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Prof. Edison Thomaz of Texas ECE has received a Google Faculty Research Award for his proposed research work on "Identifying Acoustic Biomarkers of Mental Health and Well-Being in Voice-Based Interactions with Conversational Assistants in the Home". Google Faculty Research Awards is an annual open call for "proposals on computer science and related topics such as machine learning, machine perception, natural language processing, and quantum computing." This year, Google considered 1,033 proposals covering 46 countries and over 360 universities and funded 152 projects from those proposals.

Governmental regulations and privacy concerns restrict access to data sets for individuals and only provide researchers with data in aggregated form. However, current machine learning and data mining techniques are restricted in their ability to effectively use such data. These limitations create roadblocks for companies looking for ways to better respond to their consumers’ needs while also providing safety and security for individual users.