Mozilla Funds Research Grants in Four Areas

We're happy to announce the recipients for the 2018 H2 round of Mozilla Research Grants. In this tightly focused round, we awarded grants to support research in four areas: Web of the Things, Core Web Technologies, Voice/Language/Speech, and Mixed Reality. These projects support Mozilla's mission to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all.

Web of Things

We are funding University of Washington to support Assistant Professor of Interaction Design Audrey Desjardins in the School of Art + Art History + Design. Her project, titled (In)Visible Data: How home dwellers engage with domestic Web of Things data, will provide a detailed qualitative description of current practices of data engagement with the Web of Things in the home, and offer an exploration of novel areas of interest that are diverse, personal, and meaningful for future WoT data in the home.

Core Web Technologies

Mozilla has been deeply involved in creating and releasing AV1: an open and royalty-free video encoding format. We are funding the Department of Control and Computer Engineering at Politecnico di Torino. This grant will support the research of Assistant Professor Luca Ardito and his project Algorithms clarity in Rust: advanced rate control and multi-thread support in rav1e. This project aims to understand how the Rust programming language improves the maintainability of code while implementing complex algorithms.

Voice, language and speech

We are funding Indiana University Bloomington to support Suraj Chiplunkar's project Uncovering Effective Auditory Feedback Methods to Promote Relevance Scanning and Acoustic Interactivity for Users with Visual Impairments. This project explores better ways to allow people to listen to the web. Suraj Chiplunkar is a graduate student in the Human-Computer Interaction Design program as part of the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, and is working with Professor Jeffrey Bardzell.

Mixed Reality

Mozilla has a strong commitment to open standards in virtual and augmented reality, as evidenced by our browser, Firefox Reality. We're happy to support the work of Assistant Professor Michael Nebeling at the University of Michigan's School of Information and his project Rethinking the Web Browser as an Augmented Reality Application Delivery Platform. This project explores the possibilities for displaying elements from multiple augmented reality apps at once, pointing the way to a vibrant, open mixed reality ecosystem.

The Mozilla Research Grants program is part of Mozilla's Emerging Technologies commitment to being a world-class example of inclusive innovation and impact culture, and reflects Mozilla's commitment to open innovation, continuously exploring new possibilities with and for diverse communities. We plan to open the 2019H1 round in Spring 2019: see our Research Grant webpage for more details and to sign up to be notified when applications open.

Congratulations to all of our applicants!

Thumbnail image by Audrey Dejardins

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