Youngsters' award-winning device produced in ASU lab

Two Arizona high school students won a top award at the recent Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles with a project they developed in an Arizona State University lab in the Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing (CUbiC).

CUbiC, operated within ASU's School of Computing, Informatics, and Decisions Systems Engineering, focuses on the design of technologies and devices to aid people with sensory, cognitive or perceptual disabilities.

Varun Ramesh, a sophomore at Hamilton High School in Chandler, and Shantanu Bala, a student at Barry Goldwater High School in Phoenix, teamed up to produce a prototype of a device that enables people with visual impairments to detect the facial expressions of people with whom they are talking.

Bala, who has earned a prestigious Flinn Foundation scholarship, will begin studies at ASU in the fall in the computer systems engineering program.