SEED Grant Research Projects

Project Soft is a spatial “wearable”; an encapsulated, safe space with an adaptive interior environment where sound and light experience occurs via a full-body approach. Soft employs emerging strategies that visualize relationships between the human body, mind states, and spatial aspects, including interactive sonification based on joint movement analysis and the translation of respiratory rates or emotional states to dynamic light projections. It examines how modifying sensory aspects of an interior environment —focusing on the combined effects of sound and light— can affect an individual’s physiological and psychological factors. In combining science, technology, and design expertise with the lived experience of neurodivergent advocates, Soft investigates the challenges stressful environments present to neurodivergent individuals and the healing opportunities of sensory multimodal and responsive spaces for all. 

• Loukia Tsafoulia, MSAAD
  Assistant Professor, Architecture & Interior Design
  Loukia.Tsafoulia@jefferson.edu
• Severino Alfonso, MSAAD
  Assistant Professor
  Interior Design & Interior Architecture
  Severino.Alfonso@jefferson.edu
• Wendy J. Ross, MD
  Developmental and behavioral pediatrician,
  Director of the Center for Autism and Neurodiversity,
  Jefferson Health
  Wendy.Ross@jefferson.edu
• Jane Tobias, DNP, CPNP-PC
  Assistant Professor, Jefferson College of Nursing,
  Associate Director of Nursing Research,
  Jefferson Center for Injury Research and Prevention
• Kimberly  Mollo, BFA, OTD, OTR/L
  Associate Professor, Department of Occupational Therapy,
  Jefferson College of Rehabilitation Sciences
• Alessandro Napoli
  Lead Research and Development engineer involved in a Brain Computer Interface for Stroke Clinical Trial at Thomas Jefferson University.
• Iyad Obeid
  Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Bioengineering
  Temple University