Professor Heidi Christensen

PhD

School of Computer Science

Head of School

Professor of Spoken Language Technology

Member of the Speech and Hearing (SpandH) research group

Heidi Christensen headshot
Profile picture of Heidi Christensen headshot
heidi.christensen@sheffield.ac.uk

Full contact details

Professor Heidi Christensen
School of Computer Science
Regent Court (CS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP
Profile

I am a Professor and the Head of the School of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield. My research is situated at the intersection of speech technology, AI, and healthcare, where I focus on developing machine learning systems that use spontaneous speech and language biomarkers to detect early signs of clinical conditions.

A major focus of my work is CognoSpeak™, an automated, remote assessment tool for cognitive impairment. We are currently expanding these technologies to support stroke recovery and Motor Neurone Disease (MND).

Beyond my research, I am a dedicated advocate for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), having previously served as the Faculty Director of EDI and led the University to a successful Athena SWAN Silver institutional renewal. I currently have over 3,800 citations and an h-index of 36, reflecting my commitment to bridging AI innovation with impactful, real-world healthcare solutions.
 

Research interests

Her research interests are in the use of speech and language processing in the healthcare domain. She has considerable experience in the areas of recognition of disordered speech, automatic processing of conversations and the automatic detection and tracking of paralinguistic information such as emotions and general interactional behaviours. Her research has been supported by EU, UKRI, NIHR, Google and various charities like Rosetrees Trust and the Psychiatry Research Trust. She has considerable experience in leading highly interdisciplinary research projects including being the technical lead in the development of the CognoSpeak system for using AI to detect early signs of dementia.

Publications

Journal articles

Book chapters

Conference proceedings

Reports

  • Christensen H & Barker J (2008) Inferring perceiver actions from binaural data RIS download Bibtex download
  • Khalidov V, Lu Y-C, Holveck B, Taillant E, Arnaud E, Barker J, Christensen H & Mathieu H (2007) Synchronized stereoscopic and binaural dataset with head movements : Recording details RIS download Bibtex download

Theses

  • Christensen H (2002) Speech Recognition using Heterogenous Information Extraction in Multi-Stream Based Systems. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Christensen H (1996) Speaker Adaptation of Hidden Markov Models using Maximum Likelihood Linear Regression. RIS download Bibtex download

Working papers

  • Pan Y, Mirheidari B, Reuber M, Venneri A, Blackburn D & Christensen H (2019) Automatic Hierarchical Attention Neural Network for Detecting AD. RIS download Bibtex download

Datasets

Other

  • Christensen H & Barker J (2009) Simultaneous Tracking of Perceiver Movements and Speaker Changes Using Head-Centered, Binaural Data. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Christensen H, Barker J, Lu Y-C, Xavier J, Caseiro R & Araújo H (2009) POPeye: Real-time, binaural sound source localisation on an audio-visual robot-head. RIS download Bibtex download

Preprints

Grants
  • CognoStroke - automated assessment of cognition and mood in stroke survivors, Rosetrees Trust, 03/2025 - 02/2028, £66,462, as Co-I
  • UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Speech and Language Technologies and their Applications, EPSRC, 04/2019 - 09/2027, £5,508,850, as Co-I
  • Deep learning of articulatory-based representations of dysarthric speech, Google, 02/2016 - 12/2026, £46,624, as PI
  • Design and development of CognoMND, LifeArc, 01/07/2024 - 30/06/2027, £209,000 as Co-I
  • The automated coding of expressed emotion to enhance clinical and epidemiological mental health research in adolescence, MRC, 11/2022 - 12/2024, £379,598, as Co-I
  • CcHAT Project Management Resource Uplift, Department of Health and Social Care, 02/2022 - 07/2025, £436,161, as Co-I
  • Interdisciplinary project on COMPutational Assessment of Stroke Survivors (COMPASS), Rosetrees Trust, 02/2020 - 08/2024, £124,864, as PI
  • CognoSpeak-eQMS, EPSRC, 01/01/2023 - 31/12/2023, £22,904, as PI
  • Participatory co-design of a platform for collecting atypical speech data, Research England, 03/2022 - 07/2022, £19,692, as Co-I
  • CognoSpeak UX, Research England, 06/2021 - 02/2022, £27,694, as PI
  • COMPASS: COMPutational Assessment of Stroke Survivors, Research England, 11/2019 - 06/2020, £48,886, as PI
  • COCOA: COmputerised COgnitive Assessment, MRC, 10/2018 to 09/2019, £49,513, as PI
  • TAPASTraining Network on Automatic Processing of PAthological Speech, EU H2020, 11/2017 - 09/2022, £468,000, as PI
  • CloudVent: Cloud-based speech recognition for people with paralysis using ventilators, RCUK, 10/2015 - 04/2016, £360,000, as Co-I
Professional activities and memberships
  • Member of the Speech and Hearing research group
  • Member of the ISCA Diversity Committee
  • Co-organiser of ASRU 2021
  • Co-organiser of Interspeech 2023