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<p class="MsoNormal">Dear colleagues,<span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As the organiser of the Essex Brain-Computer Interfaces and Neural Engineering (BCI-NE) seminar series, I am emailing to advertise our next webinar:
<b>Dr Maitreyee Wairagkar</b>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><b>Title: High-performance speech neuroprosthesis by decoding intracortical neural activity of person with ALS<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><b>Abstract</b>: Neurological injury or disease can lead to paralysis causing severe speech impairments, dramatically reducing the quality of life and independence in millions of people. BCIs can offer a potential
solution to restore lost speech by bypassing damaged parts of the nervous system and directly deciphering their brain signals. I will talk about my research on implanted intracortical BCIs to restore naturalistic speech to a person with ALS. We decoded their
neural signals into words (brain-to-text) or directly synthesized their voice (brain-to-voice) from the activity of hundreds of single neurons recorded from surgically implanted microelectrode arrays in the speech-motor cortex. Brain-to-text BCI enabled the
participant to communicate with high accuracy for his personal use. Taking a step further, the brain-to-voice decoder instantaneously synthesizes voice with closed-loop audio feedback and decodes paralinguistic features in voice allowing the participant to
speak expressively through the voice BCI by changing his intonation, emphasizing words and also sing short melodies.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><b>Biography</b>: Dr Maitreyee Wairagkar is a neuroscientist and neuroengineer developing advance neurotechnology using artificial intelligence. She is a Postdoctoral Scholar at University of California Davis,
USA where she has built implanted brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to enable people with severe speech and motor impairments to communicate directly via their brain signals. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Imperial College London,
UK. She earned her PhD and MEng degrees in AI and Cybernetics from the University of Reading, UK. Her research focuses on healthcare applications of neurotechnology in rehabilitation and assistive devices for people with different neurological conditions,
for example, enabling a person with paralysis to fluently speak through a neuroprosthesis, neurorehabilitation for stroke recovery and robotic care for dementia. Her previous research has also been commercially translated. She has received the 2023 International
BCI Award, 2022 Nature Inspiring Women in Science Award runner up and India UK Achievers Honours 2023.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The seminar will be delivered over <b>Zoom on 6<sup>th</sup> November, 4pm UK time</b>. Link to event in our Linkedin event here:
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/events/essexbci-newebinarspresentsdrma7257830946165469185/">
https://www.linkedin.com/events/essexbci-newebinarspresentsdrma7257830946165469185/</a> (or email Dr Matran-Fernandez for access). The talk will be recorded and made available in the lab’s Youtube channel shortly after.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES">Best wishes,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES">Ana<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span lang="ES" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">------------------------</span><span lang="ES" style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES" style="font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:#EE3424;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">Dr Ana Matran-Fernandez</span><span lang="ES" style="font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">
</span><span lang="ES" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">PhD</span><span lang="ES" style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">Lecturer in Neural Engineering and Artificial Intelligence</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">Department of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CSEE)</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">University of Essex</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">Office: 5B.539</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:#EE3424;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">E
</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"><a href="mailto:amatra@essex.ac.uk" target="_blank"><span style="color:blue">amatra@essex.ac.uk</span></a>
</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"> </span><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><b><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">Email notices: </span></b><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">1) I sometimes write emails outside (your) working hours. Please don't take this as an indication
that I require an immediate response - we simply may be working at different times.</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">2) Because of the daily high load of emails, I may take some time to reply to you. If it's
important, I may take even more time, because I want to provide an adequate response. If it's urgent, I'll try to reply quickly and maybe just with a very short email. No disrespect, just trying to be efficient - I'd understand if you did the same.</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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