Young Kazakh scientist Zhanat Makhatayeva won a prestigious scholarship of the largest U.S. IT giant. A doctoral student and researcher at the Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence at Nazarbayev University has developed a unique ‘Memory Assistant’ application for augmented reality glasses that will render assistance to people suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. In the development, the scientist applied computer vision algorithms to recognize objects and determine the location of users. Now Makhatayeva’s research will receive financial support in the amount of US$15,000 and she will undergo a 12-week internship in leading computer laboratories abroad. Makhatayeva is the first holder of such a scholarship from Kazakhstan.
“When a person enters a building, this program remembers where he went and what objects he saw. Thus, a person will not have to remember where he was, where he went and what objects he saw, because afterwards he can just look up the information that the system collected, and this will be his memory. Based on a review of literature that we did last year, we found out that there are a lot of people who have vision problems, for example, they can’t distinguish colors, faces and even voices. And this augmented reality technology can be used to solve these issues. However, there are not so many projects that do this, that’s why the Microsoft team became interested in my work,” said Zhanat Makhatayeva, PhD Student, Nazarbayev University.
Translation by Assem Zhanmukhanova
Editing by Saule Mukhamejanova
