About
Research and personal interests
In my PhD, my fields of interest are natural language processing and speech perception in both human and AI systems. I am focusing my work on language and psychology, or how mental disorders and disabilities are reflected in the speech signal properties and how those influence human-AI interaction. One practical goal of my research is to figure out how AI can assist in diagnosing and possibly treating those individuals impacted by psychological problems but also speech impairments. As humans are masters at speech perception, even if conditions are noisy or difficult, I am more broadly interested in the details of human speech perception and how we can apply those processes to automatic speech recognition and algorithms. On the other hand, I am also interested in speech production and how we can improve the quality of synthetic speech systems to sound more human and encourage users to interact with their digital assistant more.
Outside of work I love to travel and experience new cultures and have lived in Germany, Ireland and California. I enjoy intercultural experiences and have worked with refugees in Germany to help them find their way around, learn the language and feel at home in a new culture. I also love to skateboard and listen to podcasts while cuddling with the cats. Yoga and mindfulness are both parts of my spiritual practice, aside from that I also love to try out new vegan recipes and look up zero waste swaps and ways to live a more sustainable life.
If you are interested in working or conversing with me, feel free to reach out!