Daniel Gea, who graduated from the Master’s in Multimedia programme of the University of Porto, was recently presented with the Best Thesis Award in the Media category by the Portuguese Association for the Development of Communications (APDC). The award ceremony, celebrating the fifth edition of the initiative, took place at Culturgest in Lisbon on 2 July as part of the 34th APDC Congress.
Supported by Axians Portugal, this award recognises and values the merit and work of young researchers in the fields of Information Technology, Telecommunications and Media. It evaluates the originality and innovative character (50%) and social impact (50%) of the proposed solutions.
Daniel Gea’s work exemplifies a perfect combination of these two criteria, offering an innovative solution that promises to significantly impact people’s lives.
Supervised by Professor Gilberto Bernardes, a lecturer and coordinator of the Interactive Music and Sound Design specialisation at the Master’s in Multimedia at DEI, the thesis focuses on developing an innovative sonification technique to facilitate autonomous navigation, thereby improving the autonomy and mobility of blind and visually impaired individuals. The work addresses the growing need to incorporate other senses, such as hearing, to enrich various areas, especially for the 314 million people who are visually impaired — a figure expected to rise due to an ageing population.
The proposed system aims to convey the semantic and spatial characteristics of objects through non-verbal sound cues, creating a sound map with a unique code that enables quick recognition of spatial and semantic characteristics and facilitates spatial perception. The project combines sound computing, accessibility, and virtual reality with the aim of representing the surrounding environment through sound.
Daniel Gea expressed his honour and happiness at receiving the award, which recognises all the effort and time he dedicated to his Master’s degree. He highlights the project’s impact on the autonomy of people with visual impairments, and reveals plans to continue the work by integrating computer vision technologies with artificial intelligence, with the aim of bringing the project into real, everyday contexts.
He tells us that his main motivation was to make the project accessible, initially inspired by Italo Calvino’s book “Invisible Cities”, which encouraged him to consider spaces beyond what is visible.
It should be noted that DEI has a history of success with this award, having won the Best Thesis Award in the Media and Information and Communication Technologies category in previous years (2023, 2022 and 2021) with students from the Master’s in Multimedia and the Integrated Master’s in Informatics and Computing Engineering.
This continued recognition reinforces the excellence of teaching and research at the institution.