🙋 About me

I am an incoming Ph.D. student who will pursue a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in Electrical Engineering at The Johns Hopkins University (JHU). I work at Center for Language and Speech Processing (CLSP) under the supervision of Prof. Najim Dehak, Laureano Moro-Velázquez and Jesús Villalba.

I graduated with Master of Science in Engineering (M.S.E) program at JHU with the major of Electrical Engineering and the concentration of Human Language Technology in May 2023. I worked on Speech Diagnosis for Parkinson’s Disease in Prof. Najim Dehak’s lab.

I received the dual degrees: Bachelor of Engineering (Research and Development) (Honours) with the first class honours in Electronic and Communication Systems and Bachelor of Science in Statistics from The Australian National University (ANU) in December 2020.

My research interests include speech processing and speech diagnosis. Feel free to contact me via email: tcao7@jhu.edu.

🔥 News

2023/09/14:  🎉🎉I am thrilled to share that I have been named as the recipient of the Nicholas P. Jones Fellowship for the 2023-2024 academic year in the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering.

2023/05/23:  🎓🎓Graduated from JHU with a M.S.E. in ECE today.

2023/01/27:  🎉🎉Got admission to the Ph.D. program in Electrical Engineering in the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University

📝 Publications

• Cumulative Pair-wise Vowel Distance (CPVD): New Vowel Space Metrics for People with Atypical Speech
  Tianyu Cao, Anna Favaro, Thomas Thebaud, Jesús Villalba, Ankur Butala, Najim Dehak, Laureano Moro-Velázquez

• Do Phonatory Features Display Robustness to Characterize Parkinsonian Speech Across Corpora?
  Anna Favaro, Tianyu Cao, Thomas Thebaud, Jesús Villalba, Ankur Butala, Najim Dehak, Laureano Moro-Velázquez

• Deep Stroop: Using eye tracking and speech processing to characterize people with neurodegenerative disorders while performing the Stroop Test
  Trevor Meyer, Anna Favaro, Tianyu Cao, Ankur Butala, Esther Oh, Chelsie Motley, Pedro Irazoqui, Najim Dehak, Laureano Moro-Velázquez

• Multilingual Evaluation of Interpretable Biomarkers to Represent Language and Speech Patterns in Parkinson’s Disease
  Anna Favaro, Laureano Moro-Velázquez, Ankur Butala, Chelsie Motley, Tianyu Cao, Robert David Stevens, Jesús Villalba, Najim Dehak,

• VSAmeter: Evaluation of a New Open-Source Tool to Measure Vowel Space Area and Related Metrics
  Tianyu Cao, Laureano Moro-Velázquez, Piotr Żelazko, Jesús Villalba, Najim Dehak

• A Multi-Modal Array of Interpretable Features to Evaluate Language and Speech Patterns in Different Neurological Disorders
  Anna Favaro, Chelsie Motley, Tianyu Cao, Miguel Iglesias, Ankur Butala, Esther S. Oh, Robert D. Stevens, Jesús Villalba, Najim Dehak, Laureano Moro-Velázquez

🎖 Honors and Awards

• 2023/09: Nicholas P. Jones Fellowship:
  The Jones Fellowship is a donor-funded award that supports graduate financial aid. In particular, the Jones Fellowship’s purpose is to provide financial aid support to graduate students of the Whiting School of Engineering. It was established by various donors to recognize Nicholas P. Jones’ leadership and successes during his 25 years at JHU, including 9 years as Dean for the Whiting School of Engineering, in 2013.

• 2023/01: ECE Departmental Fellowship:
  This competitive scholarship is awarded to a prospective ECE Ph.D. student who has shown exceptional promise. The primary purpose is to provide an incoming student with a broad set of interests the flexibility to work with multiple faculty members/lab groups in their first year. The Fellowship includes full 1st-year tuition, fees, and stipend support for 12 months. Incoming students cannot apply directly. Instead, it is a scholarship awarded to a particular student based on the recommendation of the ECE Department Faculty and chosen by the ECE Ph.D. Faculty Admissions Committee.

📖 Educations

• Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, US, 2023/08 - present,
  Supervised by Prof. Najim Dehak, Laureano Moro-Velázquez and Jesús Villalba,
  Center for Language and Speech Processing (CLSP),
  Award: Nicholas P. Jones Fellowship, ECE Departmental Fellowship
• Master of Science in Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, US, 2024/01 - present,
  Major: Computer Science
• Master of Science in Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, US, 2021/08 - 2023/05,
  Major: Electrical Engineering,
  Concentration: Human Language Technology,
  Thesis: Vowel Space Metrics for People with Typical and Atypical Speech supervised by Prof. Najim Dehak and Laureano Moro-Velázquez
• Bachelor of Engineering (Research and Development) (Honours) &
  Bachelor of Science, Australian National Univerisity, Canberra, AU, 2016/02 - 2020/12,
  Major: Electronic and Communication Systems & Statistics,
  Minor: Applied Statistics,
  Award: Graduated with First Class Honour

🧑‍🏫 Teaching

• 2022/01 - Present, Teaching Assistant, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, US
  Teaching Assistant for the courses:
  • EN.520.412/612: Machine Learning for Signal Processing in Fall 2022 and 2023 in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • EN.520.439/659: Machine Learning for Medical Applications in Spring 2023 in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • EN.520.123: Computational Modeling for Electrical and Computer Engineering in Spring 2023 in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • EN.601.475/675: Machine Learning in Spring and Fall 2022 in the Department of Computer Science
• 2018/07 - 2021/06, Academic Tutor, Australian National Univerisity, Canberra, AU
  Academic tutor for the courses:
  • ENGN4625/6625: Power Systems and Power Electronics (Undergraduate and postgraduate) (2018S2, 2019S2, 2020S2)
  • ENGN4528: Computer Vision (2021S1)

💁 Service

• 2023/03/22 - 2023/03/24, Support Staff, the 57th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), Baltimore, US
  Served as support staff for the 57th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), organized by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University, held from March 22-24, 2023. [Certificate of Collaboration]