Cathy Holloway is Professor of Interaction Design and Innovation at UCL’s Interaction Centre and the Academic Director and co-founder of the Global Disability Innovation Hub (GDI Hub). GDI Hub exists to accelerate disability innovation for a fairer world and Cathy’s research revolves around supporting this aim. GDI Hub is part of a partnership which has grown out of the Paralympic Legacy and crosses traditional discipline boundaries to pool expertise to tackle the issues faced by society in realising the Sustainable Development Goals.

Cathy has recently created the new undiscipline of Disability Interaction (DIX) which takes an issue-based design approach, drawing on specific disciplinary methods as and when required to create solutions for disabled people globally. Using the DIX approach Cathy is tackling a number of research questions, both big and small.

Cathy leads the Research and Innovation strands and is UCL PI for the of the £20m UK Department for International Development grant called AT2030. AT2030 is investing in a long-term solution to understand how we can develop a demand-driven ecosystem for AT which ensures innovations can quickly come to market globally. As part of this work Cathy leads the development of a new Inclusive Innovation ecosystem in Nairobi, Kenya whilst researching inclusive and innovation. Cathy is also working with colleagues from UCL Robotics and the Institute of Making to develop low-cost prosthetics and novel human-robot interactions which sue low-cost sensing.

Catherine is a member of:

- World Health Organization WHO, Expert Advisory Group for Word Report on Assistive Technology

– The Commission for Mission-Oriented Innovation and Industrial Strategy (MOIIS), created to solve grand challenges in innovation and industrial strategy with a mission-oriented framework.

– The ESPRC Healthcare technology SAT

Prior to joining UCL Cathy worked as a Research and Development Engineer for Medtronic. Cathy is also a Director and co-founder of two social enterprises – Movement Metrics and the GDI Hub Community Interest Company.