Beth Mynatt showed off a wearable tech wrap at the ACM awards banquet that was designed and built by the Georgia Tech Wearable Computing Center.
The world’s leading computing society has honored IPaT Executive Director Beth Mynatt for her significant contribution to the development and application of computing. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) named Mynatt a new Fellow in December for her work in human-centered computing and the development of health information technologies, and formally recognized her at its annual awards banquet on June 11th in San Francisco.
“The awards ceremony honored the top tier of the computing field, including the two Turing award winners. It was an amazing event and I’m deeply honored to be recognized as an ACM Fellow,” said Mynatt.
Mynatt established her Everyday Computing Lab at Georgia Tech in 1999, which investigates emerging interaction techniques, research methods, and applications that are compelling and effective in a world where computing technologies are ubiquitously available yet integrated into the social fabric of everyday life. Mynatt’s focus on everyday computing requires understanding people in the context of their everyday lives, so she often assembles multidisciplinary teams with psychologists, designers, and healthcare workers.
Learn more about Mynatt’s work at Georgia Tech and with other nationally and internationally-recognized organizations
Mynatt showed off a wearable tech wrap at the awards banquet that was designed and built by Ceara Byrne, Jessica Pater, and Clint Zeagler of the Georgia Tech Wearable Computing Center. Mynatt asked to wear the garment in order to highlight Georgia Tech's work in human-centered and wearable computing.
Playfully dubbed "Professor on Fire," the wrap includes a detachable modular structure made up of aluminum rods. The structure's honeycomb shape is a nod to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Zeagler designed and created the structure that housed LED lights and a microphone. Byrne programmed the lights to provide a personal spotlight and react to sound captured by the built-in microphone, while Pater created the textile component, knitting a shawl out of black raw silk.
"Combining the shawl with a wearable tech device beautifully blends together traditional and modern handicrafts," said Pater.
ACM recognized 42 of its members for their contributions to the development and application of computing in areas from data management and spoken-language processing to robotics and cryptography. Additional information about the 2015 ACM Fellows is available on the ACM website.