Keynote Speakers

Music and Wearable Computing for Health and Rehabilitation

Prof. Ye Wang (National University of Singapore)

Abstract: Music is more than just a source of entertainment. Parents sing nursery rhymes to their young children to help them learn their first language; music therapists use music to help patients recover. Wearable sensors are applied in many different domains. I will present our work which combines music and wearable computing technologies specially designed for quantifying patients’ gaits, as well as for facilitating physical exercise via walking, dancing and music making. Towards this end, I will highlight our initial iOS-based Rhythmic Auditory Cueing Evaluation (iRACE) Mobile Application and the subsequent Mobility Analysis (MANA) smart-sensor system which are designed to quantify gaits of people with Parkinson’s disease, as well as Motion Initiated Music Ensemble with Sensors (MIMES) system which is designed to convert human movements to musical sounds for neurologic music therapy.

Short Biography: Ye Wang is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering (NGS). He established and directed the sound and music computing (SMC) Lab (https://smcnus.comp.nus.edu.sg/). Before joining NUS, he was a member of the technical staff at Nokia Research Center in Tampere, Finland for 9 years. His research interests include sound analysis and music information retrieval (MIR), mobile computing, and cloud computing, and their applications in music edutainment and e-Health, as well as determining their effectiveness via subjective and objective evaluations. His most recent projects involve the design and evaluation of systems to support 1) therapeutic gait training using Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS), 2) motivating exercise via music-based systems, and 3) language learning.