That's right, you did hear that. Welcome to my Senior Research Project
blog.
My name is Luke Forsman; I am a senior at BASIS Scottsdale. My
project will be starting in about a week and I am very excited to share my
research and interests with you.
Outside of school, I am involved in both the arts and sports. I am
on the track team, running the 800m and 4x800 and doing long and triple jump. I
also played soccer on the school team. My interests that relate to this
project, however, stem from the arts. I love both looking at and creating the
fine arts, especially sculpture. Branching off that is my interest in music,
particularly alternative, indie, and electronic music.
In school, my interests lie in physics and mathematics. Along with
those, I have been growing my knowledge of computer science and electrical
engineering. For college I will be attending Cornell University majoring in
physics and I hope to be involved in my other interests as well. But I guess I'll have to get used to the snow first.
My research project will be at ASUs department of speech and
hearing working with Dr. Visar Berisha in his lab, where he is researching a
link between speech patterns and diseases. My role in the lab is still
undecided, but I am still eager to be a part of this research. Outside of the
lab I will be auditing Dr. Berisha’s class on signal processing to further
understand his research. This research excites me because of how
interdisciplinary it is. Using sound patterns and frequencies to detect
diseases plays into my interests in physics, music, and computer science, while
also broadening my views to a medical field.
Thank you for tuning in to this first blog post and hopefully you will continue to follow my research with this blog. On the right you will find links to my official proposal, the Department of Speech and Hearing at ASU, and more information on the senior projects. You will also find other great blogs in my blog squad.
I'll keep you guy posted as I begin research and discover what I'm going to be doing in the lab. Until then,
Thank you for tuning in to this first blog post and hopefully you will continue to follow my research with this blog. On the right you will find links to my official proposal, the Department of Speech and Hearing at ASU, and more information on the senior projects. You will also find other great blogs in my blog squad.
I'll keep you guy posted as I begin research and discover what I'm going to be doing in the lab. Until then,
Wow! Luke, this is so interesting! What kind of diseases do you think might be linked to a change in speech patterns? Do you have any diseases you will be looking for, in particular?
ReplyDeleteThe two diseases Dr. Berisha mentioned to me and in some of his prior research are Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. He actually did a study on Ronald Reagan's speeches to look for early signs of Alzheimer's. It was published in New York Times; I'll put a link to the article here.
Deletewww.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/health/parsing-ronald-reagans-words-for-early-signs-of-alzheimers.html?_r=0
Dang, this is a pretty cool project, Luke! Is there any sort of special equipment that you are excited to use in his lab? Also, is there any tangible product of your research or is it just the end of the year presentation? By the way, love the intro!! I am looking forward to reading more about your topic!
ReplyDeleteHey Adam, thanks for commenting. Right now I don't know too much about the lab, I'll talk more about it in next week's post, but for now I am excited to potentially be using MATLAB for the majority of my work and I hear that the lab is undergoing remodeling (so that's exciting).
DeleteAs for a tangible product, hopefully I will have some sort of program for signal processing that I can show off, but because this is an ongoing research, I am not too sure about a final product.
Hi Luke! I am excited to follow your blog each week as your Senior Project Liaison. I too am a huge fan of alternative/indie music. Any current favorites you would recommend?
ReplyDeleteThis research sounds fascinating. Will you be looking at speech patterns that might help detect diseases, or speech patterns that are associated with certain diseases? I look forward to following your project as you start your time in the lab.
Hello Ms. Conner, I didn't know you were a fan of alternative/indie music. One of my all-time favorite bands has to be The Strokes, but a couple other smaller bands I really enjoy are Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Yabadum.
DeleteI believe the research is at the stage of finding speech patterns in the speech of patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. But I think that once clear patterns are detected the research would change to help detect diseases.
Hi Luke! Your research project sounds so cool! How is physics and music be involved in using sound patterns and frequencies to detect diseases? Will you be looking at data from clinical trials?
ReplyDeleteHi Nichole, the technique I will be using the most and the topic of the class I'm auditing, is signal processing, which is looking at sound waves and processing the data which that wave contains(the patterns and frequencies). It relates to physics with waves and characteristics of waves, and music because it can also be analyzed with signal processing. It is actually used for the radio to differentiate between each channel.
DeleteI am actually not sure about the data that I'll be looking at, but I think it will be from clinical trials. Hopefully I'll have a better answer for you next week.
Hey Luke, your project seems very interesting! It's incredible how many different fields are involved in this project, and almost all of them are ones that you mentioned you want to study while at Cornell (by the way, goodluck with the cold and congrats!). What do you anticipate you will get to study or do while you're at the lab?
ReplyDeletePS - I really loved that dog gif.
Thanks Urmi! I plan on getting a lot of warm clothes. I think the majority of my work in the lab will be with MATLAB(or maybe Python) trying to write a program to process speech samples.
DeleteHi Luke, I love your project as it approaches the wide-spread problem of disease with an interesting method. How often will you be attending the classes at ASU? Will you be conducting research outside the class as well?
ReplyDeleteHey Liam, the class is two days a week, and out side of that I will be working in a lab, but I still do not know how often that will be.
DeleteHi Luke! This is a really cool project. When you say "patterns" in the way we speak, are you looking more into the phonetics or the physics behind our speech? Also, which diseases are you planning on researching?
ReplyDeleteHi Reyna, thanks for commenting. "Patterns" can mean many different things for this project. I am not completely sure on what I will be looking at, but I do know some possibilities. The patterns could be seen in just the diction of the speech(if one word is used often or not), or it could be how the words are said(as in the emphasis on syllables, the tone, or the speed of the speech).
DeleteI believe the two diseases this research is applied to are Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
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ReplyDeleteHello Luke, I'm Evan. I am in your track team and I listened to you and your group's Capstone Physics presentation. I found this senior project extremely fascinating! As my greatest interests are in both physics and CS, I am glad I was able to follow your SR project where you put these subjects into practical use, even for a subject that I would not think would relate to Physics and CS. (Sorry it's super lengthy ;-;)
ReplyDeleteJust two questions...
Any ideas on how you can/would incorporate your music hobbies into this SR project?
Any good edm you could recommend?
PS: I would eat Jake.(not that I'm chinese or anything) :^)
Hey Evan, I'm glad to hear that your greatest interests are in physics and CS. As far as incorporating music hobbies and even your other interests into the project goes, I found that starting by looking for research in physics (or whatever subject) then narrowing down to companies or researchers near by dealing with sound worked best.
DeleteFor edm, I actually don't listen to a lot of dance music, but I can give you a recommendation on electronic music. Check out Ratatat.
Hi Luke. I truly think your project idea is engaging and possibly revolutionary, especially if it is effective with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. I am excited to find out how you will incorporate your physics and computer science skills in your project.
ReplyDeleteHey Oscar, I also think that this work could be revolutionary. The professor and the students working with him have already done some impressive work and I am excited to possibly make a contribution. I also found that a lot of my work on MATLAB earlier this year will be very useful; look for some more detail on the week one post.
DeleteHello Luke. From the start I am already incredibly fascinated by the concept being explored in your project. The bounds could be limitless! I personally do not know much at all about computer science, so I would like to know the extent to which it could amplify the research's success. Good Luck!
ReplyDelete~Marco Bergsagel
Thanks Marco. By knowing a little bit about computer science it allows me to jump into the project a lot quicker. This just means that, instead of spending time to learn how to use the computer science tools, I can focus more on the theory and math of the project.
DeleteHello Luke. You have a very interesting project. I like how it connects many fields, including physics, math, and CS, which I am also interested in. I wish you the best of luck and look forward to your future posts!
ReplyDeleteThanks Jeffery. This project actually has a lot of stress on the math and CS fields, because a lot of the analysis is done using statistics and probability theory by writing programs and algorithms. The physics side is mostly signal processing and looking at the characteristics of sound waves.
DeleteHi Luke, it's Adi Mantravadi! I love your idea of using speech patterns and how you integrated your love for science into your research. I really do hope you exceed expectations and I wish you good luck for your future posts and work.
ReplyDeleteThanks Adi, I am really excited to be able to see how science is done in the research field. I'll be sure to keep you updated throughout the project.
DeleteHi Luke, it's Suhas! I'm interested in how disease can be detected from sounds - seems like something revolutionary. I look forward to reading your posts.
ReplyDeleteHey Suhas, I actually learned a little bit more about the process and the extent to which the diseases can be detected from sound this first week. I'll talk about it on the week one post, so look out for that.
DeleteHi Luke! It sounds really exciting to be able to work with Dr. Berisha and his students! You mentioned being initially engaged by this topic via your interest in fine arts - I think that's a super cool way to find what your passionate about!
ReplyDeleteThanks Taylor, I have actually already seem some links between looking at speech samples and a personal side project where I am trying to make a song. I don't see too much coming from this connection, but it is really awesome to see how everything is related.
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