The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Director of the Centre for Perceptual and Interactive Intelligence
AI and Cognitive Health
Abstract
With the global population ageing rapidly, a key health concern lies in Neurocognitive Disorders (NCD), also known as dementia — a common form being Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). NCDs are particularly prominent in older adults, which has an insidious onset followed by gradual, irreversible deterioration in cognitive domains (memory, communication, etc.. Thus the screening NCD is crucial for timely intervention to slow down disease progression. We will present our work in the use of spoken language for assessing cognitive health, including a carefully designed speech data collection protocol that has contextual relevance to the linguistic environment in Hong Kong, Macao and the Greater Bay Area, the development of AI-enabled speech and language analytics approaches, and the use of different acoustic and linguistic features for the AD detection. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of automating cognitive health monitoring with the use of speech and language technologies, which offers the advantages of accessibility, non-invasiveness and affordability. This work is funded by the HKSAR Government’s Theme-based Research Scheme.
Biography
Professor Helen Meng is Patrick Huen Wing Ming Chair Professor of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She joined CUHK in 1998 and later became the first female head of the engineering department. She has also served as appointed Associate Dean of Research of CUHK’s Faculty of Engineering and oversaw research activities across the engineering departments. Helen has led various joint partnerships, including with Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) MIT, Tsinghua University and Dr. Stanley Ho Medical Development Foundation. The collaboration with MSRA led to the first CUHK engineering laboratory to achieve the national status of a Ministry of Education Key Laboratory. In 2019, her interdisciplinary team was awarded the first AI project under the HKSARG RGC Theme-based Research Scheme, which aims to develop AI technologies for screening dementia. In 2020, she led the establishment of CUHK’s InnoCentre on AI, named Centre for Perceptual and Interactive Intelligence, and serves as Director. In 2023, she began collaboration with HKUST and other local universities, and will also support the new InnoCentre, HKGAI (Generative AI) R&D Centre, as Deputy Director.
In terms of education, Helen led her department to launch Hong Kong’s first degree program in FinTech in 2017. In 2019, she began writing a pre-tertiary AI curriculum under the CUHK-Jockey Club AI4Future Project, with an emphasis on AI ethics. The project was recognized as Gold Award Winner in the Hong Kong ICT Awards 2021. Hong Kong’s Education Bureau announced in June 2023 that the curriculum (abridged version) will be taught in all local secondary schools starting 2024.
Helen was elected Fellow of IEEE, ISCA, HKCS and HKIE. She is serving / has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, IEEE Fellow Selection Committee and ISCA International Advisor Council. She is a mentor in CUHK’s Female Professorial Staff Support Network, and a member of the AI4SDGs AI for Children Working Group. Recent awards to her and research team include the 2021 Hong Kong SciTech Challenge Open Group Championship, 2022 DialDoc@ACL Challenge First Prize, 2022 Jessica’s Most Successful Women award, and 2023 INTERSPEECH Best Student Paper Award. Helen currently serves as an appointed member of the Financial Secretary’s Digital Economy Development Committee and Convenor of the Talent Cultivation Subgroup.