March 11, 2013 -- National Public Radio (NPR)
"New Voices for the Voiceless: Synthetic Speech Gets an Upgrade"

"Ever since she was a small child, Samantha Grimaldo has had to carry her voice with her. Grimaldo was born with a rare disorder, Perisylvian syndrome, which means that though she's physically capable in many ways, she's never been able to speak. Instead, she's used a device to speak. She types in what she wants to say and the device..." [read more]

February 24, 2013 -- Prime Access
"The Exciting Future of Icon-Based AAC"

"I’d like to tell you about my friend Karl Wiegand and his amazing research. He’s one of the smartest and most capable researchers I know, and it doesn’t hurt that he spends his valuable time and immense brain power on making the world a truly better place. Karl Wiegand is a doctoral candidate at Northeastern University in Boston..." [read more]

February 21, 2013 -- Accessible Insights Blog
"Novel approaches to icon-based AAC presented by Karl Wiegand"

"One can easily argue that few are as keenly interested in the well-being of a person with a disability as is a parent. Expanding from that core of support one can also include siblings, guardians, educators, social workers and health care professionals. One can further include advocates, friends, spouses and co-workers, all of whom are..." [read more]

February 20, 2013 -- news@Northeastern
"Researcher gives subjects their voice"

"Stephen Hawking and a 9-year-old girl with a speech disorder most likely use the same synthetic voice. It's called Perfect Paul and it's easy to understand, especially in acoustically chaotic environments like classrooms full of children. While new, more natural-sounding voices are available, Perfect Paul remains the most oft-used..." [read more]

January 1, 2013 -- The ASHA Leader
"The Future Present"

The VocaliD project was included in the American Speech Language and Hearing Association's special issue highlighting 11 up-and-coming technologies that could revolutionize diagnosis and treatment of speech, language, and hearing disorders. Please see project #10, "Giving Synthetic Voices a Personal Touch..." [read more]

November 19, 2012 -- news@Northeastern
"Technology to improve health care"

This semester, professors Matthew Goodwin, Rupal Patel, Stephen Intille, and Timothy Bickmore launched the nation's first program devoted to Personal Health Informatics. Personal health technologies amount to more than just your smartphone apps. A group of Northeastern researchers, who are leading a new doctoral program... [read more]

May 16, 2012 --news@Northeastern
"Designing a 'star-making' foreign-language learning program"

"In one past interdisciplinary collaboration, Rupal Patel and Isabel Meirelles teamed up to develop a web-based tool that teaches children how to read with appropriate expression using visual cues. Their newest project, funded by a Provost's Tier 1 Inter-disciplinary Seed Grant, targets a trickier population: teenagers who want to learn English as..." [read more]

April 12, 2012

Dr. Patel gives a talk entitled, "Prosodic control in healthy & Impaired speakers: Scaffolding not just suprasegmental," as an invited guest at the Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, CT.

March, 2012

Dr. Patel and other lab members give talks as invited guests at the National Conference on Speech Motor Control and Motor Speech Disorders in Santa Rosa, CA.

Presentations:

Patel, R., Hustad, K., Connaghan, K., & Wiegand, K. (2012). Relationship Between Prosody and Intelligibility in Children with Dysarthria.
Patel, R. & Mills, T. (2012). Generating personalized speech synthesis for speakers with dysarthria using source-filter theory.
Patel, R., Reilly, K., Archibald, E., & Guenther, F. (2012). Intensity perturbation during running speech.
Connaghan, K. & Patel, R. (2012). Impact of global and local prosodic strategies on intelligibility in children with motor speech impairment.

November 1, 2011

Sara Natale is awarded the Progressus Therapy Future Leaders In School-Based Speech-Language Pathology Scholarship in the amount of $3,000. This award is in partnership with the Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders.

November, 2011

Dr. Patel gives a talk entitled, "Cutting Edge Approaches for Working with Children with Cerebral Palsy," as an invited guest at the American Speech and Hearing Association Convention in San Diego, CA.

October 1, 2011

CadLab is awarded a new National Science Foundation (NSF) grant from the Computer and Information Sciences Division for Modeling Acoustic and Articulatory Features for Hybrid Synthesis.

June, 2011

Dr. Patel gives a talk entitled, "Motor and Linguistic Bases of Prosodic Cue Trading Relations in Dysarthria," as an invited guest at the Speech Motor Control Conference in Groningen, Netherlands.

June 1, 2011

CadLab is awarded a new interdisciplinary grant, the Northeastern University Provost's Research Award for Visualizing Speech Melody to Improve Second Language Expressive Fluency in Adolescents.

February 1, 2011

CadLab is awarded a new grant from the National Institute on Child and Human Development (NICHD) for Acquisition of Prosodic Control in Typically Developing Children.

June 24, 2010 -- news@Northeastern
"For child readers, 'once more with feeling'"

"Rupal Patel, an associate professor of speech-language pathology and audiology at Northeastern, is developing innovative reading software that helps youngsters learn to read aloud with more expression in their voices via a novel interactive computer program. Her research in speech disorders led to a discovery that those with..." [read more]

April 6, 2010 -- The ASHA Leader
"Inspiring the Next Generation of Teacher-Scholars"

"ASHA introduced the Students Preparing for Academic and Research Careers (SPARC) in 2004, a mentoring program named for the spark of inspiration it was designed to provide for undergraduate and graduate students pursuing research-oriented careers. The program was one of several responses to the shortage of..." [read more]

December 13, 2008 -- The Globe and Mail
"Someone to Watch Over Me"

"Every move, every burble, every stage of development of their young son is being recorded as two university professors study how humans learn to speak — and whether robots can be taught the same way. It all started with a dare. The first parry came from Deb Roy, now an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of..." [PDF]

May 3, 2005 -- The Northeastern Voice
"Are You Talking to Me?" — Speech synthesis research brings new hope to the impaired

"It seems unfair that the computerized voice in an automobile navigation system speaks more concisely and legibly than individuals who rely on speech synthesizers — sounding no better than the computer HAL from '2001: A Space Odyssey' to communicate their thoughts and desires. Sentences from synthesizers are as basic as..." [PDF]

Undated -- Disaboom
"Voice Recognition Technology Help People Speak"

"I learned how to type when I was in high school. I remember sitting in the classroom wondering why I needed to learn this 'important' skill. But the truth is, as I grew older and my educational challenges increased, I found myself pounding on the keyboard more and more. To this day, despite the best efforts of that long-forgotten teacher..." [read more]