We welcome Dr. Ewen MacDonald, who comes to Systems Design Engineering as Associate Professor.
Ewen
received
his
Ph.D.
in
Biomedical
Engineering
in
2007
from
the
University
of
Toronto.
His
thesis
work
investigated
the consequences
of
the
loss
of
temporal
synchrony
on
speech
intelligibility
in
noise.
The
loss
of
synchrony
in
the
auditory
system reduces
temporal
information
that
is
available
to
a
listener's
brain
and
can
occur
as
a
result
of
aging
and/or
synaptopathy
(often referred
to
as
"hidden"
hearing
loss).
Following
his
Ph.D.,
Ewen
conducted
postdoctoral
research
at
Queen's
University
where
he
investigated
the
role
of
auditory
feedback in
the
control
of
speech
production.
When
we
talk,
we
subconciously
monitor
the
acoustics
of
the
speech
we
produce
to
maintain communication.
For
example,
at
a
noisy
party,
people
automatically
raise
the
level
of
their
voice.
However,
we
also
monitor
other acoustic
properties
of
our
speech.
Using
a
time-varying
filter,
it
is
possible
change
the
vowels
in
the
words
that
people
say
in
real-time.
In
one
line
of
experiments,
Ewen
investigated
how
we
monitor
vowel
production.
For
example,
when
talkers
said
the
word "head"
into
a
microphone,
they
simultaneously
heard
themselves
saying
a
different
word,
like
"had",
over
headphones.
When
they received
this
altered
feedback,
most
talkers
altered
their
vowel
production,
saying
a
word
that
sounded
more
like
"hid"
rather
than "head".
In
2011,
Ewen
moved
to
Copenhagen
to
take
a
faculty
position
at
the
Technical
University
of
Denmark.
There
he
continued
his research
into
the
perceptual
consequences
of
hearing
loss
and
how
they
can
be
addressed
by
hearing
assistive
devices.
A
recent focus
of
his
research
has
been
on
the
timing
of
turn
taking
in
interactive
conversation
and
how
this
can
be
used
to
evaluate
hearing-aid
signal
processing.