Michal Šimek came to study Bioengineering unplanned. "I was studying a previously existing Master's degree programme in Open Electronic Systems. I finished my degree and was thinking what to do next. The year 2020, the covid pandemic..." recalls Ing. Šimek. "And then I heard about the PhD in Bioengineering, so I thought I'd give it a try and see how it goes. And now I'm in my fifth year there," said the PhD student.
It was a good choice, a study combining engineering and medicine Ing. Šimek was a good fit. During his doctorate, he joined the project of associate professor Jan Rusz. He and his team at the FEE CTU developed a method that identifies early manifestations of Parkinson's disease by analyzing speech characteristics and facial muscle movements. This method uses advanced algorithms to monitor fine motor and speech changes that are characteristic of the early stages of the disease. "We are engaged in the development and analysis of digital speech biomarkers for the evaluation of neurodegenerative diseases," said Ing. Šimek. "Basically, we are trying to use speech analysis to detect changes that indicate the progression of Parkinson's disease and thus contribute to its early diagnosis. We would also like to use these analyses for other diseases such as Alzheimer's disease or multiple sclerosis," added Ing. Šimek.
And what is his research topic? "My main project I'm working on is called SmartSpeech. It's about speech analysis based on mobile phone calls," the PhD student described. "We have a project involving about 75 people, of which about 25 people have Parkinson's disease, 25 people have a sleep disorder and about 25 people are healthy - they serve as a control group. The participants provide us with their calls and from these we then try to detect disease-related changes," explained the award-winning researcher.
The Hlávkova Foundation awards were also given to FEL students last year. For their significant contributions to research, last year it was awarded to PhD students Ing. Šimon Mandlík from the Department of Computers and Ing. Tomáš Kouba, also from the Department of Circuit Theory.
Photo credit: Petr Neugebauer
