This is the goal of Hadil Mehrez, a master's student at the Shippagan campus of the Université de Moncton. His efforts recently earned him an Award of Excellence at a conference on artificial intelligence in Japan.
“I have always loved helping people,” says the graduate of Tunisia’s National Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology.
She therefore decided on a project in which she would combine her humanistic side with her passion for artificial intelligence.
That's why Ms. Mehrez and her team at the Human-System Interaction Research Laboratory (LARIHS) have been developing a tool since the summer that will enable people with language disorders to be understood.
“We were particularly interested in dysarthria, a disorder of motor origin caused by damage to the nervous system and affecting the muscular control of the speech mechanism,” she explains.
By leveraging advances in artificial intelligence and thanks to a transplanted chip, patients could potentially see an improvement in their voice quality.
“We don’t yet know exactly where this sound transplant will be placed, but it will contain the system that transforms the dysarthric voice so that it becomes clearer and more understandable,” explains the student.
Final testing leaves Hadil Mehrez optimistic about the system she and her colleagues are developing.
“This innovative approach offers exciting prospects for improving communication for people affected by these disorders by combining the powerful capabilities of artificial intelligence neural networks with the complex challenges of human communication.”
Excellence Award at ICAIIC 2024
Ms. Mehrez submitted an article about her research to the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Information and Communication 2024 (or ICAIIC 2024), held February 19-22 in Osaka, Japan.
The article was selected for publication and received an Award of Excellence.
“That's good news. I’m very happy!” says the woman who works from the Shippagan campus.
“It was a source of pride for me, my supervisor Sid Ahmed Selouani and Mounira Chaiani, the PhD student who worked with me, to learn of this evaluation of my article and my project by great researchers and PhD students who are familiar with this Domain.”
Reflecting on her place at the University of Moncton and in New Brunswick, Hadil Mehrez says she has been supported and warmly welcomed in her lab and wants to stay in the province.
“We are almost a family,” is how she sums it up when she talks about her team. Everyone is nice and wants to help. I was able to integrate without any problems.”
In addition to the Université de Moncton, she would also like to highlight the contribution of her team, whom she thanks.
“This is a great opportunity for me and it's just the beginning. I want to do my best, make them even more proud of me, do more projects, submit more articles and win more prizes. I am very motivated and very proud of this result!”