate Professor of Language Technologies and Machine Learning in the School of Computer Science (opens in new tab) at Carnegie Mellon University (opens in new tab). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University (opens in new tab) in 2006 and his B.S. in Computer Science and B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Maryland (opens in new tab) in 2001. His research interests include statistical natural language processing, machine learning, and applications of natural language processing, especially to the social sciences. His book, Linguistic Structure Prediction (opens in new tab), covers many of these topics. He has served on the editorial boards of the journals Computational Linguistics (opens in new tab) (2009–2011), Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (opens in new tab) (2011–present), and Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics (opens in new tab) (2012–present), as the secretary-treasurer of SIGDAT (opens in new tab) (2012–2015 and 2018–present), and as program co-chair of ACL 2016 (opens in new tab). Alumni of his research group, Noah’s ARK (opens in new tab), are international leaders in NLP in academia and industry; in 2017 UW’s Sounding Board (opens in new tab) team won the inaugural Amazon Alexa Prize. Smith’s work has been recognized with a UW Innovation award (2016–2018), a Finmeccanica career development chair at CMU (2011–2014), an NSF CAREER award (2011–2016), a Hertz Foundation (opens in new tab) graduate fellowship (2001–2006), numerous best paper nominations and awards, and coverage by NPR, BBC, CBC, New York Times, Washington Post, and Time.
Christian Vogler, PhD
Director, Technology Access Program, Gallaudet University
Dr. Christian Vogler is the director of the Technology Access Program (TAP) at Gallaudet University, a research group focused on accessible tech for the deaf and hard of hearing. He is a principal investigator within the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Technology for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, as well as the Disability and Rehabilitation Research Project on Twenty-First Century Captioning. He also leads research into Telecommunications Relay Services access and usability, and has co-led Gallaudet University’s collaboration with SignAll, a company focused on sign language recognition technology. Prior to joining TAP in 2011, Dr. Vogler has worked on various research projects related to sign language recognition and facial expression recognition from mocap and video at the University of Pennsylvania; the Gallaudet Research Institute; UNICAMP in Campinas, Brazil; and the Institute for Language and Speech Processing in Athens, Greece.