Laura Giarré

How much the empowerment of people with specific needs can benefit from innovative technological solutions? Is there a future for assistive technology devices outside the Academic Laboratories?  Social innovation means developing new ideas, services and models to better address social issues. It invites input from public and private actors, including civil society, to improve social services. Social investment is about investing in people., answering to the  Challenge of strengthening  people’s current and future capacities, and improving their opportunities to participate in society and the labor market. What are the step to design a system that can be easily accepted by the blind communities? A case study is presented..

Laura Giarré received the Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering from the Università di Firenze, Italy and the Ph.D. degree in System Engineering from the Università di Bologna, Italy, in 1986 and 1992, respectively. She has held visiting positions  at the  University of California at Santa Barbara and at MIT, Boston (1999, 2006, 2015).  Since 1993 she was Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy and since 1998 she has been Associate Professor at the Università di Palermo, Italy and qualified as full professor in 2014.  She served as Associate Editor of Systems and Control Letters, (1999-2012) and IEEE Transaction on Automatic Control (2012-2015). Her research interests include networked systems, smart grid, identification and assistive technology. She is cofounder and CEO of In.sight srl. She is member of the advisory board of the Andrea Bocelli Foundation and scientific coordinator for the Challenges program.