Guide to Graduate Study in Area VII:
Research Interests of Faculty Members and Research Staff
The following list of faculty members and research staff includes primarily people whose principal research interests are in Area VII. There are others in the department who have some research activities in problems related to living systems, but who work primarily in other areas.
Director, Biomaterials Laboratory, Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital; Associate Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School (Massachusetts General Hospital, 617 726.3083 jerry@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu, http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/~jerry)
Biomedical (orthopedics, cardiovascular, interventional) and non-medical (chemistry, physics, materials science, engineering) applications of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging (MRI) and spectroscopy (MRS). Solid state MRI and MRS. Studies of atherosclerosis, interventional MR.
1. Polymer distribution in silica aerogels impregnated with siloxanes by 1ˆH NMR imaging
2. Fluid and solid state MRI of biological and non-biological ceramics
3. Phosphate ions in bone: identification of a calcium-organic phosphate complex by 31ˆP solid state NMR spectroscopy at early stages of mineralization
4. Density of organic matrix of native mineralized bone measured by water and fat suppressed proton projection MRI
5. Nuclear magnetic resonance-compatible furnace for high temperature MR imaging and spectroscopy in situ
6. Cylindrical meanderline radio frequency coil for intravascular magnetic resonance studies of atherosclerotic plaque
7. Water and fat suppressed proton projection MRI (WASPI) of rat femur bone
8. MR image guided tumor ablation
Assistant Professor, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (26-335, 617 324.3597, elfar@mit.edu). Magnetic Resonance Imaging Group.
1. Medical imaging
2. Acuqisition and processing of in vivo magnetic resonance imaging data
3. Neuroimaging
Octo Barnett
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School (Massachusetts General Hospital, 617 726.3939, obarnett@hstbme.mit.edu)
Application of computer science to patient care, medical education, and clinical decision making. Hospital information systems, ambulatory medical information systems, medical query language, clinical data bases, computer diagnosis and physical consultation, computer-based medical education using clinical simulations, statistical models of clinical decisions.
Professor or Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (36-747, 617 253.2575, braida@mit.edu)
Development of improved hearing aids and aids for the deaf. Functional models of the perceptual effects of hearing impairment. Mathematical and computational models of speech intelligi bility and audiovisual integration. Development of aids to speechreading based on speech recognition and speech processing. Acoustic properties of speech and their relation to intelligibility in various environments.
1. DSP implementation of a real-time hearing loss simulator based on dynamic expansion
2. Intelligibility of conversational and clear speech in noise and reverberation for listeners with normal and impaired hearing
3. Auditory supplements to speechreading: combining amplitude envelope cues from different spectral regions of speech
4. Automatic speech recognition to aid the hearing impaired: current prospects for the automatic generation of cued speech
5. Consistency among speech parameter vectors: application to predicting speech intelligibility
Technical director, Biomedical Engineering Center; Lecturer Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (16-336A, 617 253.2577, steve@hstbme.mit.edu)
Medical electronics and instruments, especially instruments incorporating computers. Networked instruments. Model-based and interactive measurement. Medical Instruments in the developing world. Sports Medicine, Telephony. Physiologic signal acquisition and processing especially in the area of neurophysiology and cardiac electrophysiology.
1. Throught-the-eyelid Tonometer for Glaucoma Screening
2. Visual Field Measurement System
3. An Instrument to Measure Skin Resistance After Electroporation
4. Web-based Medical Instruments
5. USB Implementation Engine
Chathan M. Cooke
Lecturer and Research Associat, EECS (N10-201, 617 253.2591, cmcooke@mit.edu)
Hazards of electrical discharges and effects of electric fields on living systems. Dosimetry and effects of ionizing radiation. Development of sources of intense ionizing radiation. High resolution computerized tomorgraphy. Compact electron acceleratiors of the Van de Graaff type.
1. Models for radiation absorption
2. 3MeV electron source
3. Computerized tomography
Senior Research Scientist, Research Laboratory of Electronics (Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary, 617 253.3876, bard@mit.edu)
Signal processing by the auditory system, with particular emphasis on speech signals. Physiological mechanisms underlying auditory perception. Stimulus coding for cochlear implants. Applications of auditory models to speech analysis and recognition. Central neural mechanisms for sound localization.
1. Coding of speech in the discharge patterns of neurons in the auditory nerve, brainstem and midbrain
2. Modulation transfer functions of auditory neurons and their use in predicting neural responses to speech
3. Neural mechanisms for musical pitch and consonance
4. Neural mechanisms underlying sound localization in reverberant and noisy environments
5. Neurophysiological studies aimed at improving processing strategies for binaural cochlear implants
Senior Scientist, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (36-709, 617 253.2534, durlach@cbgrle.mit.edu)
Sensory communication, with emphasis on audition and taction and on the use of engineering concepts to provide adequate theoretical models. Applications to the hearing impaired, the deaf, and the deaf-blind, and to teleoperator and virtual-environment systems.
1. Auditory psychophysics
2. Tactile psychophysics
3. Speech coding for impaired auditory systems (hearing aids)
4. Speech coding for the tactile system (tactile aids)
5. Signal processing for the reduction of backgroundinterference
6. Research on capabilities of the human hand
7. Development of multimodal human-machine interfaces for teleoperator and virtual-environment systems
8. Human spatial perception, cognition, and behavior
Associate Professor, Otology and Laryngology, Harvard Medical School, Director, Cochlear Implant Research Laboratory, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Director, Cochlear Implant Research Laboratory, MEEI, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary Cochlear Implant Research Lab, 243 Charles Street, Boston, MA 02114, 617 573.3766, dke@cirl.meei.harvard.edu)
Electrical stimulation of the human auditory system: physiological considerations and models, psychophysical studies of implanted subjects, speech coding for electrical stimulation and implantable hardware.
1. Investigation of current flow in the inner ear during electrical stimulation of intracochlear electrodes
2. Speech recognition in deaf subjects with multichannel, intracochlear electrodes
3. Fundamental considerations in designing auditory implants
Professor of Electrical Engineering (36-889, 617 253.8795, freeman@mit.edu)
Cochlear mechanics. Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). Laser Interferometric Optics. Microfluidics.
1. Measurements and models of sound-induced motions of inner-ear structures
2. Measurememnts and models of material properties of the tectorial membrane
3. Optical methods to measure nanometer motions of micrometer-sized structures
4. Applications of mciro-electro-mechanical systems to the study of cochlear micromechanis
Lawrence S. Frishkopf
Professor of Electrical and Bioengineering emeritus and Senior Lecturer in EECS (36-596, 617 253.5869, lsf@mit.edu)
Transduction mechanisms of receptor cells (hair cells) of vestibular and auditory organs. Mechanism of frequency analysis in the cochlea. Micromechanics of hair cell stereocilia.
1. Mechanical tuning of free-standing sterociliary bundles and frequency analysis in the alligator lizard cochlea
2. Cupula motion in the semicircular canal of the skate, Raja erinacea
3. Element composition of inner ear lymphs in cats, lizards, and skates determined by electron probe microanalysis of liquid samples
4. Receptor potentials from hair cells of the lateral line
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (36-345, 617 253.8528, jgfuji@mit.edu)
Biomedical optics, novel optical biomedical imaging and diagnostic techniques. Development and applications of Optical coherence tomography (OCT). OCT is an optical technique for cross sectional imaging of tissue microstructure on the micron scale which can perform micron scale imaging of tissue in situ. Development of new optical technologies for OCT including real time imaging, subcellular scale imaging, catheter/endoscopic delivery systems. Techniques for optical biopsy. Studies of laser tissue interaction and laser surgery. Collaborative research with investigators at the Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, the Brigham and Womens Hospital, the New England Eye Center, Tufts University School of Medicine
1. Optical Coherence Tomography technology for high speed and high resolution imaging.
2. Development of catheter and endoscopic diagnostic techniques
3. Intravascular imaging for atherosclerotic plaque
4. Cancer diagnosis and screening using optical coherence tomography
5. Image guided laser microsurgery
6. Image processing, reconstruction, and intelligent algorithms
7. Ophthalmic applications of optical coherence tomography
8.Retinal disease diagnosis using novel optical imaging techniques algorithms
Principal Research Scientist, Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (32-G444, 617 253.1640, glass@mit.edu)
Automatic speech recognition (ASR), speech synthesis, and spoken language understanding. Areas of interest include signal representation, pattern classification, acoustic-phonetic analysis and modelling, lexical representation/access, search, language modelling and generation.
1. Real-time, telephone-based ASR for conversational interfaces
2. Corpus-based, concatenative speech synthesis
3. Facilitating spoken-dialogue system development
4. Out-of-vocabulary word modeling for robust ASR
5. Modeling non-native speech for ASR
6. Acoustic modeling improvements for segment-based ASR
J. W. Kieckhefer Professor of Medical and Electrical Engineering, HST, EECS, (E25-406, 617 258.8974, mgray@mit.edu)
Cartilage repair and remodeling. Role of mechanical factors in cartilage physiology; development of “functional” imaging of cartilage.
1. Molecular imaging of cartilage
2. Composition and transport properties of connective tissues in vivo and in vitro, and how these properties are affected by disease
3. Understanding thge process of cartilage repair and evaluating related treatment strategies
4. Microscale devices for biomedical applications
Director, Center for Biomedical Engineering, MIT, Professor of Electrical, Mechanical, and Biological Engineering in EECS, BE and MechE (NE47-377, 617 253.4969, alg@mit.edu)
Degeneration and repair of cartilage in injured and arthritic joints, cellular mechanotransduction, molecular and cellular nano-mechanics, stem cells for cartilage tissue engineering; the influence of physical forces on gene expression and matrix biosynthesis in musculoskeletal connective tissues, transport in biological tissues and synthetic gels; nondestructive spectroscopic detection of early cartilage degeneration.
1. Cartilage metabolism in health and disease: role of mechanical, electrical, and chemical regulation of gene expression, matrix sythesis, and cellular apoptosis
2. Cartilage Tissue Engineering: Synthesis of a cartilage-like tissue substitute by stem cells embedded in self-assembling peptide hydrogel scaffolds
3. Molecular and Cellular Nano-Mechanics: Use of atomic force microscopy to quantify molecular interaction forces between extracellular matrix macromolecules; nanoindentation of chondrocytes and their pericellular matrices
4. Cartilage mechanical injury: synergistic effects of overload injury and catabolic cytokines on stimulation of cartilage degeneration
5. Mechanical loading and peptide growth factors: anabolic stimluation of cartilage growth and repair
6. Role of proteinases, proteinase inhibitors, and mechanical loading in osteroarthritic cartilage degeneration
7. Electrochemical, electromechanical and osmotic forces and flows: enhanced transport of proteins and nutrients in charged tissues and membranes
HST Faculty, Professor of Otology and Laryngology and Health Sciences and Technology, HMS, MEEI (Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary, Eaton Peabody Lab, 243 Charles St., Boston, MA 02114-3002, 617 573.4236, John_Guinan@meei.harvard.edu)
Physiology of the cochlea, especially the mechanisms by which outer hair cells influence the mechanical response of the cochlea (including the generation of otoacoustic emissions) and thereby control the signal transduction in the cochlea. Feedback control of the peripheral auditory system, especially by the oliviocochlear efferents reflexes.
1. Organization of the efferent fibers: The lateral and medial oliviocochlear systems
2. Physiology of the oliviochlear efferents
3. Effect of efferent neural activity on cochlear mechanics
4. Effects of electrical stimulation of medial olivocochlear neurons on ipsilateral and contralateral cochlear responses
5. Reflection and distortion emissions arise by fundamentally different mechanisms: A taxonomy for otoacoustic emissions
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (32-G966, 617 253.6022, guttag@mit.edu)
Physiological monitoring, medical signal processing and decision systems. Collaborative research with investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
1. Monitoring health status outside medical environments
2. Computer-assisted cardiac screening
3. Early detection of epileptic seizures
4. Scalable and portable medical alert and response technology
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Division of Biological Engineering, Research Laboratory of Electronics (36-841, 617 253.2290, jyhan@mit.edu)
Application of micro/nanofabrication technology to biological problems. Micro/Nanofluidics, biomolecule analysis and separation. Nanostructure-biomolecule interaction.
1. Development of novel nanofluidic molecular sieve
2. Microfluidic multi-dimensional biomolecule separation devices
3. Biomolecule detection and identification
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (36-253, 617 253.8143, jslim@mit.edu)
Digital Image Processing
1. Theories of Digital Signal Processing
2. Advanced television systems
3. Image/video restoration, enhancement, and coding
4. Speech enhancement, analysis/synthesis system development
Distinguished Professor in Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT (E25-505, 617 253.7818, rgmark@mit.edu)
Physiological signal processing and computational modelling with application to clinical problems.
1. Intelligent patient monitoring systems
2. Multiparameter ICU databases; collection, deidentification and annotation
3. Physiological signal processing
4. Cardiovascular system modeling
Associate Professor of Anaesthesia (Biomedical Engineering), HMS, MGH, HST Affiliated faculty, Strategic Director, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, CIMIT, (617 726.1635, rnewbower@partners.org)
Technology development, transfer and application in healthcare: Utilization of technology in re-engineering health-care delivery
Professor of Electrical and Bioengineering (Office: Mass. Eye and Ear, Eaton Peabody Lab; 617 573.3376, peake@meei.harvard.edu)
Signal transmission in the normal and pathological auditory system: emphasis on acoustical, mechanical, and electrophysiological processes of the ear and on interspecies comparisons.
1. Analysis of middle-ear mechanics and application to diseased and reconstructed ears
2. The middle ear of a lion: Comparison of structure and function to domestic cat
3. Acoustic mechanisms that determine the ear-canal sound pressures generated by earphones
4. Relating middle-ear acoustic performance to body size in the cat family: measurements and models
5. A noninvasive method for estimating acoustic admittance at the tympanic membrane
6. Tests of some common assumptions of ear-canal acoustics in cats
7. How do tympanic-membrane perforations affect human middle-ear sound transmission
8. Acoustic responses of the human middle-ear
Senior Research Scientist, Research Laboratory of Electronics (36-591, 617 253.3223, perkell@mit.edu)
Physiology of speech production. Control of movement of the speech production mechanism. Bases of phonetic categories (linguistic features) and the relationship of underlying linguistic structure to movement control strategies. Physiological and biomechanical properties of the speech production mechanism and their influence on movement control. The influence of hearing on speech motor control.
1. Physiological studies of normal and disordered speech production (measurements of movement, EMG, air pressure, acoustics, etc.)
2. Modeling of aspects of the speech production process—biomechanics and control
3. Projects on the speech of cochlear implant patients and mechanisms of voice disorders
George W. Pratt
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science emeritus (13-3057, 617 253.4636, gwpratt@mit.edu)
Experimental and theoretical solid state and molecular physics. Quantum electronics, lasers, interaction of lasers with crystalline and molecular systems.
1. Ultrasonic determination of bone strength—a non-invasive diagnostic technique
2. Measurement and analysis of muscular and joint forces associated with locomotion
3. Interaction of infrared lasers with vibrational states of biomaterials
4. Electromagnetic control of blood flow
Principal Research Scientist, Research Laboratory of Electronics (36-751, 617 253.8502, cmreed@mit.edu)
Tactile communication of speech. Auditory perception in normal and impaired listeners. Processing of speech by listeners with impaired hearing.
1. Basic study of tactual sensory perception in humans
2. Development of schemes for encoding and displaying speech and environmental sounds through the tactual sense
3. Study of improved tactual supplements to speechreading
4. Functional models of hearing impairment
5. Speech perception in listeners with hearing impairment
6. Signal processing for hearing aids
HST Faculty, Professor of Otology and Laryngology and Health Sciences & Technology, HMS, MEEI, Co-director, Wallace Middle-Ear Research Unit, Eaton-Peabody Laboratory, MEEI, Research Affiliate, RLE, MIT (Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary, 617 573.4237, John_Rosowski@meei.harvard.edu)
Acoustics and mechanics of external and middle ears. Comparative physiology of the auditory periphery. Evolution of the ear. Effects of pathology and surgical reconstruction on the function of the external and middle ear.
1. Measurements of middle-ear function in specialized mammalian ears
2. Acoustic mechanisms that determine the ear-canal sound pressures generated by earphones
3. Diagnostic utility of laser-Doppler vibrometry and laser holography in conductive hearing loss with normal tympanic membranes
4. Experimental ossicular fixations and the middle-ear's response to sound: Evidence for a flexible ossicular chain
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, Research Laboratory of Electronics (38-294, 617 258.6599, rahuls@mit.edu)
Bioelectronics
1. Biomedical Electronics: Bionic systems for the deaf, blind, and paralyzed and other bio-signal sensing systems from the molecular to body scale
2. Bio-inspired Electronics: Inspiration from biology to research revolutionary architectures for RF (radio frequency), sensory, or computing systems
3. Circuit Modeling of Biology: Electrical analogs of biological systems to shed insight into how they work
further details at http://www.rle.mit.edu/avbs/
Principal Research Scientist, Laboratory for Computer Science (32G-438, 617 253.0451, seneff@csail.mit.edu)
Computer speech recognition. Natural language processing. Morphology and phonology. Discourse and dialogue modelling. Conversational systems.
1. Response planning and Generation in the Mercury flight reservation
2. TINA: A natural language system for spoken language applications
3. Statistical Modeling of Phonological Rules through Linguistic Hierarchies
4. ANGIE: A new framework for speech analysis based on morpho-phonological modelling
5. Gene Structure Prediction Using an Orthologous Gene of Known Exon-Intron Structure
Principal Research Scientist, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Department of Mechanical Engineering (36-796, 617 253.2512, srinivasan@cbgrle.mit.edu)
All aspects of human hands and their interactions with objects, including mechanics, sensorimotor functions, and cognition. Experimental and theoretical approaches in a multidisciplinary setting—biomechanics, neurophysiology, psychophysics, and computational theory of haptics. Applications include rehabilitation, robotics, and human-machine interfaces for virtual environments and teleoperation.
1. Biomechanics of skin-object contact
2. Geometric and material properties of primate fingers
3. Mechanistic modeling of primate fingers
4. Tactile and kinesthetic sensing of contact conditions and physical properties of objects
5. Signal transduction, processing and control in the haptic system during manual exploration and manipulation
6.Design and fabrication of high precision electro-mechanical devices such as instrumented tools, active objects, tactile stimulators and human-machine interfaces
Clarence J. LeBel Professor of Electrical Engineering Emeritus, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology Emeritus, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (36-517, 617 253.3209, stevens@speech.mit.edu)
Speech production and recognition in humans. Investigation of relation between speech sounds and physiological states of the speech source. Investigation of relation between perceptual categories and speech sounds. Machine generation of speech. Speaker recognition and speech recognition. Studies of speech disorders, including methods for diagnosis and remediation. Acoustical methods for the study of respiration.
1. The quantal nature of speech: evidence from articulatory-acoustic data
2. Development of speech in children
3. Models for the production and perception of speech
4. Phonetic features and lexical access
5. The search for invariant acoustic correlates of phonetic features
6. Synthesis of speech from text
7. Acoustic analysis and assessment of disordered speech
W. M. Keck Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Associate Professor of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (36-796, 617 253.4961, cmstultz@mit.edu)
Research in the computational biophysics laboratory is focused on understanding conformational changes in biomolecules that play an important role in common human diseases. Our lab uses an interdisciplinary approach combining computational modeling with biochemical experiments to make connections between conformational changes in macromolecules and disease progression. By employing two types of modeling, molecular dynamics and probabilistic modeling, hypotheses can be developed and then tested experimentally.
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and head of the Clinical Decision-Making Group within CSAIL (32-254, 617 253.3476, psz@mit.edu)
Artificial Intelligence methods of medical decision making, knowledge representation, medical language understanding, clinical decision support systems, lifelong medical records, integration of clinical and research data for learning new medicine.
1. De-identification of sensitive private medical data
2. Extraction of meaning from clinical notes
3.
Knowledge, corpus and taxonomy-based representation of medical facts and data
4. Qualitative modeling of pathophysiological processes
5. Diagnostic and therapeutic reasoning
6. Learning from non-systematic data
Professor of Biological Engineering and Computer Science; EECS, BE, CSAIL, CSBi (32-212, 617 253.7258, tidor@mit.edu)
Computational modeling of biological systems; computer-aided drug and protein design; biological network modeling, analysis, and design; computer algorithms and numerical techniques for solving biological problems; optimization and design strategies; biological signal transduction; systems biology.
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Principal Investigator, Research Laboratory of Electronics (36-824, 617 253.2094, voldman@mit.edu)
Application of microfabrication technology to biology, especially to cell biology. We design, fabricate, and characterize microdevices that interface with living cells, from bacteria to mammalian cells. Examples include devices to actively place and manipulate cells for novel cell assays and microsystem for quantitative analysis of cell phenotype.
James C. Weaver
Senior Research Scientist, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology; Associate Director, Biomedical Engineering Center (20A-128, 617 253.4194)
Electromagnetic field effects in cells, particularly “electroporation” which occurs at high electric field strengths and which can be used in biotechnology and biomedical engineering to move molecules into, out of, or through cells. Research activity ranges from basic studies of electroporation mechanism to applied studies aimed at new applications.
1. Experimental studies of electroporation in tissue for noninvasive drug delivery and sensing
2. Theory of electroporation mechanisms
3. Experimental studies of electroporation using fluorescence-labeled molecules to study transport in isolated cells
4. Investigation of very low level electromagnetic field effects in cells
5. Biosensing
Associate Professor of Electrical and Bioengineering Depts. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Biological Engineering, Principal Investigator, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, CSAIL (32-214; E17-350 617 253-8966, 617 715-4150, rweiss@mit.edu)
Synthetic biology. Construction and analysis of synthetic gene networks. Use of computer engineering principles of abstraction, composition, and interface specifications to program cells with sensors and actuators precisely controlled by analog and digital logic circuitry. Emphasis on establishing the engineering foundation for synthetic biology and the pursuit of novel applications enabled by the technology (e.g. programmed tissue engineering, diabetes, engineered neuronal circuits).
Thomas F. Weiss
MIT affiliate, Professor of Electrical and Bioengineering emeritus (tfweiss@mit.edu)
Mechanical, electrical and neural signals in the peripheral auditory system. Mechanical to neural transduction in hair cell receptor organs. Statistical properties of neural firing patterns. Neural elements and systems.
1. Mechanisms that degrade timing information in the cochlea
2. Software for teaching physiology and biophysics
3. The osmotic response of the isolated tectorial membrane of the chick to isosmotic solutions: Effect of Na+, K+, and Ca2
4. Cellular Biophysics, Volumes 1 and 2
6. Cellular homeostasis models
Robert J. Shillman Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Biological Engineering, CSBI, (36-834, 617 253.1583, yanik@mit.edu)
Dr. Yanik's group is working on development and applications of technologies for studying and engineering neural processes. Both in vivo and in vitro neural regeneration and degeneration is being studied by femtosecond laser nano-surgery and multi-photon imaging as well as microfluidic in vitro and in vivo high-throughput screening technologies using the model organism C. elegans, primary mammalian neurons as well as human embryonic stem cell derived neurons. Other problems being investigated include three dimensional neural scaffolds, and sub-diffraction-limit imaging.
See also:
http://www.rle.mit.edu/bbng/people.htm, http://www.rle.mit.edu/bbng/news.htm, and http://www.rle.mit.edu/bbng/publications.htm
Delta Electronics Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Director, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) (32-G470, 617 253.8513, zue@csail.mit.edu)
Application of signal processing, pattern recognition, and computer science principles to speech research, with particular emphasis on computer speech recognition and understanding. Acoustic analysis of continuous speech and general audio signal, and phonological/lexical analyses of words and sentences.
1. Multi-lingual conversational interfaces
2. Acoustic scene analysis
3. Integration of speech and vision
4. Robust speech recognition and understanding
5. Paralinguistic cues in speech (emotion, stress, fatigue, etc.)