Mail : 3740 McClintock Ave. EEB 400
Los Angeles, CA 90089-2560

Office : RTH 318
Phone: (213) 821-4282

I am a PhD candidate in the Electrical Engineering (EE) department of the University of Southern California (USC). My advisor is prof. Shrikanth Narayanan. I am a member of the Speech Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory (SAIL) and of the Emotion subgroup since September 2007, and on December 2011 I passed my qualifying examination.

My research interests include multimodal signal processing, machine learning and affective computing. My thesis topic focuses on developing accurate computational models for emotion recognition and understanding. Such models take into account the context in which an emotion is expressed, and capture the evolution of an emotional expression throughout interactions, highlighting regions of emotional saliency. Multimodality is a fundamental aspect of emotional expression and my work studies a variety of emotion-modulated modalities such as facial expressions, vocal characteristics, as well as body language movements and gestures conveying interaction information between participants of an affective conversation

This type of research has given me the unique opportunity to get involved with exciting multi-disciplinary collaborations with experts from domains quite different from engineering, such as theater and psychology.

This website provides information about my research progress and publications. Please don't hesitate to contact me for comments or questions.