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University at Buffalo computer science lecturer Michael Buckley, left, and Kris Schindler, a UB teaching assistant professor, demonstrate a DISCO system used to teach cause and effect to autistic children by using strong sensory feedback. The two men are involved in the UB Center for Socially Relevant Computing at the North Campus in Amherst.

Bill Wippert/Buffalo News

"Now is the time to venture and see new wonders," said Aldrin in a message to today's youth before the upcoming 40th anniversary of that historic walk.

Buckley, an award-winning UB computer science lecturer whose dad, John Byczkowski, was a Bell engineer, is helping youth see those "new wonders."

Yet only 8,000 college students last year graduated from computer science programs. Buckley, who lives in West Seneca, would like to reverse that trend with what he calls "computing for a cause" -- Socially Relevant Computing (SRC).

And Microsoft Corp. has invested $60,000 in that cause as Buckley strives to help UB students use technology to create "practical solutions to socially relevant problems."

One person who is benefiting from this creative SRC process is a 43-year-old stroke patient from Williamsville, who has limited upper-body mobility, uses a wheelchair and can think, but not speak.

A device called the "UB Talker" was customized by Buckley's UB team to allow the stroke victim to communicate for the first time in about two decades. To the delight of students who worked on the project, the man was able to order pizza. The technology uses voice synthesis and a touch-screen laptop computer to allow for natural, two-way conversations.

"We simply turned our students loose and their creative energy came through," commented Kris Schindler, a UB teaching assistant professor. Schindler said his students are so enthusiastic that they forget grade preoccupations and, ironically, become even more attractive to job recruiters with their life-enhancing project work.

Buckley, whose daughter has cerebral palsy, takes a short walk over to the UB Assistive Technology Lab. In this capacious, underground setting, he has worked with students designing and developing more than 20 amazing technologies that the world has taken notice of. Several of these devices have now been licensed to companies and are being introduced to the marketplace.

Bill Wippert/Buffalo News

Too often, Buckley says, undergraduate computer design courses lack social relevance.

"They don't help students figure out how it's relevant to society's technology needs, Buckley continued, "like helping people with a range of disabilities or establishing a region's safest evacuation plan in case of a natural disaster."

Each semester, Buckley takes his "Software Engineering" students to the Center for Handicapped Children's Learning Center in Williamsville. Clients of the center have multiple disabilities and are too restricted to attend public schools.

"I ask my students, 'How can you use technology to improve their lives?' " said Buckley.

Through the use of light, music, spoken words and even fog machines, these young men and women develop systems to provide positive feedback to these kids. The students help the handicapped children by creating enhanced sensory experiences, encouraging them to learn to make choices and to begin to understand cause-and-effect.

Another UB student team has developed an Incident Response Monitoring System, which monitors the vital signs of emergency responders in the field and can notify others when someone's in trouble. It's the kind of technology that might have saved Sept. 11 firefighters.

Buckley's lab is now developing the system into a prototype. As one student commented, "This is what I do, this is what I know and now I can use it to help someone."

And these young people also will be helping themselves with greater marketability in their job searches following graduation.

Buckley and Schindler offer a solution to "The Global Achievement Gap," which describes the education students need to be successful in the new global economy. This "Gap" was outlined in a study by Tony Wagner, co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Wagner postulates in his "Global Achievement Gap" thesis that business leaders are calling for far more innovative and collaborative thinkers in this highly competitive economy.

In his office in Bell Hall, Buckley is helping to close this gap, using the latest computer technology and at least one comforting educational tool from the pre-trip-to-the-moon past -- the old-fashioned blackboard.

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