USC professor’s tech has improved autism analysis

Shrikanth Narayanan has spent his total profession making speech and language processing applied sciences extra accessible.

The IEEE Fellow has developed machine intelligence and sign processing applied sciences to research human conduct together with spoken language, facial expressions, and physiological indicators.

Because of his work, medical professionals can higher diagnose and monitor autism, despair, and different situations.

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

It’s additionally simpler now to be taught 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, 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 tutorial positions throughout the college. He’s a visiting school researcher at Google DeepMind in Los Angeles.

Narayanan obtained 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 obtained this award have been my heroes within the discipline—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 college 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 modify 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 discipline 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 techniques work to conceptualize how the human physique features. That made me this form of engineer who may be very human-focused proper from the start. I take 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 observed that the functions being developed have been just for wholesome adults, so he and different researchers determined to deal with ones for kids.

“After we began engaged on applied sciences for kids, we instantly discovered elementary challenges due to this dynamic trajectory of how their speech and language adjustments,” 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 adjustments to be studied objectively and quantitatively, he says.

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

“My biggest 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 be taught new issues every single day.”

To check the processes in a scientific means, the researchers used sensors and imaging to measure adjustments in speech and language abilities. After amassing knowledge within the type of indicators, the researchers utilized sign processing methods to extract significant data.

Narayanan concluded that their technique could possibly be used for kids who’ve developmental situations akin to autism spectrum dysfunction, language delays, and related problems.

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 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 software they created screens the progress of the communication talents of youngsters who usually are not growing language abilities 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 person’s feelings. BSP expertise 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 data enabled digital assistants to determine speech extra precisely.

Tech to enhance psychological well being

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

“My biggest 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 be taught 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 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 discipline.”

Diagnosing and treating psychological well being situations typically entails 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 deal with them.

Psychotherapy analysis and medical observe have a tendency to make use of guide strategies to gather and consider efficiency and efficacy knowledge, Narayanan says, however that’s not scalable and may result in inaccuracy. The solutions may not really mirror how the affected person feels, he says.

Narayanan and his colleagues invented a option to acquire knowledge via 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 function 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 pictures. Notably the college has invested greater than US $1 billion in its Frontiers of Computing initiative.

“The college and its president have this huge strategic imaginative and prescient of desirous about 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 huge initiatives which have a world footprint.”

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

IEEE: A giant household

On the encouragement of one in all his undergraduate professors, Narayanan joined IEEE in his senior 12 months.

“I spotted IEEE is a house to be taught, to share, and to continually develop,” Narayanan says. “IEEE gives that for us. It’s a platform to situate your work in your discipline, and within the broader context of society and humanity. And, after all, you make plenty of lifelong pals, 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 obtained an IEEE Laptop Society McCluskey Technical Achievement Award this 12 months and an IEEE Sign Processing Society Shannon-Nyquist Technical Achievement Award final 12 months.

Volunteering has turn out to be a part of his life, he says, and over time, he has inspired his college students to hitch.

“Lots of them are actually professors around the globe, and so they encourage their college students to hitch,” he says. “IEEE is sort of a huge household.”