Lauren Ward

About Lauren

Lauren is the Technology Lead at the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, UK and was previously a Research Fellow in Media Accessibility at the University of York AudioLab where she was part of XR Stories and lead the ‘A3I: Accessible Audio for Autistic Individuals’ Project.
Lauren completed her John Monash funded PhD in 2020 (University of Salford, UK) whilst working for BBC Research & Development. Her PhD created novel technology to improve the accessibility of broadcast media which was trialled by BBC Studio’s ‘Casualty’. For this she won an EPSRC Connected Nation Pioneer Award (2018) and was Runner Up at the European Broadcasting Union’s ‘Technology and Innovation’ Awards (2020).
She has a B.Eng (Hons) in Electronics and Communications Engineering (2014) and a B. Phil (2015), from University of Tasmania. Lauren also worked for CSIRO developing speech recognition technology for assessing speech disorders in children.
Outside of research you can find her kayaking white-water, throwing axes (as Manchester’s 2018 League Champion), crocheting or baking.