I am a Professor in the Psychology Department at New Mexico State University. I am a quantitative psychologist by training, although the majority of my work falls within the domains of audio interface design, audio algorithms, and statistics. I am currently the Principal Investigator on an NIH grant entitled Attention-Guided Speech Enhancement for Hearing Impaired Listeners. The project is focused on the development of a device to improve the user's speech perception in noisy environments. I have developed an auditory source separation algorithm that amplifies sounds coming from any specified direction. The research project is focused on pairing this with eye tracking hardware to amplify sounds coming from the direction of the user's eye gaze. Development and evaluation is currently underway with both normal and hearing-impaired users.
Current projects in my lab:
- Creation, prototyping, and usability testing of an auditory assistive device that amplifies sounds coming from the direction of the user’s eye gaze
- Development and evaluation of a sound source separation algorithm
- Using eye gaze as an indicator of auditory spatial attention
- Adaptive auditory warnings for smart vehicle interfaces
- Real-time adjustment of Voice User Interfaces (VUIs)
- Using haptic systems to complement auditory perception
- Using trans-Cranial Direct Stimulation (tDCS) to enhance auditory perception
- Development and evaluation of an algorithm to provide approximate solutions to the set cover problem in combinatorics