About me

I have always been interested in physics, machines and the brain, and I studied Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University College London for my first degree.

My interest in neuroscience was continually increasing and I decided that speech processing would provide an interesting interface between engineering and the study of the human brain. I obtained my Doctorate at UCL in the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics and my PhD Thesis was entitled "Speech Fundamental Period Estimation Using Pattern Classifications". This work culminated in the development of a speech fundamental period estimation system which made use of a then relatively new supervised learning technique, the Multi-Layer Perceptron. The training signal for the pattern recognizer was provided by means of a Laryngograph (a device that can directly measure vocal fold contact), developed by my supervisor Professor Adrian Fourcin.

After writing up my PhD, I worked as a post-doc at at the "Drittes Physikalisches Institut" in Göttingen, Germany, with Birger Kollmeier and Hans Werner Strube, on speech processing. I then stayed in Göttingen and worked in industry at Skalar Computer GmbH, which developed multi-channel data acquisition and analysis systems. After working for Skalar for a few years, I formed my own company Ingenieur Büro Howard and worked as a software analyst/engineer, also in Göttingen.

Finally I decided that I what most wanted to do was scientific research, in particular trying to understand and reverse engineer some of
the functions of the human brain, i.e. working in the fields of computational motor control and robotics. I started working as a technical assistant in Daniel Wolpert's Lab in the Sobell Department, at the Institute of Neurology, spending most of my time designing robotic devices to investigate human motor learning. Daniel's laboratory moved to the University of Cambridge in 2006 and I have been working in the Computational and Biological Learning Lab as a postdoc ever since.

I am currently involved in several projects. I am interested in studying and modelling the human motor system, with particular emphasis on arm and hand movements. I am also interested in developing computational models of how an infant learns to speak. For details of my past and current work, please visit the Speech and Motor Control pages.