Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities
Overview of Activities
The mission of the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities is to catalyze and integrate advances in science, engineering, and technology to promote the quality of life and independent living of people with cognitive disabilities. Over 23 million people in the U.S. alone are affected by impaired cognitive function such as intellectual disabilities, brain injury, Alzheimer's disease, stroke, and serious, persistent mental illness. An estimated 334,000 persons in Colorado have cognitive disabilities.
The University of Colorado System established the Coleman Institute in 2001 as a result of a substantial endowment from Bill and Claudia Coleman of San Jose, California. The Colemans also provide annual gifts to fund the operating and research expenditures of the Institute through the Coleman Colorado Foundation [CCF], which was established to receive gifts from the donors. The CCF is a 501 (c) (3) public charity classified as a 509 (a) (3) supporting organization to the University of Colorado [CU] to support the Coleman Institute. The Executive Director of the Institute is David Braddock, PhD, who is also Associate Vice President of the University of Colorado System [CU] and holds the Coleman-Turner Chair in the School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. The Associate Director is Enid Ablowitz, an experienced advancement officer who continues to serve as an internal consultant and Vice President for Strategic Philanthropy of the University of Colorado Foundation. Professor Clayton Lewis, PhD, Professor of Computer Science, is the Institute's Scientist in Residence.
Principal activities of the Institute include:
- Provision of research and development support to faculty and students on the Anschutz Medical Campus [AMC], University of Colorado Denver [UCD], University of Colorado at Boulder [UCB] and University of Colorado at Colorado Springs [UCCS] campuses;
- Commercialization of derivative intellectual property;
- A fellowship program for faculty, postdoctoral students, and graduate students;
- The Annual Coleman Institute Conference on Cognitive Disability and Technology; and
- Public policy advocacy and outreach on cognitive disability and technology.
Research and Development Support
The primary activity of the Institute is to provide grants for cognitive disability and technology research and development to CU faculty on all campuses of the university. The Institute makes grants that provide seed funding for research that may lead to patent-protected intellectual property and ultimately, commercialization. Since its inception, the Institute has allocated funding to 128 projects involving 58 faculty and graduate students. Coleman Institute research commitments have also assisted CU faculty in securing significant grant funding from Federal and private agencies.
The Institute provides funding for research and development projects on new technologies and new applications. Advances have been made in areas such as batteryless-wireless power for sensors and devices, and software solutions that map on to new open source opportunities, like Google's Android project. The Institute has a national presence in the area of cognitive technology on the Web, both in the development of standards and in policy directions. Biomedical science and technology projects funded by the Institute include a drug delivery system for conditions such as schizophrenia and epilepsy, immunological studies of AIDS/HIV with potential pharmacological interventions, the development of bio-compatible electrodes for in vivo recording and stimulation in the brain using Cellular Engineering Micro Systems and wireless telemetry, an investigation of drugs to prevent decline in cognitive function, and non-human stem cell research in a mouse model of Down syndrome.
A major investment of the Coleman Institute has been in the co-funding of two federal government center grants from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research [NIDRR]. In 2004, NIDRR initiated funding for the nation's first Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for the Advancement of Cognitive Technologies [RERC-ACT]. In a peer reviewed national competition, the University of Colorado succeeded in securing the Center. In 2009, the grant was re-competed. Once again, the University of Colorado succeeded. The combined federal grants exceed $9 million and the combined commitment by the Coleman Institute for RERC-ACT I (2004-2009) and RERC-ACT II (2009-2014) was over $1.6 million. Cathy Bodine, Associate Professor, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the Anschutz Medical Center continues to serve as principal investigator.
The RERC-ACT I incorporated 13 separate projects on the UCB, UCCS, AMC, and UCD campuses in nine different academic units. Research partners from four other research universities in Illinois, California, Michigan and Kansas also participated. Other collaborators include the Institute for Matching Persons and Technology, Inc., AbleLink Technologies, Inc., AT Sciences, LLC, and CaringFamily. Projects fell into five categories: needs assessment projects; community living and technology; health, family support and technology; education, employment and technology; and technology standards development.
RERC-ACT II builds on past successes and introduces new elements of research and development of cognitive technologies across the life span. Efforts are focused in three main areas: creating a product usability testing facility to focus rigorous industry-standard product testing protocols on cognitive assistive technology, developing a core software/sensor platform to support mobile animated agents used for multiple applications, and developing infrastructure standards, long considered an important missing link for information technology access by people with cognitive disabilities.
From non-linear job coaching to Socially Assistive Robots, the projects are challenging, creative and show great promise in improving quality of life for people with cognitive disabilities, their families and their caregivers. Descriptions of each of the projects are available at www.cu.edu/colemaninstitute/.
The RERC-ACT centers are not the only recipients of Coleman Institute funding. The Institute has also supported research and development across a broad spectrum including "smart" transportation systems, "smart" home residential care systems, a personal digital assistant [PDA] based speech training program for children with Down syndrome and patients with Parkinson's, recreation technology adapted for people with cognitive disabilities, computer-based technology for teaching reading to students with cognitive limitations, and web-based resources for teachers, parents, and students with disabilities in the public schools. Funding has also been provided for initiatives to promote accessibility to the World Wide Web for people with cognitive disabilities, including policy and regulatory issues, single sign-on system, content adjustments, and specialized user support.
Commercialization of Derivative Intellectual Property
The Coleman Institute works with faculty and the University's Office of Technology Transfer [TTO] to encourage commercialization of research and development-generated intellectual property for the benefit of people with cognitive disabilities and in some cases, for the advancement of biomedical and biotechnical applications with wider society benefit as well. The Institute also participates in partial ownership of the intellectual property based on invested grant funds to faculty who also have other grant funding. Two of the Institute's funded projects have been leveraged with investments through the State of Colorado and the University of Colorado TTO's Bioscience Discovery Evaluation Grant Program and a third received a Proof of Concept grant from TTO directly. (See below for details.)
Mentor InterActive recently won CU's Annual Technology Transfer Company of the Year Award in Physical Sciences/Engineering/IT Company of the Year at their January, 2010 recognition event. It was one of two companies honored that night that were founded on university research. The company publishes and markets interactive software based on the proven Foundations to Literacy reading program developed at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Through a former faculty member, Ron Cole, the Coleman Institute provided significant grant support ($195k, 2001-2005) which led to the intellectual property on which this company was based. Quoted from the Mentor Interactive website: "The first products in the My Virtual Tutor™ line debuted in September 2009 at leading retailers throughout the US and Canada. Mentor InterActive recently signed a licensing agreement with Nintendo of America Inc. to develop My Virtual Tutor™ for Nintendo DS™ and Wii™ video game systems."
Karen Newell, PhD (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs) has received multiple grants totaling $118k from '04-'09, primarily for lab support. As a result, the Coleman Institute has intellectual property agreements including rights to a patent licensed to Viral Genetics related to immune disease therapeutics. The Coleman Institute received its first distribution this year.
Additional intellectual property agreements have been established between the following investigators/labs and the Coleman Institute:
Karen Stevens, PhD, Dan Abrams, MD and Tom Anchordoquy, PhD, (University of Colorado School of Medicine and School of Pharmacy) received a small seed grant from the Institute for new treatments for ineffectively treated mentally ill and epileptic patients through centrally administered medication. A license agreement with Sierra Neuro through TTO is being transferred to ICVRx. Clinical trials are imminent.
Professor Alberto Costa, MD, PhD, (University of Colorado School of Medicine) with co-investigators Professors Curt Freed, MD and Wenbo Zhou, PhD were funded to use newly available technologies to create induced pluripotent stem cells [iPSC] from fibroblasts from persons with Down syndrome [Ds] and mouse models of Ds. The human and mouse derived iPSC lines from this research have the potential to become new and valuable laboratory reagents. These cells represent unique commercialization opportunities in the near future. In a separate agreement with Dr. Freed, the Institute has supported intellectual property development in the discovery of drugs that increase the activity of neuroprotective genes in the brain to prevent decline in cognitive function.
Professor Regan Zane and Professor Zoya Popovic, University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering were partially supported for research that resulted in patents in the areas of RF energy harvesting and power management with the field of use covering assistive technologies or related biomedical applications. The licensing status is in transition.
Research Associate Professor Alex Repenning, University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Computer Science and Professor Lorraine Ramig, University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences independently developed intellectual property in different fields and went on to license the property to companies they founded.
Fellowship Program
A primary activity of the Institute is to award Coleman Institute Graduate Student Fellowships. Many of these fellowships are tied to federally funded research grants and are awarded as a leveraging match to help faculty proposals to be more competitive. Dozens of graduate students have been supported by the Coleman Institute through the matching program, and Coleman Graduate Fellows are often named as part of a capacity-building commitment. In particular, there has also been a focused effort to provide critical funding for graduate fellowships to support the establishment of the PhD program in Geropsychology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs [UCCS] and to ensure its continuing success through its initiative in Aging and Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities. Contributed funding has also been provided to the School of Medicine NIH-funded Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center.
In addition to awards for graduate studies, the Institute also provides support for Coleman Institute Postdoctoral Fellowships, Coleman Institute Faculty Fellowships, and the Coleman Scientist in Residence. A recent Coleman Postdoctoral Fellow was Xiaolu Huang Sturgeon, PhD, who works in the lab of CU's School of Medicine faculty member Kathleen Gardiner. Coleman Faculty Fellows include: Zoya Popovic, PhD, and Regan Zane, PhD, UCB Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Wenbo Zhou, PhD, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology Dept. Clayton Lewis, PhD, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder [UCB] serves as the Institute's Scientist in Residence.
Annual Conferences on Cognitive Disability and Technology
The Coleman Institute annual conference is a major Institute activity and has a University of Colorado regional and national following. Institute Executive Director and Professor of Psychiatry David Braddock has organized and chaired the nine CU-based national conferences since the Institute's founding in 2001. Research poster sessions on cognitive disability, technology and related topics are at the heart of the conferences. University faculty and students from a variety of fields including engineering, the health sciences, the humanities and social sciences present their research and create new interdisciplinary collaboration. The academic discourse also involves colleagues from many other research universities, as well as leaders in government, industry, the disability community and philanthropy.
The Institute's Tenth Annual Conference on Cognitive Disability and Technology, All Together Now: The Power of Partnerships in Cognitive Disability and Technology, will be held on October 21, 2010 at the Westin Hotel in Westminster, Colorado.
The Institute will also host The Coleman Institute Pre-conference Workshop on Developing an Accessible National Information Infrastructure for People with Cognitive Disabilities in partnership with the University of Colorado Law School's Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship. For the first time, the pre-conference workshop will have not only invited participants, but will also accommodate an audience of other Coleman Institute conference registrants.
The Coleman Institute welcomes back last year's partner, ANCOR [American Network of Community Options and Resources] and a new partner, the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare [NCCBH] for the second annual Technology Leadership Summit to follow our conference.
Registration information is available from the Coleman Institute Conference registration page for the conference, the pre-conference workshop and the Summit.
The Institute's 2009 conference, "Cognitive Disability, Inequality, and Technology in an Age of Economic Uncertainty" was held on November 5, 2009 and was attended by over 300 persons. The keynote speaker was James K. Galbraith, PhD, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations, University of Texas at Austin, and former Director, Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress.
Past conference speakers have included:
- John Seeley Brown, Chief Scientist, Xerox Corporation, 2002;
- Vinton Cerf, currently Chief Technology Officer at Google, Inc., (and co-designer of the protocols and architecture of the Internet), 2004;
- Bill Coleman, Founder and former CEO, BEA Systems, Founder and CEO of Cassatt, Inc. and Claudia Coleman, founding donors of the Coleman Institute, 2001-2007;
- Robert Freedman, MD, Chair, CU Department of Psychiatry, 2002;
- Temple Grandin, PhD, Professor, Colorado State University; NY Times best-selling author of Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports from My Life with Autism, and Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior; 2006;
- Raymond Kurzweil, inventor and entrepreneur, 2003;
- Jay Lundell, PhD, Digital Health Group, Intel Corporation, 2009;
- Robert Pasternack, Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, United States Department of Education, 2003;
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Executive VP, Kennedy Foundation, 2005;
- Timothy Shriver, PhD, Chairman of the Board, International Special Olympics, 2005;
- Steven Tingus, Director, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, 2004, 2002; and
- Mary Woolley, President and CEO, Research! America, 2004.
Public Policy Advocacy and Outreach
The Coleman Institute has influenced program development and funding for research in cognitive technologies not just at CU but nationally. Professor of Psychiatry and Institute Director David Braddock, successfully advocated for the federal government to authorize a new funding source dedicated to cognitive technologies research and development. This initiative was authorized in 2003 through the federal government's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research [NIDRR]. The subsequent national, peer-reviewed competition led to CU being competitively awarded the nation's first Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for the Advancement of Cognitive Technologies in 2004. The Center was recently competitively refunded at the CU School of Medicine through 2014. The total funding for the Center is over $10 million dollars, with the Institute's contribution at over $1.6 million.
The Institute has also been an effective agent to bring constituencies together nationally and internationally to advance awareness, advocacy and resources related to cognitive disability and technology. Executive Director David Braddock speaks frequently on issues involving quality of life for people with cognitive disabilities and on the role of technology in this emerging field. Since joining CU in August 2001, he has given over 100 invited public lectures and keynote addresses in university and conference settings. Audiences have included CU alumni groups, state legislatures, international, national, state and community organizations, and disability and technology constituencies in Colorado, 24 other states and the District of Columbia, and in six foreign countries (Japan, Canada, Mexico, China, United Arab Emirates, and Sweden). The Institute's public policy activities have also included consultation with the federal government's President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, congressional and agency staff, and the Colorado Legislature. The annual Coleman Institute conferences on cognitive disability and technology include a workshop on cognitive accessibility on the web. The Institute's scientist in residence, Professor Clayton Lewis, of the UCB Computer Science Department, serves on national and international committees engaged in technical, usability and regulatory issues related to accessibility issues for people with cognitive disabilities.
In 2005, the Institute launched on its web site the nation's first searchable electronic database on published cognitive technology research literature pertinent to persons with cognitive disabilities. The database contains entries for nearly 900 articles that have been published in more than 70 journals. It is designed for use by researchers, engineers, students, business development specialists, and parents of persons with cognitive disabilities.
The State of the States in Developmental Disabilities and Related Projects
In addition to his Coleman Institute activities, Professor Braddock has secured additional grants for $5.475 million through his academic appointment in CU's Department of Psychiatry. One of these current grants, for $1.5 million over five years, is the State of the States in Developmental Disabilities Project. It has been continuously funded by the US Government's Administration on Developmental Disabilities for 30 years. A second grant builds on the State of the States Project and extends its focus to mental health and physical disability. The National Study of Public Spending for Disability in the United States is funded at $600,000 over three years by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. It is extending the state by state study of spending and services for people with developmental disabilities to psychiatric and physical disabilities. Recent publications from the two projects are listed below.
Staff includes: Richard Hemp, Senior Professional Research Assistant; Laura Haffer, Senior Professional Research Assistant; Joy Wu, Professional Research Assistant; Mary Kay Rizzolo, Clinical Associate Professor, Disability and Human Development, University of Illinois at Chicago; and, Glenn Fujiura, Associate Professor, Public and Human Development, University of Illinois at Chicago.
Selected Publications
Braddock, D. (2010). Public spending for services to persons with disabilities in the United States. In Proceedings of a Conference on the Disability Market at the Federal Reserve Bank, Washington, DC. Boston: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Braddock, D. (2010). Honoring Eunice Kennedy Shriver's Legacy in Intellectual Disability, Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.
Braddock, D., Hemp, R., & Rizzolo, M.C. (2008). The State of the States in Developmental Disabilities: 2008. Washington, DC: American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (309 pages), Revised Edition.
Braddock, D. (2007). Washington rises: Public financial support for intellectual disability in the United States, 1955-2004. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews, 13, 169-177.
Rizzolo, M.C. & Braddock, D. (2008). People with Cognitive Disabilities. In S. Helal, M. Mokhtari, and B. Abdulrazak (Eds), The engineering handbook of smart technology for aging, disability, and independence, pp. 203-216. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
David Braddock, PhD, Associate Vice President, University of Colorado System; Executive Director, Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities; The Coleman Turner Chair & Professor in Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine
Enid Ablowitz, Associate Director, Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities
May 2010
