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
Sheffield
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 Sheffield 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
- Analysis of voice biomarkers for the detection of cognitive impairment. IEEE Access, 1-1.
- Automatic detection of expressed emotion from five-minute speech samples: challenges and opportunities. PLOS ONE, 19(3). View this article in WRRO
- Spoken language-based automatic cognitive assessment of stroke survivors. Language and Health.
- Feasibility of longitudinal automated cognitive assessment in the stroke pathway. Alzheimer's & Dementia, 19(S14).
- Developing an automated Cognitive assessment based on language; CognoSpeak‐ working with an ethnic minority group. Alzheimer's & Dementia, 19(S20).
- Predicting the cause of seizures using features extracted from interactions with a virtual agent. Seizure: European Journal of Epilepsy.
- 02 Predicting the cause of TLOC using an automated analysis of interactions with a virtual agent. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 94(12), e2.9-e2.9.
- Speech patterns in responses to questions asked by an intelligent virtual agent can help to distinguish between people with early stage neurodegenerative disorders and healthy controls. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics. View this article in WRRO
- Differentiating between epileptic and functional/dissociative seizures using semantic content analysis of transcripts of routine clinic consultations. Epilepsy & Behavior, 143, 109217-109217.
- Automated detection of the competency of delivering guided self-help for anxiety via speech and language processing. Applied Sciences, 12(17).
- Trends and drivers of pharmaceutical expenditures from systemic anti-cancer therapy.. Eur J Health Econ.
- 050 Feasibility of an automated assessment to measure cognition and mood in the acute stroke setting. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 93(9), e2.246-e2.246.
- Keeping patient and public partnership at the heart of medical technology development during Covid-19 : examples of adaptive practice. Journal of Medical Engineering & Technology. View this article in WRRO
- Acoustic Modelling From Raw Source and Filter Components for Dysarthric Speech Recognition. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 30, 2968-2980.
- Characterising spoken interactions of healthy ageing adults with CognoSpeak, a web‐based cognitive assessment tool. Alzheimer's & Dementia, 17(S5).
- #3079 Investigating the feasibility of automating the differential diagnosis of transient loss of consciousness. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 92(8), A7.1-A7.
- Feasibility of using an automated analysis of formulation effort in patients’ spoken seizure descriptions in the differential diagnosis of epileptic and nonepileptic seizures. Seizure, 91, 141-145.
- Acoustic differences in emotional speech of people with dysarthria. Speech Communication, 126, 44-60. View this article in WRRO
- A fully automated cognitive screening tool based on assessment of speech and language. Alzheimer's & Dementia, 16(S6).
- 26 Can an automated assessment of language help distinguish between Functional Cognitive Disorder and early neurodegeneration?. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 91(8), e18.2-e19.
- Characterising spoken responses to an intelligent virtual agent by persons with mild cognitive impairment. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics. View this article in WRRO
- A fully automated cognitive screening tool based on assessment of speech and language (5548). Neurology, 94(15_supplement).
- View this article in WRRO
- 055 The digital doctor : a fully automated stratification and monitoring system for patients with memory complaints. Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 90(12). View this article in WRRO
- 056 Exploring the feasibility of automating verbal fluency tasks for cognitive assessment: data collection and analysis. Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 90(12). View this article in WRRO
- A virtual agent to support individuals living with physical and mental comorbidities : co-design and acceptability testing. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 21(5). View this article in WRRO
- A new diagnostic approach for the identification of patients with neurodegenerative cognitive complaints. PLoS ONE, 14(5). View this article in WRRO
- Dementia detection using automatic analysis of conversations. Computer Speech and Language, 53, 65-79. View this article in WRRO
- Developing an intelligent virtual agent to stratify people with cognitive complaints: A comparison of human-patient and intelligent virtual agent-patient interaction.. Dementia. View this article in WRRO
- NeuroSpeech. SoftwareX, 8, 69-70. View this article in WRRO
- NeuroSpeech: An open-source software for Parkinson's speech analysis. Digital Signal Processing: A Review Journal, 77, 207-221. View this article in WRRO
- PO029 An avatar aid in memory clinic. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 88(Suppl 1), A19.4-A20.
- Characterisation of voice quality of Parkinson’s disease using differential phonological posterior features. Computer Speech & Language, 46, 196-208. View this article in WRRO
- An Innovative Speech-Based User Interface for Smarthomes and IoT Solutions to Help People with Speech and Motor Disabilities. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 242, 306-313. View this article in WRRO
- Toward the Automation of Diagnostic Conversation Analysis in Patients with Memory Complaints. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 58(2), 373-387. View this article in WRRO
- A hearing-inspired approach for distant-microphone speech recognition in the presence of multiple sources. Computer Speech and Language.
- The PASCAL CHiME speech separation and recognition challenge. Computer Speech and Language.
- Combining speech fragment decoding and adaptive noise floor modeling. IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, 20(3), 818-827.
- A cascaded broadcast news highlighter. IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, 16(1), 151-161.
- The Dysarthric Expressed Emotional Database (DEED): An audio-visual database in British English. PLOS ONE, 18(8), e0287971-e0287971.
- Special Issue on Applications of Speech and Language Technologies in Healthcare. Applied Sciences, 13(11), 6840-6840.
- Nationwide Survival Benefit after Implementation of First-Line Immunotherapy for Patients with Advanced NSCLC—Real World Efficacy. Cancers, 13(19), 4846-4846.
Conference proceedings papers
- A Situational Semantic Projection Model for Ontology Completion in Dysarthric Speech Using Emotion and Dialogue Acts. 2024 6th International Conference on Natural Language Processing (ICNLP) (pp 124-128), 22 March 2024 - 24 March 2024.
- Identifying People with Mild Cognitive Impairment at Risk of Developing Dementia using Speech Analysis. 2023 IEEE Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding Workshop (ASRU), 16 December 2023 - 20 December 2023.
- Moving Towards Non-Binary Gender Identification Via Analysis of System Errors in Binary Gender Classification. ICASSP 2023 - 2023 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 4 June 2023 - 10 June 2023.
- Investigating Visual Features for Cognitive Impairment Detection Using In-the-wild Data. 2023 IEEE 17th International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG), 5 January 2023 - 8 January 2023.
- Multi-Modal Acoustic-Articulatory Feature Fusion For Dysarthric Speech Recognition. ICASSP 2022 - 2022 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 23 May 2022 - 27 May 2022.
- Eye Blink Rate Based Detection of Cognitive Impairment Using In-the-wild Data. 2021 9th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII), 28 September 2021 - 1 October 2021.
- Multi-Task Estimation of Age and Cognitive Decline from Speech. ICASSP 2021 - 2021 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 6 June 2021 - 11 June 2021.
- How can automated linguistic analysis help to discern functional cognitive disorder from healthy controls and mild cognitive impairment?. BJPsych Open, Vol. 7(S1) (pp S7-S7). Virtual, 21 June 2021 - 24 June 2021.
- Predicting Levels of Depression and Anxiety in People with Neurodegenerative Memory Complaints Presenting with Confounding Symptoms. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, Vol. 285 (pp 58-69)
- A comparison of acoustic and linguistics methodologies for Alzheimer’s dementia recognition. Interspeech 2020 (pp 2182-2186). Shanghai, China, 25 October 2020 - 29 October 2020.
- Recognising emotions in dysarthric speech using typical speech data. Interspeech 2020 (pp 4821-4825). Shanghai, China, 25 October 2020 - 29 October 2020.
- Improving Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease Using Automatic Speech Recognition to Identify High-Quality Segments for More Robust Feature Extraction. Interspeech 2020
- Improving Cognitive Impairment Classification by Generative Neural Network-Based Feature Augmentation. Interspeech 2020, 25 October 2020 - 25 October 2020.
- Source Domain Data Selection for Improved Transfer Learning Targeting Dysarthric Speech Recognition. ICASSP 2020 - 2020 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 4 May 2020 - 8 May 2020. View this article in WRRO
- Exploring Appropriate Acoustic and Language Modelling Choices for Continuous Dysarthric Speech Recognition. ICASSP 2020 - 2020 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 4 May 2020 - 8 May 2020. View this article in WRRO
- Automatic Hierarchical Attention Neural Network for Detecting AD. Interspeech 2019, 15 September 2019 - 15 September 2019.
- Phonetic Analysis of Dysarthric Speech Tempo and Applications to Robust Personalised Dysarthric Speech Recognition. ICASSP 2019 - 2019 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 12 May 2019 - 17 May 2019.
- Computational Cognitive Assessment: Investigating the Use of an Intelligent Virtual Agent for the Detection of Early Signs of Dementia. ICASSP 2019 - 2019 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 12 May 2019 - 17 May 2019.
- Examining Temporal Variations in Recognizing Unspoken Words using EEG Signals. 2018 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), 7 October 2018 - 10 October 2018. View this article in WRRO
- Discriminating between Imagined Speech and Non-Speech Tasks using EEG. 2018 40th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) (pp 1952-1955), 18 July 2018 - 21 July 2018. View this article in WRRO
- Detecting Signs of Dementia Using Word Vector Representations. Interspeech 2018
- Detecting and Predicting Alzheimer's Disease Severity in Longitudinal Acoustic Data. Proceedings of the International Conference on Bioinformatics Research and Applications 2017 - ICBRA 2017, 8 December 2017 - 10 December 2017.
- An avatar to screen for cognitive impairment. Journal of the Neurological Sciences, Vol. 381 (pp 319-319)
- An Avatar-based system for identifying individuals likely to develop dementia. Interspeech 2017 (pp 3147-3151) View this article in WRRO
- On the impact of non-modal phonation on phonological features. ICASSP, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - Proceedings (pp 5090-5094) View this article in WRRO
- Multi-view representation learning via gcca for multimodal analysis of Parkinson's disease. ICASSP, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - Proceedings (pp 2966-2970) View this article in WRRO
- Cloud-Based Speech Technology for Assistive Technology Applications (CloudCAST). Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, Vol. 242 (pp 322-329) View this article in WRRO
- An Innovative Speech-Based Interface to Control AAL and IoT Solutions to Help People with Speech and Motor Disability (pp 269-278)
- Brain-computer interface technology for speech recognition: A review. 2016 Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA), 13 December 2016 - 16 December 2016.
- Diagnosing people with dementia using automatic conversation analysis. Proceedings of Interspeech 2016 (pp 1220-1224) View this article in WRRO
- View this article in WRRO
- Simple and robust audio-based detection of biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease. SLPAT 2016 Workshop on Speech and Language Processing for Assistive Technologies
- Knowledge transfer between speakers for personalised dialogue management. Proceedings of the 16th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue, September 2015 - September 2015.
- Remote Speech Technology for Speech Professionals - the CloudCAST initiative. Proceedings of SLPAT 2015: 6th Workshop on Speech and Language Processing for Assistive Technologies, September 2015 - September 2015.
- Speech-enabled environmental control in an AAL setting for people with speech disorders: a case study. IET International Conference on Technologies for Active and Assisted Living (TechAAL)
- Automatic selection of speakers for improved acoustic modelling: recognition of disordered speech with sparse data. 2014 IEEE Spoken Language Technology Workshop (SLT), 7 December 2014 - 10 December 2014.
- A speech fragment approach to localising multiple speakers in reverberant environments. ICASSP, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - Proceedings (pp 4593-4596)
- From text summarisation to style-specific summarisation for broadcast news. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), Vol. 2997 (pp 223-237)
- Evaluating the Performance of State-of-the-Art ASR Systems on Non-Native English using Corpora with Extensive Language Background Variation. Interspeech 2022
- Automatic Detection of Expressed Emotion from Five-Minute Speech Samples: Challenges and Opportunities. Interspeech 2022
- Automatic cognitive assessment: Combining sparse datasets with disparate cognitive scores. Interspeech 2022
- Dysarthric Speech Recognition From Raw Waveform with Parametric CNNs. Interspeech 2022
- Using the Outputs of Different Automatic Speech Recognition Paradigms for Acoustic- and BERT-Based Alzheimer’s Dementia Detection Through Spontaneous Speech. Interspeech 2021
- Identifying Cognitive Impairment Using Sentence Representation Vectors. Interspeech 2021
- Parental Spoken Scaffolding and Narrative Skills in Crowd-Sourced Storytelling Samples of Young Children. Interspeech 2021
- Fully automated cognitive screening tool based on assessment of speech and language. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry
- Acoustic Feature Extraction with Interpretable Deep Neural Network for Neurodegenerative Related Disorder Classification. Interspeech 2020
- CloudCAST — Remote Speech Technology for Speech Professionals. Interspeech 2016
- Integrating pitch and localisation cues at a speech fragment level. Interspeech 2007
- View this article in WRRO
Reports
Theses / Dissertations
Working papers
Datasets
Other
Preprints
- Early Dementia Detection Using Multiple Spontaneous Speech Prompts: The PROCESS Challenge, arXiv.
- View this article in WRRO
- A Virtual Agent to Support Individuals Living With Physical and Mental Comorbidities: Co-Design and Acceptability Testing (Preprint).
- Analysis of voice biomarkers for the detection of cognitive impairment. IEEE Access, 1-1.
- 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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UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Speech and Language Technologies and their Applications, 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: Training Network on Automatic Processing of PAthological Speech, 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 Speech and Hearing research group
- Member of the ISCA Diversity Committee
- Co-organiser of ASRU 2021
- Co-organiser of Interspeech 2023