Undergraduate research opportunity in School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics

COVID-19 patient detection via smartphone recorded coughs and confidence Machine Learning

Summary:

The pandemic has had a long-lasting effect on most students’ learning experiences and career prospects. However, it also offers our ambitious students a unique opportunity to make a strong, personal impact on a global challenge.

In the past year, coronavirus detection via smartphone recorded coughs has emerged as a low-cost and non-invasive solution, which plays a vital role in supporting test and trace and accelerating the return to pre-lockdown freedoms. However, there are challenges in cough classification via smartphones, including arbitrary-length audio segments, varying cough intensity, and a large amount of ambient noise.

The project offers an enthusiastic student a unique opportunity to work with a cross-country, cross-university, team of researchers from both academia and industry, to implement a well-calibrated Machine Learning algorithm to address the uncertainty of the critical COVID-19 patient detection task using smartphone recorded coughs.

Benefit:

Research publication: Providing the participating student with a strong piece of research record on their career portfolio. This placement is part of a larger research project funded by Brighton’s Radical Futures, Connected Futures initiative, and Santander. Therefore, the results will likely lead to a high quality publication in the premier Machine Learning and healthcare conference or journal.

Research experience:

Empowering the student with a set of transferable research skills, including paper reading, data analysis, machine learning algorithm implementation, parameter fine-tuning, and manuscript writing.

Career opportunity:

Offering the student an exclusive opportunity to collaborate with an industry practitioner, Cardisio (Germany), specialised in machine learning for healthcare, which will boost the student’s future employment with other corporations in the machine learning and healthcare industry.

Project leads

Dr. Khuong An Nguyen (K.A.Nguyen@brighton.ac.uk) & Ms. Julia Meister (J.Meister@brighton.ac.uk) (University of Brighton, UK).

Project consultants

Prof. Zhiyuan Luo (Royal Holloway University of London, UK) & Mr. Werner Gentzke (Cardisio, Germany).