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[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Abstract In terms of education, Helen led her department to launch Hong Kong\u2019s first degree program in FinTech in 2017.\u00a0 In 2019, she began writing a pre-tertiary AI curriculum under the CUHK-Jockey Club AI4Future Project, with an emphasis on AI ethics.\u00a0 The project was recognized as Gold Award Winner in the Hong Kong ICT Awards 2021.\u00a0 Hong Kong\u2019s Education Bureau announced in June 2023 that the curriculum (abridged version) will be taught in all local secondary schools starting 2024.<\/p>\n Helen was elected Fellow of IEEE, ISCA, HKCS and HKIE.\u00a0 \u00a0She 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.\u00a0 She is a mentor in CUHK\u2019s Female Professorial Staff Support Network, and a member of the AI4SDGs AI for Children Working Group.\u00a0 Recent awards to her and research team include the\u00a02021 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.\u00a0 Helen currently serves as an appointed member of the Financial Secretary\u2019s Digital Economy Development Committee and Convenor of the Talent Cultivation Subgroup.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>With the global population ageing rapidly, a key health concern lies in Neurocognitive Disorders (NCD), also known as dementia — a common form being Alzheimer\u2019s 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\u2019s Theme-based Research Scheme.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Biography
\n<\/strong><\/span>Professor Helen Meng is Patrick Huen Wing Ming Chair Professor of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.\u00a0 She joined CUHK in 1998 and later became the first female head of the engineering department.\u00a0 She has also served as appointed Associate Dean of Research of CUHK\u2019s Faculty of Engineering and oversaw research activities across the engineering departments.\u00a0 \u00a0Helen has led various joint partnerships, including with Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) MIT, Tsinghua University and Dr. Stanley Ho Medical Development Foundation.\u00a0 The collaboration with MSRA led to the first CUHK engineering laboratory to achieve the national status of a Ministry of Education Key Laboratory.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In 2020, she led the establishment of CUHK\u2019s InnoCentre on AI, named Centre for Perceptual and Interactive Intelligence, and serves as Director.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n