Our PhD student Fan Wu has spent the last several months at Harvard Medical School and recently shared some updates about her time in Boston:

Greetings from my research stay at the Voice Center, Harvard Medical School & Massachusetts General Hospital, where I explore voice as a window to human health.

Our vision: to develop a self-management and monitoring tool for chronic heart failure patients, enabling earlier interventions and less hospitalizations. Since vocal folds can be highly sensitive to fluid accumulation caused by heart failure, we hypothesize that detecting subtle voice changes may enable early identification of acute deterioration.

During this research stay, I focused on voice-based prognostics for heart failure. The voice data was collected from heart failure patients at home via mobile devices in two-month longitudinal studies. Under the guidance and support of Prof. Daryush Mehta, I gained valuable insights into acoustic features from a medical perspective. I worked on acoustic signal processing pipelines, feature extraction and selection, and developed multi-modal machine learning models to predict health status, comparing their performance with the current standard of care.

My research stay broadened my perspective on acoustic analysis through discussions with speech professionals. A highlight was observing a pre-therapy evaluation session, which deepened my understanding of clinical voice assessments. Beyond research, this stay provided an invaluable opportunity to connect with professionals from various fields. Boston, a city full of learning opportunities, offered countless moments of inspiration.

I want to express my gratitude to my host, Prof. Mehta, and the Voice Center team for their invaluable guidance. I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, Prof. Fleisch, for fully supporting my stay. I also sincerely thank ETH Doc.Mobility for supporting my living expenses. This has been a truly enriching experience—both professionally and personally.

See you soon back in Zurich!

Fan Wu