Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Mississippi State's College of Architecture, Art and Design is receiving assistance from OMNOVA Solutions to support university research designed to improve the lives of Mississippi's rural aging and elderly populations.
Representatives of the Ohio-based company's corporate foundation came to campus recently to present a $20,000 grant to college Dean James West. The money supports the college's Design Research & Informatics Laboratory and its development of "smart" design technologies.
OMNOVA, which has a production plant in East Columbus, is a manufacturer of durable commercial wall coverings, upholstery fabrics and laminates. Its foundation traditionally supports local schools, as well as community economic development and related activities that improve the quality of human life.
"This grant will enable assistant professor Anijo Mathew to continue research for 'smart' homes in rural Mississippi for a year, with the potential for continued funding," West said. "This study is a prime example of the important work being done by the laboratory."
Mathew has been researching interactive architectures and rural "smart" spaces since 2004.
"A 'smart' home or space typically is a home that monitors the well-being of residents without actually being intrusive," Mathew explained. "It does so using ubiquitous computing to analyze activities of daily living of residents and seeks to provide assistance or indicate emergency only in case of an anomaly in the normal functioning of the resident.
"The grant will allow us to demonstrate innovative thinking and solutions to the widely recognized and growing challenge of healthy aging for the elderly population," he added.
Mathew, who has written extensively about the technology, received the Architectural Research Centers Consortium's 2006-07 New Researcher of the Year Award for his proposed solutions and design innovations in rural "smart" home architecture.
A member of the MSU faculty since 2003, he holds a master's degree in design studies from Harvard University and a bachelor's in architecture from Birla Institute of Technology in India.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information on "smart" design, contact Mathew or West at 662-325-2202.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.