September 9, 2024

Ke Li is a doctoral student in information science from Suzhou, China. He earned a B.S. in information engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and now works to develop wearable sensing systems for everyday settings under the guidance of Cheng Zhang at Cornell.

What is your area of research and why is it important?

AI excels at interpreting text and images, but understanding human behavior has been challenging due to the lack of suitable devices for collecting comprehensive training data. My research focuses on developing wearable sensing systems—such as eyeglasses, earphones, headphones, wristbands, and rings—that individuals can use in everyday settings. These devices track behavior like facial expressions, gaze movements, body postures, hand gestures, and silent speech commands with precision and continuity. By leveraging this data, a range of applications can be developed to enhance users’ quality of life, including health monitoring, innovative interfaces, disease diagnosis and intervention, and more.

What are the larger implications of this research?

Among all types of human behavior, I am particularly interested in tracking facial and gaze movements. Continuous, fine-grained monitoring of these movements has significant real-world applications. For example, individuals with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) often experience hypomimia, a reduction in facial expressiveness, commonly referred to as a “masked face.” By using our proposed systems to track facial expressivity over time, we can monitor disease progression and potentially aid doctors in treatment. Additionally, integrating eye-tracking technologies into future smart glasses could help monitor eye twitches and eyelid movement speed, which are effective indicators of fatigue and anxiety.

You recently won a 2024 North America Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship for your work on “Communication for People with Impairments Using AI-powered Synthesis on Intelligent Wearables.” Can you describe the project?

Speech is of vital importance for human communication. Unfortunately, not every individual is blessed with the ability to speak with their own voices. For instance, laryngectomees have gone through total larynx removal, which deprives them of their ability to speak up with their own voices. Giving laryngectomees their voices back is a challenging yet important task. This project aims to use AI-powered speech synthesis with non-obtrusive wearable sensing to reconstruct high-quality speech for laryngectomees. We plan to employ active acoustic sensing powered by miniature speakers and microphones on a slightly modified commodity glass-frame, combined with generative-AI-powered voice synthesis models, to generate high-quality customized voices.

What does it mean to you to have won the fellowship?

Winning this fellowship is a great honor for me, as it signifies recognition of the importance of our research. It highlights the potential of our proposed systems to be effectively deployed in real-world settings and to assist those in urgent need. Additionally, receiving support and advice from experts with diverse perspectives will be invaluable. Along with this fellowship, we will benefit from the guidance of our assigned Qualcomm mentor, whose industry experience and resources will be crucial in helping us develop deployable hardware prototypes and evaluate our system with patients.

What are your hobbies or interests outside of your research or scholarship?

In my spare time, I enjoy a variety of sports, including tennis, basketball, rock climbing, badminton, table tennis, and swimming. Over the past year, I have developed a particular passion for rock climbing and now climb twice a week. While in Ithaca, I take advantage of the summer to hike and the winter to ski. During holidays, I love traveling and immersing myself in different cultures and cuisines around the world. I have visited numerous countries across Europe, Asia, and North America, and I am excited to add more destinations to my list. Additionally, I am an avid fan of Nintendo Switch, with The Legend of Zelda being my favorite game.

Why did you choose Cornell to pursue your degree?

The field of information science at Cornell is highly interdisciplinary, with faculty and students engaging in scientific discoveries across diverse fields. This environment fosters easy collaboration, allowing researchers to draw on expertise from various disciplines. Additionally, the department has a supportive and professional atmosphere, making me feel valued and supported both in my research and personal life. Overall, I find conducting research here in Ithaca to be a very positive experience.