Speech Biomarkers in Medical Applications

by Vered Aharonson, Professor of Medical Physics, UNIC Medical School

BRIEF SUMMARY

The human voice not only conveys speech content, but also facilitates communication. It is a signal that carries pertinent information regarding the speaker’s personality, medical state, and emotions. This lecture explores the application of audio analysis to the screening and monitoring of physiological and mental conditions.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Vered Aharonson is a Professor of Medical Physics at the University of Nicosia Medical School. Her academic journey began at the Technion Institute of Technology in Israel, where she earned both her BSc and MSc in Physics. She furthered her expertise with a PhD in Physics and Electrical Engineering from the University of Tel Aviv. Prof Aharonson’s was a research fellow at Harvard’s Eaton Peabody Laboratory in Boston, MA, a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University’s computer science and software engineering departments, and later an associate professor at Afeka, Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering where she contributed to the medical engineering and electrical engineering departments.

Prof Aharonson was the founder and CEO (2004-2007) of Nexsig, Neurological Examination Technologies LTD, and co-founder and senior researcher (2004-2015) of the Afeka Center for Language Processing (ACLP), Israel. Her last academic affiliation was with the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she designed and promoted research and education programmes in artificial intelligence for the biomedical engineering undergraduate and postgraduate studies. Her research involves physiological signals and speech processing for medical diagnosis, biometrics and behaviour recognition, rehabilitation robots and affective computing.

Apart from her academic and research endeavours, Prof Aharonson’s life has an adventurous side. She is an airline transport pilot, actively engaged in air ambulances and special-mission flights.