Published: June 12, 2001

NEWS TIP SHEET

Famed Colorado High School Inventor to Present Research at CU-Boulder June 14

Grand Junction, Colo., teenager Ryan Patterson, who made national news this spring for inventing a glove that translates American Sign Language into written words on a computer screen, will talk about his research at CU-Boulder June 14.

Patterson, 17, has won $192,000 in scholarships, more than $15,000 in cash and a trip to Stockholm, Sweden, for the Nobel Prize ceremonies and to present his invention to Nobel laureates. The device he invented, called the Sign Translator, is a golf glove with finger sensors, wrist sensors and a circuit board sewn in.

The CU-Boulder event is open to the media but closed to the public.

Patterson will present his project from 1:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. in the Benson Earth Sciences Conference Room to the computer science department's Cognitive Lever Team. The Cognitive Lever Team is part of the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design in the computer science department.

Patterson, who will be a senior at Grand Junction's Central High School this fall, won all three top honors at the Intel Science and Engineering Fair held in May in San Jose, Calif. He won the Intel Young Scientist Scholarship Award, the Glenn T. Seaborg Nobel Prize Visit Award and the Intel Best of Category Award, bringing home more than $216,000 in cash and scholarships.

Patterson will spend much of the day participating in research presentations with the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design and touring CU-Boulder's engineering facilities. The center is supported in part by the recent $250 million gift from Bill and Claudia Coleman to the CU system to design innovative technologies that will enhance the lives of people with cognitive disabilities, mental retardation and developmental disabilities.

For more information, contact Senior Research Associate Jim Sullivan in the computer science department at (303) 492-3912 or Jim Scott in the CU-Boulder News Office at (303) 492-3114.