By Patrice L. (Tamar) Weiss
The 14th International Conference on Virtual Rehabilitation (ICVR 2019) took place at Tel Aviv University (Tel Aviv, Israel) from July 21-24, 2019 and was co-chaired by Rachel Kizony and Debbie Rand. Four workshops were held on the first day followed by three days of 3 keynote talks, 31 platform presentations, 43 posters, a demo session, a mentoring breakfast, a debate and a special panel on industry applications. A total of 200 participants from 15 countries attending one or more workshops and conference days made this a truly international event.
The conference program was crafted under the guidance of the four program chairs, Geoff Wright, Sandeep Subramanian, Gerry Fluet and Maayan Agmon. The workshops were organized by Evelyne Klinger, Judy Deutsch, and Noa Givon. Financial support was provided by Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa and the Israel Ministry of Science and Technology.
The awards process was organized by Alma Merians and Wendy Powell. Awards for Best Paper and Best Poster were sponsored by Bright Cloud International. The recipients of the Best Paper award were G. Burdea, K. Polistico, N. Kim, A. Kadaru, D. Roll, N. Grampurohit, A.M. Barrett, M. Oh-Park, J. Masmela, E. Kaplan P. Nori and S. Pollack “Novel Therapeutic Game Controller for Telerehabilitation of Spastic Hands: Two Case Studies”.
The recipients of the Best Poster award were A. Lamontagne, A. Blanchette, K. Andréanne K., J. Fung, B. McFadyen, S. Sangani, N. Robitaille, A. Deblock-Bellamy, M.A. Bühler, C. Perez, Claire and A. Menon “Development of a virtual reality toolkit to enhance community walking after stroke”
Best Student Paper, Best Student Poster, Best Young Paper and the Early Career Award were sponsored by the International Society for Virtual Rehabilitation. The recipients of the Best Student Paper award were O. Ben Gal, G.M. Doniger, M. Cohen Y. Bahat M. Plotnik, M. Schnaider Beeri and G. Zeilig “Cognitive-motor interaction during virtual reality trail making”.
The recipients of the Best Student Poster award were Le Yu, Liu, S. Samir, Sangani, K. Patterson, J. Fung and A. Lamontagne “Effects of real-time visual feedback in the form of a virtual avatar on symmetry and other parameters of gait post-stroke”. The recipients of the Best Post-doctoral award were S. Maidenbaum A. Patel, E. Stein and J. Jacobs “Spatial Memory Rehabilitation in Virtual Reality – Extending findings from Epilepsy Patients to the General Population”.
An award for Best Demo was sponsored by the ALYN Hospital ALYNnovation Space. It was given to Nikita Kovalenko for his demo an “Immersive Virtual Memory Task”.
D. Levac was awarded the Early Career Award by the International Society for Virtual Rehabilitation and PL (Tamar) Weiss was awarded a Special Recognition Award for Service and Leadership by the ICVR Steering Committee.
Finally, we are happy to announce that two special issues of selected conference papers will be published in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation and Disability (coedited by Geoff Wright, Sergi Bermudez and Meir Plotnik and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology (coedited by Danielle Levac and Patrice (Tamar) Weiss.
(Original article source: ISVR Newsletter Issue 16)
