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

Heidi Christensen headshot
Profile picture of Heidi Christensen headshot
heidi.christensen@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 1950

Full contact details

Professor Heidi Christensen
School of Computer Science
Regent Court (DCS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP
Profile

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

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

Journal articles

Conference proceedings papers

Reports

  • Christensen H & Barker J (2008) Inferring perceiver actions from binaural data RIS download Bibtex download
  • Khalidov V, Lu Y-C, Holveck B, Taillant E, Arnaud E, Barker J, Christensen H & Mathieu H (2007) Synchronized stereoscopic and binaural dataset with head movements : Recording details RIS download Bibtex download

Theses / Dissertations

  • Christensen H (2002) Speech Recognition using Heterogenous Information Extraction in Multi-Stream Based Systems. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Christensen H (1996) Speaker Adaptation of Hidden Markov Models using Maximum Likelihood Linear Regression. RIS download Bibtex download

Working papers

  • Pan Y, Mirheidari B, Reuber M, Venneri A, Blackburn D & Christensen H (2019) Automatic Hierarchical Attention Neural Network for Detecting AD. RIS download Bibtex download

Datasets

Other

  • Christensen H & Barker J (2009) Simultaneous Tracking of Perceiver Movements and Speaker Changes Using Head-Centered, Binaural Data. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Christensen H, Barker J, Lu Y-C, Xavier J, Caseiro R & Araújo H (2009) POPeye: Real-time, binaural sound source localisation on an audio-visual robot-head. RIS download Bibtex download

Preprints

  • Mirheidari B, Bittar A, Cummins N, Downs J, Fisher HL & Christensen H (2022) Automatic Detection of Expressed Emotion from Five-Minute Speech Samples: Challenges and Opportunities, arXiv. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Mirheidari B, Pan Y, Blackburn D, O'Malley R, Walker T, Venneri A, Reuber M & Christensen H (2020) Data augmentation using generative networks to identify dementia, arXiv. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Mirheidari B, Pan Y, Walker T, Reuber M, Venneri A, Blackburn D & Christensen H (2019) Detecting Alzheimer's Disease by estimating attention and elicitation path through the alignment of spoken picture descriptions with the picture prompt, arXiv. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Mirheidari B, Pan Y, Walker T, Reuber M, Venneri A, Blackburn D & Christensen H (2019) Detecting Alzheimer's Disease by estimating attention and elicitation path through the alignment of spoken picture descriptions with the picture prompt.. View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download
  • Easton K, Potter S, Bec R, Bennion M, Christensen H, Grindell C, Mirheidari B, Weich S, de Witte L, Wolstenholme D & Hawley MS () A Virtual Agent to Support Individuals Living With Physical and Mental Comorbidities: Co-Design and Acceptability Testing (Preprint). RIS download Bibtex download
Grants

Current Grants

  • The automated coding of expressed emotion to enhance clinical and epidemiological mental health research in adolescence, MRC, 11/2022 - 10/2024, £379,598, as Co-PI

  • CcHAT: CognoSpeak: a Cognitive Health Assessment Tool, NIHR, 02/2022 - 01/2025, £1,357,247, as Co-I

  • UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Speech and Language Technologies and their Applications, EPSRC, 04/2019 - 09/2027, £5,508,850, as Co-PI

  • Deep learning of articulatory-based representations of dysarthric speech, Google, 02/2016 - 12/2025, £46,624, as PI

  • Design and development of CognoMND, LifeArc, 01/07/2024 - 30/06/2027, £209,000 as Co-PI

Previous Grants

  • Interdisciplinary project on COMPutational Assessment of Stroke Survivors (COMPASS), Rosetrees Trust, 02/2020 - 08/2024, £124,864, as PI

  • CognoSpeak-eQMS, EPSRC, 01/01/2023 - 31/12/2023, £22,904, as PI

  • Participatory co-design of a platform for collecting atypical speech data, Research England, 03/2022 - 07/2022, £19,692, as Co-PI

  • CognoSpeak UX, Research England, 06/2021 - 02/2022, £27,694, as PI

  • COMPASS: COMPutational Assessment of Stroke Survivors, Research England, 11/2019 - 06/2020, £48,886, as PI

  • COCOA: COmputerised COgnitive Assessment, MRC, 10/2018 to 09/2019, £49,513, as PI

  • TAPASTraining Network on Automatic Processing of PAthological Speech, EU H2020, 11/2017 - 09/2022, £468,000, as PI

  • CloudVent: Cloud-based speech recognition for people with paralysis using ventilators, RCUK, 10/2015 - 04/2016, £360,000, as Co-PI

Professional activities and memberships
  • Member of the Speech and Hearing research group
  • Member of the ISCA Diversity Committee
  • Co-organiser of ASRU 2021
  • Co-organiser of Interspeech 2023