UNI AppsLab creates a vocabulary app for smart phones

A faculty member and program assistant at the University of Northern Iowa have created an app for smartphones and tablets that helps speech therapy patients regain vocabulary. Angela Burda and Stephen Hughes developed the mobile application after meeting three years ago at Campus Connexus, an event to encourage networking and collaboration among faculty and staff.

Burda is a professor in UNI's Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders while Hughes is a program assistant in UNI's John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center (JPEC). Their app, Name That!, is designed to help patients suffering from aphasia, an acquired communication disorder that impairs a person's ability to process language. Burda says the app takes standard practices used in speech pathology and puts it into a format that fits today's world, something that wouldn't have been possible without Hughes and his team of students from the computer science department.

Name That! is the first application to come out of JPEC's AppsLab, which provides technical assistance to UNI faculty and staff working to develop software tools for Apple and Android devices.

"The AppsLab is a hidden gem on campus," Burda said. "Once people find out this resource is there, I think the opportunities are unlimited in terms of what will be able to come out of this university."

Burda and Hughes have presented at regional and international conferences and are working on a new version of Name That! for use in hospitals and long-term care settings.

Hughes says the entire experience--from meeting Burda at Campus Connexus to collaborating with students and launching the AppsLab--is an example of UNI's strengths as an institution. "This isn't two professors doing their own research and sitting in their offices," he said. "This project is an example of a university working the way it should be working."

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