Dear Alisa Brownlee,

My name is Dereck Paul; I’m working with a group of colleagues on a new speech-generating device for individuals with severe speech impairment. Our goal is to create software that works with commercially available EEG headsets that will require no motor function for operation and allow users to communicate in even the very worst stages of their disease. It could be described almost like a “‘Siri' for brainwaves.”

Just to give you some background on me: I studied physiology and neurobiology at the University of Maryland, biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University and am in the entering MD class at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. A quick video explaining our project can be found here! -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taWoaYyIdr8

At this time our project is being considered for funding that would allow us to build a basic version by the end of the summer, but I need more evidence that people in the ALS community can really benefit from this technology in order to convince the funders. I’ve had some success reaching out to bloggers in the ALS community who tell me that the project we are working on is exactly what they need, but I need to hear that story from more people. Is there anything you can do to help me reach out to more members of the community?

I appreciate your time and consideration,

Sincerely,

Dereck Paul