USC professor’s tech has improved autism prognosis

Because of his work, medical professionals can higher diagnose and monitor autism, melancholy, and different circumstances.

Anybody utilizing digital assistants has benefitted from Narayanan’s analysis in understanding and decoding human feelings from speech. The assistants at the moment are extra intuitive, they usually can higher perceive and reply to a consumer’s instructions.

It’s additionally simpler now to study a brand new language because of instruments he developed that present suggestions on find out how to pronounce phrases.

Narayanan is a professor {of electrical} engineering, laptop science, linguistics, psychology, pediatrics, and otolaryngology on the College of Southern California, in Los Angeles. He additionally heads USC’s Sign Evaluation and Interpretation Laboratory and holds a number of different tutorial positions inside the college. He’s a visiting school researcher at Google DeepMind in Los Angeles.

Narayanan acquired the 2025 IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award for his contributions to speech communication science and applied sciences for inclusive human-centered engineering. The award is sponsored by Mitsubishi Electrical Analysis Laboratories.

“I’m so touched and honored,” he says about getting the award. “I began my profession at Bell Labs, and James Flanagan was a legendary researcher in speech and audio there. Many individuals who’ve acquired this award have been my heroes within the subject—who I look as much as. Their work has impressed me profoundly.”

An early fascination with how the human physique features

Rising up in Chennai, India, Narayanan wished to be a doctor as a result of he was fascinated with how the physique works. He utilized and was accepted into medical faculty on the age of 17, however his profession plans modified earlier than he even stepped right into a classroom.

Narayanan’s father was a chemist, and his uncle was {an electrical} engineer. After a number of discussions, his household persuaded him to change to engineering even on the “supportive protest” of his uncle who was an engineer, he says.

“On the time, electrical engineering was touted as essentially the most foundational subject of science,” he says. “I didn’t know a lot about it, but it surely quickly turned clear to me that I might begin matching how sign processing methods work to conceptualize how the human physique features. That made me this kind of engineer who could be very human-focused proper from the start. I have a look at individuals from an engineering angle.”

He earned a bachelor’s diploma in EE in 1988 from the School of Engineering, Guindy, (now a part of Anna College, in Chennai). Narayanan went on to earn his grasp’s and doctoral levels in EE in 1990 and 1995, from the College of California, Los Angeles.

He began his profession as a analysis scientist in 1995 at AT&T Bell Labs (now Nokia Bell Labs) in Murray Hill, N.J. Whereas engaged on speech and language processing applied sciences, he observed that the functions being developed had been just for wholesome adults, so he and different researchers determined to deal with ones for youngsters.

“Once we began engaged on applied sciences for youngsters, we instantly discovered elementary challenges due to this dynamic trajectory of how their speech and language modifications,” he explains. “As youngsters are rising, they’re growing not solely bodily and physiologically but additionally socially.”

The researchers first needed to create a basis based mostly on speech science for the modifications to be studied objectively and quantitatively, he says.

“Speech and language consequence from a posh orchestration of assorted processes that occur within the mind and the neural and motoric methods,” he says.

“My best pleasure is working with my college students in my lab and studying from them, greater than being a trainer or advisor. It’s superb that I get to study new issues every single day.”

To check the processes in a scientific approach, the researchers used sensors and imaging to measure modifications in speech and language expertise. After gathering knowledge within the type of alerts, the researchers utilized sign processing strategies to extract significant info.

Narayanan concluded that their methodology may very well be used for youngsters who’ve developmental circumstances comparable to autism spectrum dysfunction, language delays, and comparable problems.

They invented behavioral sign processing (BSP) know-how, which analyzes and interprets speech and language in social conditions. Narayanan says the know-how is helpful for youngsters with autism who sometimes have a tough time with social interactions. The researchers additionally developed computational fashions to detect and interpret emotional cues from autistic youngsters’s speech and facial expressions.

One other instrument they created displays the progress of the communication skills of kids who aren’t growing language expertise on the anticipated age.

The researchers’ early work in understanding and decoding human feelings from speech has impressed options utilized in digital assistants comparable to Alexa and Siri to sound extra pure and acknowledge a consumer’s feelings. BSP know-how helps the gadgets acknowledge not solely what customers say but additionally how they are saying it.

The researchers’ work in acoustic modeling, language modeling, and integrating contextual info enabled digital assistants to establish speech extra precisely.

Tech to enhance psychological well being

Narayanan left Bell Labs in 2000 to hitch the USC school. He at all times wished to mentor college students and work with individuals from completely different disciplines, he says, so when he was supplied a educating place in California—a spot he loves—he determined to provide it a shot.

“My best pleasure is working with my college students in my lab and studying from them, greater than being a trainer or advisor,” he says. “It’s superb that I get to study new issues every single day.”

All through his practically 25 years at USC, Narayanan has continued to develop speech and language processing functions for well being care. He makes use of applied sciences comparable to BSP to create strategies to higher perceive psychological well being.

“Bringing engineering instruments to assist analysis into psychological well being has been a giant space,” he says. “I’m very dedicated to that subject.”

Diagnosing and treating psychological well being circumstances typically entails interacting with sufferers utilizing speech and language. In psychotherapy, for instance, a psychological well being skilled talks with the affected person to establish troubling ideas, feelings, and behaviors and to assist tackle them.

Psychotherapy analysis and scientific follow have a tendency to make use of guide strategies to gather and consider efficiency and efficacy knowledge, Narayanan says, however that isn’t scalable and might result in inaccuracy. The solutions may not truly replicate how the affected person feels, he says.

Narayanan and his colleagues invented a method to gather knowledge by way of speech and language-based biomarkers to characterize remedy high quality and outcomes. Additionally they designed goal measures to detect and monitor an individual’s speech patterns for indicators of melancholy and nervousness.

He presently is working with the U.S. Protection Superior Analysis Initiatives Company to establish biomarkers for individuals with suicidal ideation.

Narayanan holds 19 U.S. patents and has helped to discovered a number of startups to commercialize his applied sciences.

Overseeing USC’s grand analysis plans

In February he took on a brand new function that makes use of his multidisciplinary background: USC appointed him as vice chairman for its presidential initiatives, a newly created place. He coordinates and expands the attain of the college’s analysis initiatives in computing, well being, and sustainability, issues the college refers to as moon pictures. Notably the college has invested greater than US $1 billion in its Frontiers of Computing initiative.

“The college and its president have this massive strategic imaginative and prescient of fascinated with grand issues, like the way forward for well being, the way forward for computing, and sustainability of the planet,” Narayanan says. “They wished a researcher and a scholar who works throughout disciplines. They need me to attach individuals and concepts to launch these massive initiatives which have a world footprint.”

“Advances are happening at an astonishing price within the evolving fields encompassed by our moon pictures,” Carol Folt, the college’s president, mentioned in an announcement concerning the appointment. “This function was created to focus not solely on implementing but additionally regularly broadening, amplifying, and weaving our moon pictures collectively so USC stays on the forefront of discovery and innovation. Professor Narayanan is the proper alternative for this function.”

IEEE: A giant household

On the encouragement of certainly one of his undergraduate professors, Narayanan joined IEEE in his senior yr.

“I noticed IEEE is a house to study, to share, and to always develop,” Narayanan says. “IEEE gives that for us. It’s a platform to situate your work in your subject, and within the broader context of society and humanity. And, after all, you make quite a lot of lifelong associates, and also you give again as a volunteer.”

And provides again he has. A member of the IEEE Pc and IEEE Sign Processing societies, he was the latter’s first vice chairman of schooling.

He has been on the editorial boards of each societies’ publications and has served as editor in chief for his or her journals and transactions. He additionally held management roles in organizing the societies’ conferences and workshops.

Each societies have acknowledged him for his work. He acquired an IEEE Pc Society McCluskey Technical Achievement Award this yr and an IEEE Sign Processing Society Shannon-Nyquist Technical Achievement Award final yr.

Volunteering has develop into a part of his life, he says, and over time, he has inspired his college students to hitch.

“Lots of them at the moment are professors world wide, they usually encourage their college students to hitch,” he says. “IEEE is sort of a massive household.”