UniServices, the commercialisation unit for the University of Auckland, has awarded its Spark Ideas Challenge prize to a team of students from the Master of Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship programme for a plan to bring software to assist autistic children to market.
The project, LearnEmotion, is designed to help autistic children recognise facial expressions. Part of the autistic condition prevents those with the disorder from understanding emotions on the faces of others, hampering effective communication and can lead to behavioural issues in social settings.
Graeme Finch, team leader for the LearnEmotion project, said: “The LearnEmotion application has the potential to establish a strong connection with the child, assisting them to recognise the expression of emotion in others and training them to express emotion. This helps not only the child, but also their wider family group, to better manage relationships.”
He added: “From many possibilities for commercialisation, we narrowed it down to this one, that we dubbed LearnEmotion, and developed a commercialisation strategy for it.”