Professor Heidi Christensen
PhD
School of Computer Science
Head of School
Professor of Spoken Language Technology
Member of the Speech and Hearing (SpandH) research group
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+44 114 222 1950
Full contact details
School of Computer Science
Regent Court (DCS)
211 Portobello
91Ö±²¥
S1 4DP
- Profile
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Professor Christensen obtained her M.Sc. and a Ph.D. degrees from Aalborg University, Denmark, in 1996 and 2002, respectively. In 1998, she was a visiting researcher at IDIAP, Switzerland. From 2000, she worked as a research associate on numerous national and international projects in the Speech and Hearing group in 91Ö±²¥ before taking up her lectureship in 2015. She was subsequently appointed a senior lecturer (2019) and chair (2022) in the department.
She is the current Head of School and has a long-term interest in EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion), serving as the Faculty Director of EDI (2020-2022).
Her main research interests are in the areas of recognition of disordered speech, automatic processing of conversations, and the automatic detection and tracking of paralinguistic information such as emotions and general interactional behaviours.
- Research interests
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Her research interests are in the use of speech and language processing in the healthcare domain. She has considerable experience in the areas of recognition of disordered speech, automatic processing of conversations and the automatic detection and tracking of paralinguistic information such as emotions and general interactional behaviours. Her research has been supported by EU, UKRI, NIHR, Google and various charities like Rosetrees Trust and the Psychiatry Research Trust. She has considerable experience in leading highly interdisciplinary research projects including being the technical lead in the development of the CognoSpeak system for using AI to detect early signs of dementia.
- Publications
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Journal articles
Conference proceedings papers
Reports
Theses / Dissertations
Working papers
Datasets
Other
Preprints
- Grants
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Current Grants
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CcHAT: CognoSpeak: a Cognitive Health Assessment Tool, NIHR, 02/2022 - 01/2025, £1,357,247, as Co-I
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, EPSRC, 04/2019 - 09/2027, £5,508,850, as Co-PI
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Deep learning of articulatory-based representations of dysarthric speech, Google, 02/2016 - 12/2025, £46,624, as PI
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Design and development of CognoMND, LifeArc, 01/07/2024 - 30/06/2027, £209,000 as Co-PI
Previous Grants
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The automated coding of expressed emotion to enhance clinical and epidemiological mental health research in adolescence, MRC, 11/2022 - 12/2024, £379,598, as Co-PI
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Interdisciplinary project on COMPutational Assessment of Stroke Survivors (COMPASS), Rosetrees Trust, 02/2020 - 08/2024, £124,864, as PI
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CognoSpeak-eQMS, EPSRC, 01/01/2023 - 31/12/2023, £22,904, as PI
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Participatory co-design of a platform for collecting atypical speech data, Research England, 03/2022 - 07/2022, £19,692, as Co-PI
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CognoSpeak UX, Research England, 06/2021 - 02/2022, £27,694, as PI
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COMPASS: COMPutational Assessment of Stroke Survivors, Research England, 11/2019 - 06/2020, £48,886, as PI
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COCOA: COmputerised COgnitive Assessment, MRC, 10/2018 to 09/2019, £49,513, as PI
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TAPAS: , EU H2020, 11/2017 - 09/2022, £468,000, as PI
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CloudVent: Cloud-based speech recognition for people with paralysis using ventilators, RCUK, 10/2015 - 04/2016, £360,000, as Co-PI
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- Professional activities and memberships
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- Member of the research group
- Member of the ISCA Diversity Committee
- Co-organiser of ASRU 2021
- Co-organiser of Interspeech 2023