USC professor’s tech has improved autism analysis

Due to his work, medical professionals can higher diagnose and monitor autism, despair, and different circumstances.

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

It’s additionally simpler now to be taught a brand new language due to instruments he developed that present suggestions on methods to pronounce phrases.

Narayanan is a professor {of electrical} engineering, pc 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 educational positions throughout 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 needed 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 probably the most foundational subject of science,” he says. “I didn’t know a lot about it, however it 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 type of engineer who could be very human-focused proper from the start. I have a look at folks 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 seen that the purposes being developed had been just for wholesome adults, so he and different researchers determined to concentrate on ones for kids.

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

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

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

“My biggest pleasure is working with my college students in my lab and studying from them, greater than being a instructor or advisor. It’s superb that I get to be taught new issues daily.”

To review the processes in a scientific manner, the researchers used sensors and imaging to measure modifications in speech and language expertise. After gathering information within the type of alerts, the researchers utilized sign processing methods to extract significant info.

Narayanan concluded that their technique may very well be used for kids who’ve developmental circumstances akin to autism spectrum dysfunction, language delays, and related issues.

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

One other device they created screens the progress of the communication skills of youngsters who will not be growing language expertise on the anticipated age.

The researchers’ early work in understanding and deciphering human feelings from speech has impressed options utilized in digital assistants akin to Alexa and Siri to sound extra pure and acknowledge a consumer’s feelings. BSP expertise helps the units 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 determine speech extra precisely.

Tech to enhance psychological well being

Narayanan left Bell Labs in 2000 to affix the USC school. He all the time needed to mentor college students and work with folks from totally different disciplines, he says, so when he was provided a educating place in California—a spot he loves—he determined to provide it a shot.

“My biggest pleasure is working with my college students in my lab and studying from them, greater than being a instructor or advisor,” he says. “It’s superb that I get to be taught new issues daily.”

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

“Bringing engineering instruments to help 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 usually includes interacting with sufferers utilizing speech and language. In psychotherapy, for instance, a psychological well being skilled talks with the affected person to determine troubling ideas, feelings, and behaviors and to assist tackle them.

Psychotherapy analysis and medical follow have a tendency to make use of handbook strategies to gather and consider efficiency and efficacy information, Narayanan says, however that’s not scalable and may result in inaccuracy. The solutions won’t really replicate how the affected person feels, he says.

Narayanan and his colleagues invented a solution to gather information by 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 despair and nervousness.

He at present is working with the U.S. Protection Superior Analysis Initiatives Company to determine biomarkers for folks 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 position that makes use of his multidisciplinary background: USC appointed him as vp 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 photographs. Notably the college has invested greater than US $1 billion in its Frontiers of Computing initiative.

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

“Advances are going down at an astonishing price within the evolving fields encompassed by our moon photographs,” Carol Folt, the college’s president, stated in an announcement concerning the appointment. “This position was created to focus not solely on implementing but additionally frequently broadening, amplifying, and weaving our moon photographs collectively so USC stays on the forefront of discovery and innovation. Professor Narayanan is the right selection for this position.”

IEEE: An enormous household

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

“I noticed IEEE is a house to be taught, 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 a variety of lifelong buddies, and also you give again as a volunteer.”

And provides again he has. A member of the IEEE Laptop and IEEE Sign Processing societies, he was the latter’s first vp 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 Laptop Society McCluskey Technical Achievement Award this yr and an IEEE Sign Processing Society Shannon-Nyquist Technical Achievement Award final yr.

Volunteering has grow to be a part of his life, he says, and over time, he has inspired his college students to affix.

“Lots of them at the moment are professors around the globe, and so they encourage their college students to affix,” he says. “IEEE is sort of a large household.”