Helena Reis
Institute of Education at the University of Minho. Master’s Degree in Early Intervention-Special Education from the Institute of Child Studies at the University of Minho. Specialist in Therapy and Rehabilitation – Occupational Therapy. Postgraduate in “Sensory Integration”. Postgraduate in “Introduction to Statistical Models in Epidemiology” – organised by the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon. In clinical practice, she was part of an early intervention team specialising in Developmental Disorders and Autism, at the Portuguese Association for Developmental Disorders and Autism in the North (APPDA-Norte) and in private paediatric clinics where she accompanied children with developmental disorders and their families for 15 years.
She began teaching in 2010 and is currently a full-time lecturer at ESSLei, but collaborates with other Schools/Faculties, namely ESSA, where she has been teaching since 2016 on the master’s programme in Occupational Therapy-Sensory Integration.
Principal Investigator of the application team for the FCT ERA NET NEURON-Call for Joint Transnational Research Projects 2021 with the title “Technological application for sensory regulation of children with ASD in different natural contexts” worth 250,000 euros. The project involved two international partners: Fintan Sheerin – Associate Prof in Intellectual Disability Nursing and Head of the School of Nursing & Midwifery on Trinitty College in Dublin and Josep Monguet – Industrial Engineer, PhD from the Universitat Polytecnica de Catalunya.
Given that this project was not funded by the FCT, he decided to start developing it with a group of 4th year students in collaboration with his colleague Catarina Reis, from ESTG’s Computer Engineering course.
It was thus possible to develop an application (“REGUL-A”) for parents of children with autism to regulate their children’s activities of daily living at home. The research was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health entitled: Regul-A: A Technological Application for Sensory Regulation of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the Home Context.
This project is still under development.