Celine De Looze

Biographical Information

Céline De Looze is a speech scientist, expert in speech prosody and interpersonal communication in social interaction. Her scientific approach combines knowledge from clinical linguistics, phonetics and neuropsychology with methods and technologies from social signal processing and human factors engineering. Her interest for communication difficulties and how speech can offer new quantitative methods for the assessment of cognitive deficits led her to pursue her research in different areas of applications. Her work mainly aims to provide objective evaluation of interpersonal communication strategies and their impact on performance and psychosocial outcomes in health care and high-stress environments.

Céline De Looze received her BA degree in English Linguistics, Literature & Civilisation in 2003 and her MA in Speech and Language Sciences (specialty English Phonetics) in 2005 from Aix-Marseille University, France. She completed her PhD in January 2010 at the Laboratoire Parole et Langage (LPL), Aix-Marseille University, on the Analysis of the Temporal Span of Prosodic Variations in English and French. She then worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the ANR-funded DesphoApady project at the LPL, where she carried out prosodic analyses on Parkinson’s speech. From 2005-2010, she also lectured on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the English Department and the Department of General Linguistics and Phonetics, at Aix-Marseille University.

In October 2010, she joined the Phonetics and Speech Laboratory, at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where she worked for four years as a postdoctoral researcher within the SFI-funded FASTNET project, investigating interpersonal adaptation processes in conversational interaction. She also lectured on postgraduate courses in the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences in TCD. From March to August 2015, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher for the RAPP (Representation and Planning of Prosody) project, at the LPL, where she investigated prosodic planning in Multiple Sclerosis.

In August 2015, she received a CARDI fellowship (Call 3 of the Leadership Programme on Ageing Research; duration 3 years; TCD/ St James’s Hospital) for which she is investigating the effect of cognitive impairment on speech in the contexts of ageing, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and interpersonal communication between older persons with MCI or AD and their caregivers. The aim of the project is to provide objective evaluation of cognitive impairment, interpersonal communication and related psychosocial impact. The outcomes of her project will provide new quantitative speech-based technologies for the early diagnosis and monitoring of cognitive impairment as well as informative guidelines of evidence-based communication practices that can promote patients’ and caregivers’ well-being.

In parallel of her research project, Céline is collaborating on a number of different research projects – investigating prosodic planning in Multiple Sclerosis (collaboration with the Laboratoire Parole et Langage; collaboration with St Vincent’s University Hospital); investigating remote monitoring of inhaler technique and respiratory health via inhaler sound analysis (collaboration with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland). She is also involved in research commercialisation. In 2012, she received a grant from Entreprise Ireland Commercialisation Fund Program and directed as a co-PI the TAPOIA project to develop a technology for the assessment of airline pilots’ communication efficiency. In 2014, she became a research adviser for CrewFactors, a spin-out company that she co-founded, which provides cloud based technology that processes speech signals and generates performance metrics relating to team communication skills. CrewFactors app for communication skills training is now available for iOS devices.

Research Interests

• Communication difficulties in neurological disorders and high-stress environments
• Speech-based technologies for the detection, monitoring and social evaluation of mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis & Ageing
• Speech-based technologies for the assessment of interpersonal team skills in aviation and medical domain
• Technologies for remote monitoring of inhaler technique and respiratory health using acoustic analysis
• Analysis of co-construction mechanisms and their communicative functions
• Discourse, dialogue and interaction
• Prosodic structure and modeling
• Human speech and social signals
• Vocal behaviours and inter-species universals

Grants, awards & patents

• 2015 – CARDI (Center for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland) fellowship (€220K) [N°LP3-02]
• 2015 – Shortlisted for the Aviation Industry Awards
• 2014 – Shortlisted for the Aviation Industry Awards
• 2013 – Shortlisted for the ISA (Irish Software Association) Software Industry Awards
• 2013 – Patent pending (Method and system for measuring communication skills of crew members)
• 2012 – Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Fund Program “TAPOIA project” (€125K) [N°214.F02032]
• 2012 – AFCP (Association Française de la Communication Parlée) grant: support for travel expenses
• 2011 – Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Fund Program: Commercial Case Feasibility Support (€11K) [N°CF20111738Y]
• 2011 – AFCP grant : support for travel expenses
• 2010 – FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo) grant: support for travel expenses
• 2009 – ISCA (International Speech Communication Association) grant : support for travel and conference fees
• 2005-2008 – Ministry of Education Grant (PhD) : awarded on the basis of scientific excellence (€72K)
• 2004-2005 – National University Grant (Master’s) : awarded on the basis of scientific excellence (€6000)

Publications in International Reviewed Journals

De Looze, C., Scherer, S., Vaughan B. (2014) Investigating automatic measurements of prosodic accommodation and its dynamics in social interaction. Speech Communication, Vol 28, 11-34.

Ghio, A., Pouchoulin, G., Teston, B., Pinto, S., Fredouille, C., De Looze, C., Robert, D., Viallet, F., Giovanni, A. (2011) How to manage sound, physiological and clinical data of 2500 dysphonic and dysarthric speakers? Speech Communication, 54(5): 664-679.

Proceedings papers for international conferences

De Looze, C., Vaughan, B., Kelly, F., Kay, A. (2015) “Providing Objective Metrics of Team Communication Skills via Interpersonal Coordination Mechanisms.” Interspeech 2015, Dresden, Germany, 7-10 September.

De Looze, C., Yanushevskaya, I., Murphy, A., O’Connor, E., and Gobl, C. (2015) Pitch declination and reset as a function of utterance duration in conversational speech data, Interspeech 2015, Dresden, Germany, 7-10 September, 3071 – 3075.

De Looze, C., Yanushevskaya, I., Kane, J., Ní Chasaide, A. (2014) Pitch range declination and reset in turn-taking organisation, Speech Prosody 7, Dublin, Ireland, May 20-23, 2014, 1100 – 1104.

Yanushevskaya, I., Kane, J., De Looze, C., Ní Chasaide, A. (2014) The distribution of pitch patterns and communicative types in speech chunks preceding pauses and gaps, Speech Prosody 7, Dublin, Ireland, 959 – 963.

Kane, J., Yanushevskaya, I., De Looze, C. and Ní Chasaide, A. (2014) Analysing the prosodic characteristics of speech-chunks preceding silences in task-based interactions. Proceedings of Interspeech, Singapore, 2014.

Bonin F., De Looze C., Ghosh S., Gilmartin E., Vogel C., Polychroniou A., Salamin H., Vinciarelli A., Campbell N. (2013) Investigating fine temporal dynamics of prosodic and lexical accommodation, Proceedings of Interspeech 2013, Lyon, France.

De Looze, C., Zhi, N., Auran, C. Cho, HS, Herment, S., Nesterenko, I. (2012) Providing linguists with better tools : Daniel Hirst’s contribution to prosodic annotation. Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2012, Shanghai, China.

De Looze, C., Ghio, A., Scherer, S., Pouchoulin, G. & Viallet, F. (2012) Automatic analysis of prosodic variations in Parkinsonian speech. Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2012, Shanghai, China.

Han, F., Gilmartin, E., De Looze, C., Vaughan, B., & Nick Campbell (2012) Speech & Multimodal Resources – The Herme Database of Spontaneous Multimodal Human-Robot Dialogues. Proceedings of LREC-2012, Istanbul, Turkey.

Han, F., Dalton, J., Vaughan, B., Oertel, C., Dougherty, C., De Looze, C. & Nick Campbell (2011) Collecting multi-modal data of human-robot interaction. Proceedings of CogInfoCom 2012, Kosice, Slovakia. 4 pages.

De Looze, C. & Rauzy, S. (2011) Measuring speakers’ similarity in speech by means of prosodic cues: methods and potential, Proceedings of Interspeech 2011, Florence, Italy.

De Looze, C., Oertel, C., Rauzy, S. & Campbell, N. (2011) Measuring dynamics of mimicry by means of prosodic cues in conversational speech, Proceedings of ICPhS 2011, Hong-Kong.

Oertel, C., De Looze, C., Wagner, P. & Campbell, N. (2011) Identification of cues of the automatic identification of hotspots in natural conversation. Proceedings of the SSPnet-COST 2102 PINK International Conference. Springer.

Crevier-Buchman, L., Fougeron, C., Fredouille, C., Ghio, A., Meunier, C., De Looze, C., Duez, D, Gendrot, C., Legou, T., Levèque, N., Audibert, N., Colazo Simon, A., Pillot, C., Pinto, S., Pouchoulin, G., Robert, D., Viallet, F., Vincent, C., (2010) A new approach for an acoustic-phonetic description of dysarthria, Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium Basal Ganglia Speech Disorders & Deep Brain Stimulation, 2010, June 29th – July 1st, Aix-en-Provence, France.

De Looze, C. (2010) ADoReVA and ADoTeVA, Two PRAAT Plugins for the Automatic Detection of Register and Tempo Variations, São Paulo School of Advanced Studies in Speech Dynamics, 2010, June 7-11, São Paolo, Brazil.

Fougeron, C., Crevier-Buchman, L., Fredouille, C. Ghio, A., Meunier, C. Chevrie-Muller, C., Audibert, N., Bonastre, J-F., Colazo Simon, A., De Looze, C., Duez, D., Gendrot, C., legou, T., Levèque, N. Pillot-sLoiseau, C., Pinto, S., Pouchoulin, G. Robert, D., Vaissière, J., Viallet, F., Vincent, C. (2010). The DesPho-APaDy Project: Developing an acoustic-phonetic characterization of dysarthric speech in French, Proceedings of the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), Valleta, Malta.

De Looze, C. & Hirst, DJ. (2010). Integrating changes of register into automatic intonation analysis, Proceedings of the Speech Prosody 2010 Conference, Chicago, United States.

De Looze, C. & Rauzy, S. (2009). Automatic Detection and Prediction of Topic Changes Through Automatic Detection of Register variations and Pause Duration, Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, InterSpeech09, Brighton, England.

Vainio, M., Hirst, DJ., Suni, A. & De Looze, C. (2009). Using functional prosodic annotation for high quality multilingual, multidialectal and multistyle speech synthesis , Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Speech and Computer, St. Petersburg, Russia (SPECOM’2009), 164-169.

De Looze, C. & Hirst, DJ. (2008). Detecting Key and Range for the Automatic Modelling and Coding of Intonation, Proceedings of the Speech Prosody 2008 Conference, Campinas, Brazil, 135-138.

Proceedings papers in national conferences

De Looze, C., Scherer, S., Vaughan, B. & Campbell, N. (2012) Vers une mesure automatique de l’adaptation prosodique en interaction conversationnelle. Proceedings of 29ème Journées d’Etude sur la Parole (JEP 2010), Grenoble, France.

Lalain, M., Mendonça-Alves, L., Espesser, R., Ghio, A., De Looze, C. & Reis, C. (2012) Lecture et prosodie chez l’enfant dyslexique, le cas des pauses. Proceedings of 29ème Journées d’Etude sur la Parole (JEP 2010), Grenoble, France.

De Looze, C. & Hirst, DJ. (2010). L’échelle OME (Octave-MEdiane) : une échelle naturelle pour la mélodie de la parole. Proceedings of the XXVIIIème Journées d’Etude sur la Parole (JEP 2010), Mons, Belgium.

Proceedings papers in international workshops

Oertel, C., De Looze, C., Vaughan, B., Gilmartin, E., Wagner, P., Campbell, N. (2011) Using hotspots as a novel method for accessing key events in a large multi- modal corpus. Workshop on New Tools and Methods for Very-Large-Scale Phonetics Research. University of Pennsylvania, 28-31 Jan.

Critical reviews

De Looze, C. (2009). Critical Review of the book Incursões Em Torno Do Ritmo Da Fala de Plinio A. Barbosa, In Cognito (Cahiers Romans des Sciences Cognitives). 123-140

Communications

Invited Speaker in International Conferences

De Looze, C (2013) Prosodic coordination mechanisms in social interaction. Conference Discourse and Prosody Interface IDP. September 2013.

De Looze, C. Zhi, N., Auran, C. Cho, HS, Herment, S., Nesterenko, I. (2012) Providing linguists with better tools : Daniel Hirst’s contribution to prosodic annotation. Speech Prosody 2012, Shanghai, China.

Invited Speaker in International Workshops

De Looze, C. 2013. Coordination mechanisms in social interaction. WISP, Neuchatel University. March 2013.

Invited Speaker in Research Laboratories

De Looze, C. (2016). Prosodic planning in patients with cognitive impairment in Multiple Sclerosis. Neurology Journal Club. St Vincent’s University Hospital. Dublin. January 2016.

De Looze, C. (2012). Dialogue co-construction mechanisms in social interaction. Institut fur Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung, Stuttgart University. November 2012.

Invited Speaker in Research Commercialisation Events

De Looze, C., Vaughan, B., Gosh, S. (2013) TAPOIA project, Prosodic Accommodation in Aviation. TTO showcase. September 2013, TCD, Ireland.

De Looze, C., Vaughan, B., Gosh, S. (2012) Prosodic Accommodation in Aviation. TTO showcase. October 2012, TCD, Ireland.

Invited Speaker for Master and PhD students’ career development event

De Looze, C. (2015) Transitions and opportunities within and beyond academia. Academic and Alternative Employment for PhD Students of School of Linguistic, Speech & Communication Studies. Trinity College Dublin. 3rd June 2015.

Oral Presentations in International Conferences

De Looze, C., Vaughan, B., Kelly, F., Kay, A. (2015) “Providing Objective Metrics of Team Communication Skills via Interpersonal Coordination Mechanisms.” Interspeech 2015, Dresden, Germany, 7-10 September.

De Looze, C., Yanushevskaya, I., Murphy, A., O’Connor, E., and Gobl, C. (2015) Pitch declination and reset as a function of utterance duration in conversational speech data, Interspeech 2015, Dresden, Germany, 7-10 September, 3071 – 3075.

De Looze, C., Yanushevskaya, I., Kane, J., Ní Chasaide, A. (2014) Pitch range declination and reset in turn-taking organisation, Speech Prosody 7, Dublin, Ireland, May 20-23, 2014, 1100 – 1104.

Bonin F., De Looze C., Ghosh S., Gilmartin E., Vogel C., Polychroniou A., Salamin H., Vinciarelli A., Campbell N. (2013). Investigating fine temporal dynamics of prosodic and lexical accommodation, Interspeech 2013, Lyon, France. 4 pages.

De Looze, C., Oertel, C., Rauzy, S. & Campbell, N. (2011) Measuring dynamics of mimicry by means of prosodic cues in conversational speech, ICPhS 2011, Hong-Kong. 4 pages.

De Looze, C. (2009) Automatic Detection Of Register Changes For The Analysis Of Discourse Structure, the 4th Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia Conference (PaPI09) Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, June 2009.

Poster Presentations in International Conferences


De Looze, C., Lawlor, B., Reilly, R. (2015) Objective evaluation of cognitive impairment and psychosocial outcomes in dementia via interpersonal communication analysis. Beeson Annual Meeting 2015. New York. USA.

De Looze, C., Lawlor, B., Reilly, R. (2015) Cognitive impairment and psychosocial outcomes in dementia: an interpersonal communication analysis. CARDI International Training Programme on Ageing. Sept 2015. Dublin. Ireland.

De Looze, C., Benittah, K., Trambert, A. Ghio, A., Moreau, N., Renié, L., Petrone, C. (2015) Effects of cognitive disorders in dialogic conversations. Joint Action Meetings. 1-4 July 2015. Budapest. Hungary.

De Looze, C., Yanushevskaya, I, & Ni Chasaide, A. (2014) Prosody and dysprosody in spoken interaction, ICPLA ’14, Solna, Sweden.

Yanushevskaya, I, De Looze, C. & Ni Chasaide, A. (2014) The role of voice in prosody and its relevance to understanding dysprosody, ICPLA ’14, Solna, Sweden.

De Looze, C., Ghio, A., Scherer, S., Pouchoulin, G. & Viallet, F. (2012) Prosodic variations in Parkinson’s disease : tools and measurements. MDS International Congress of Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders, Dublin, Ireland.

De Looze, C., Ghio, A., Scherer, S., Pouchoulin, G. & Viallet, F. (2012) Automatic analysis of prosodic variations in Parkinsonian speech. Speech Prosody 2012, Shanghai, China.

De Looze, C. & Rauzy, S. (2011) Measuring speakers’ similarity in speech by means of prosodic cues: methods and potential, Interspeech 2011, Florence, Italy; 4 pages.

De Looze, C. & Hirst, DJ. (2010). Integrating changes of register into automatic intonation analysis, Speech Prosody 2010 Conference, Chicago, United States, 4 pages.

De Looze, C. & Rauzy, S. (2009). Automatic Detection and Prediction of Topic Changes Through Automatic Detection of Register variations and Pause Duration, 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, InterSpeech09, Brighton, England, 4 pages.

De Looze, C. & Hirst, DJ. (2008). Detecting Key and Range for the Automatic Modelling and Coding of Intonation, Proceedings of the Speech Prosody 2008 Conference, Campinas, Brazil, 135-138.

Poster Presentations in National Conferences

De Looze, C., Scherer, S., Vaughan, B. & Campbell, N. (2012) Vers une mesure automatique de l’adaptation prosodique en interaction conversationnelle. 29ème Journées d’Etude sur la Parole (JEP 2010), Grenoble, France.

De Looze, C. & Ghio, A. (2011) La dysprosodie dans les pathologies neurologiques: état des lieux et perspectives, JPC4, Strasbourg, France.

De Looze, C. & Hirst, DJ. (2010). L’échelle OME (Octave-MEdiane) : une échelle naturelle pour la mélodie de la parole. XXVIIIème Journées d’Etude sur la Parole (JEP 2010), Mons, Belgium, 4 pages.

Poster Presentations in Summer Schools/ Workshops

Gilmartin, E., De Looze, C. & Campbell, N. (2012) Priming, Timing, and the Phatic Component in Machine-Mediated Dialogue. LISTA Workshop, Edinburg, Scotland.

De Looze, C., Scherer, S., Vaughan, B. & Campbell, N. (2012) Investigating automatic measurements of prosodic accommodation and its dynamics in social interaction. Workshop on Innovation and Applications in Speech Technology, Dublin, Ireland.

De Looze, C. Oertel, C. & Campbell N. (2011) Measuring the temporal variations of mimicry in spontaneous speech by means of multi-modal cues, International Workshop on Voice and Speech Processing in Social Interactions, Glasgow, Scotland.

De Looze, C. & Vaughan, B. (2011) Measuring variations of mimicry by means of prosodic cues in task-based scenarios and conversational speech. International Symposium on Focus on Actions in Social Talk. Dublin, Ireland, 14-15th of March, 2011.

De Looze, C. (2010) ADoReVA and ADoTeVA, Two PRAAT Plugins for the Automatic Detection of Register and Tempo Variations, São Paulo School of Advanced Studies in Speech Dynamics, 2010, June 7-11, São Paolo, Brazil, 2 pages.

Oral Presentations within Research Projects

De Looze, C. (2010) Analyse et Interprétation de l’Empan Temporel des Variations Prosodiques en Français et en Anglais (within the ANR DesPho APaDy project).

Scientific Communication for the General Public

De Looze, C. (2008) The Sounds of Speech: analysis and tools (Oral presentation for the secondary education teaching-researchers meeting day)