Edoardo Calia

The presentation could include 3-4 examples of “makers” projects dedicated to help blind or visually impaired people. The makers community is booming all over the world, putting together people who rediscover the passion to make things using both their hands and modern technologies such as Computer Aided Design and digital fabrication machines. Some of the projects are designed to help visualize either abstract concepts (like math formulas) or physical objects like monuments, art masterpieces, complex objects. This can be a valuable support to provide information to blind or visually impaired users. In this speech I will briefly present the most effective and successful international projects carried out by university, schools and industries.

Edoardo Calia graduated from Politecnico di Torino (MSEE: 1987, PhD: 1992), and he spent most of his professional career working on innovation based and Communication Technologies. After several years – some of which in USA – spent working on research projects on Internetworking and distributed computing, he contributed in 2001 to the startup of Istituto Superiore Mario Boella (ISMB), a research center set up by Politecnico di Torino and Compagnia di San Paolo, where he is currently Deputy Director for Strategic Programs. ISMB carries out applied research projects in several application domains where Information Technologies play a key enabler role (urban mobility, e-health, energy etc).