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Title: Community-Based Design and Evaluation of a Voice Training App for Transgender People

Speaker: Alex A. Ahmed, PhD Candidate, College of Computer and Information Science at Northeastern University

Location: Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, West Village H, 3rd Floor, Room #366, Massachusetts 02115

Abstract

This project aims to develop a personalized voice training application for transgender people.  Voice training is typically conducted by a speech therapist, and consists of personalized sessions that support individuals in changing their voices (such as modifying pitch, resonance, or speech patterns).  The reasons why people may pursue voice training are varied, but often includes discomfort with voice being misaligned with gender identity.  Training with a speech therapist may be inaccessible due to health disparities within minority populations; thus, a technological solution, as Ahmed will propose in her research, is necessary.

This project will address existing constraints to design a novel voice training application in partnership with community members and organizations, using a community-based participatory research methodology.

About the Speaker

Alex A. Ahmed is a PhD student in the Personal Health Informatics program at Northeastern University’s College of Computer and Information Science, advised by Professor Matthew Goodwin.  Alex studied cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, biology, and programming at the University of California at San Diego.  While there, Alex worked with Gedeon Deák studying cognitive development and joint attention sharing in infants and young toddlers, and with Gentry Patrick studying the regulation of the ubiquitin-proteasome system.  After graduating, Alex was awarded the Yale Computational Neuroscience Fellowship and moved to New Haven to work with Brent Vander Wyk at the Child Study Center where she used fMRI techniques to measure brain activations to social stimuli in children with autism.  She then joined the Machine Perception Laboratory at the University of California at San Diego as a Research Associate. There, Alex worked under the mentorship of Marian Bartlett on a project that used computer face recognition and machine learning to categorize instances of post-operative pain in children.  She also worked with Leanne Chukoskie on gathering behavioral and physiological data from video games.

So far at Northeastern, Alex has been involved in on-site research using robotic teddy bears at Boston Children’s Hospital and worked with Rick Palumbo on developing window analysis algorithms for skin conductance data.  In 2015, she was awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) to support her current doctoral work.  In 2017, Ahmed was a featured speaker at the Diversity and Inclusion Lunch at CHI 2017.  Her long-term research interests involve the development and distribution of patient-facing health technology to marginalized and under-served communities.

Event Details

  • Reuben Mathew Philip

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