Allison Makani`olu Rowe

Simi

Healthcare is out of touch with half of the population. Too many women have told me: 'I wish I looked at my fertility sooner'. 'I thought I was going crazy, I didn’t realise I was going through menopause.' 'I dropped out of school from depression, and then found out it was a hormone imbalance.'

Hormones touch many aspects of a woman’s life, affecting everything from mood to muscle response, from appetite to attraction. More than health issues, however, these are life issues – the things we think about, that influence us, every day. And because life and health are inextricably intertwined, Simi integrates the two, allowing women to manage them simultaneously.

Simi is a health monitoring system for women that tracks hormone levels, activities and more to generate customised clinical and lifestyle tips, enabling women to predict and prepare for the future. The system provides a lifetime of benefits by watching just four key hormones – tracing monthly cycle patterns and drawing conclusions from long-term trends – giving women personalised advice about their interests, from mood and fitness to fertility and menopause.

Inaudible Sounds

Our group project is an exploration of the creation of a seventh sense – a three-dimensional audio experience that provides enhanced environmental awareness. Humans are able to process sounds 1,000 times faster than visual stimuli, yet we barely scratch the surface of this potential because our ears can only access a small fraction of the frequencies moving through us at any given time. And although our senses are currently limited by physical proximity, we aim to expand our perception through a sensory network – using others as our ears, eyes and nerves. With these principles, we are developing a technology that will allow a cyclist to feel a car approaching an intersection before she can see it, or for the visually impaired to independently navigate a city.