The Research Council of Norway is evaluating the research being done in the humanities these days, and all institutions were given the task to submit cases of how societal impact. Obviously, basic research is per definition not aiming at societal impact in the short run, and my research definitely falls into category.Still it is interesting to see that some of my basic research is, indeed, on the verge of making a societal impact in the sense that policy makers like to think about.

A couple of weeks ago, NRK, the Norwegian broadcasting company screened a documentary about my research together with the physiotherapists at NTNU in the CIMA project. The short story is that we have developed the tools I first made for the Musical Gestures Toolbox during my PhD, into a system with the ambition of detecting signs of cerebral palsy in infants. The documentary was made for the science program Schrödingers Katt, and I am very happy that they spent so much time on developing the story, filming and editing.

Two weeks ago Lars Adde defended his PhD entitled Prediction of cerebral palsy in young infants. Computer based assessment of general movements at NTNU in Trondheim. I have contributed to this research through development of the General Movement Toolbox, a variant of my Musical Gestures Toolbox. This toolbox he has used to analyse video material of children with fidgety movements, with the aim of being able to predict cerebral palsy at an early stage.