Karen Milchus is co-director of the national Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Workplace Accommodations, funded by NIDRR. She specializes in identifying and providing educational and vocational accommodations to youth and adults with disabilities, with a particular focus on computer access solutions. Related to her interest in workplace accommodations, Ms. Milchus is the PI for a grant to develop an expert system to recommend workplace accommodations, recently finished work on an NSF project that investigated the accommodation needs of teachers with disabilities, and was the PI for CATEA's work on Tech Connections, a NIDRR-funded information dissemination project on assistive technology for rehabilitation counselors. Related to her interest in educational accommodations, Ms. Milchus has led projects supported by the National Science Foundation to disseminate information on how to make science experiments accessible to students with disabilities. Prior to joining CATEA in 1994, Ms. Milchus worked as a Rehabilitation Technologist at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in what is now the Assistive Technology and Assessment Center. While there, she co-authored Wisconsin's procedural manual on transporting students with special needs. Her Master's research was on providing supplementary force feedback to the upper extremity neuroprosthesis developed by the Cleveland FES Center.

Ms. Milchus has certification as an Assistive Technology Practitioner (ATP) and is active in RESNA.

Upcoming COA Research Forums

• November 18, "Composer, Performer, Listener" presented by music professor Jason Freeman.
• January 27, 2011, TBD
• February 24, 2011, TBD
• March 31, 2011, presentation by city and regional planning professor Nancey Green Leigh.
• April 28, 2011, presentaiton by geographic information systems (GIS) researcher Subrahmanyam Muthukumar.

About the COA Research Forum

The COA Research Forum provides an informal setting for the Georgia Tech community to learn about research within the College of Architecture. Forums are free and open to the public and participants are invited to explore ideas and identify opportunities for collaboration.  All talks are held in the Architecture Library from 11 a.m. to noon on the last Thursday of August through April. Talks are 30-to-45 minutes followed by questions and discussion. 
View past research forums.