Unisa online - Scholarship for Unisa professor to visit US university

Prof Helene Gelderblom with Prof Mariki Eloff from the School of Computing working with the eye tracker in the observer room of the HCI lab

Unisa’s Prof Helene Gelderblom will, in June, be jetting off to the University of Maryland in the US to learn more about creating usable and accessible computer technologies.

This follows a year-long scholarship that was awarded to Prof Gelderblom through the US Fulbright post-doctoral research programme. She will be a visiting researcher at the university’s Human Computer Interaction (HCI) lab.

“I am very excited to be visiting Maryland University and part of my work there will include learning more about whether the technology developed for US children is transferable to a different socioeconomic and cultural context such as South Africa. I will also find out how South African researchers and children can get involved in ongoing international research projects, especially projects relating to online communities and cross-cultural interaction,” said Prof Gelderblom.

Prof Gelderblom says Maryland University’s HCI lab is a world-leading facility in the field of human computer interaction. She will also be conducting an in-depth investigation of selected US-based research projects related to the role of technology in children’s cognitive and social development.

“I will be working with some of the big names in HCI and will bring my experience from here because not much has been done in terms of systems development for the African continent, so I hope to bring what I learn there to better our expertise here in South Africa and Africa as a whole,” said Prof Gelderblom.

Human Computer Interaction, a term that was coined by Prof Ben Shneiderman of Maryland University, a Founding Director of the university’s HCI laboratory, is a new field that was born out of computer science and cognitive psychology.

Prof Mamokgethi Setati, Executive Dean of the College of Science, Engineering and Technology, has expressed excitement at the scholarship being awarded to Prof Gelderblom. “As the college, we are very pleased that Prof Gelderblom won this prestigious Fulbright scholarship. This is not just good for CSET but it is also an opportunity that will put Unisa on the global map of computer science. I am very happy for Prof Gelderblom because she is a very deserving candidate. She has been serving as a leader of the CSET research flagship project on Human Computer Interaction and she has done exceptionally well in this role. I am confident that she will be an excellent ambassador for Unisa,” said Prof Setati.