The SFU Centre for Disability Independence Research and Education provides a site where persons with physical disabilities can meet with researchers to analyze ways to improve their performance of activities of daily living and other needs, and to come up with innovative solutions that may be jointly conceived, developed and tested.

This setting encourages participation by and knowledge transfer among researchers, staff, undergraduate and graduate students, educators, clinicians and health professionals.

You can view a Video describing CDIRE activities here

In its initial phase of development, the CDIRE is concentrating on providing close, day-to-day interaction among SFU students or staff who have physical disabilities and researchers such as graduate students developing  thesis projects, undergraduate students seeking term projects, faculty supervisors, mentors, clinicians and expert advisors, primarily from the B.C. Lower Mainland community.

In later phases of development, the CDIRE plans to expand its geographical scope to include participants beyond British Columbia, with the goal of jointly identifying unmet needs of disabled groups, formulating desired solutions, designing, developing and testing prototypes, and ultimately transferring promising innovations onto paths leading to their commercial availability for people with disabilites anywhere in Canada and beyond.