Sarenne Wallbridge

Sarenne Wallbridge

Machine Learning PhD Student

University of Edinburgh, ILCC & CSTR

About Me

Update 11/2023 I’m exploring opportunities to start once I’ve finished my PhD. Reach out to chat!

I’m a final year PhD student at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Speech Technology Research and Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation, working with Catherine Lai and Peter Bell.

I’m interested in communication and how we use it efficiently. My current research investigates how information encoded in the lexical and non-lexical channels of spoken communication affects perception, and how we can leverage these findings to build more efficient, perceptually-motivated representations of speech (and other multi-channel signals).

Translation: Spoken conversation is one of the most fundamental means we have for information transmission. How can we leverage the information encoded in both [what words we say]Lexical and [how we say them]Non-lexical to better understand human communication and augment human-machine interaction?


In my spare time, I play, sing, and listen to music. I enjoy climbing moutains or rocks (whichever are closer!) and teaching yoga.

Before starting my PhD, I worked on several ML & NLP research teams in the UK, Denmark, and Germany. Check out my resumé for more details.

Interests

  • Speech Processing
  • Information Theory
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Machine Learning
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Natural Language Processing

Education

  • BSc (Hons) Cognitive Science, 2018

    University of Edinburgh

News

  • 10/2023: Our paper was accepted to EMNLP, shiok!
  • 06/2023: Participated in REST-CL–thanks for the invitation!
  • 05/2023: Our paper was accepted at Interspeech, see you in Dublin!
  • 04/2023: I’ll be on a research visit at the Dialogue Modelling Group of ILLC in Amsterdam.
  • 03/2023: Presenting a talk at the CLS in the University of Amsterdam.
  • 02/2023: Organiser for the Young Female Researchers in Speech workshop at Interspeech 2023, reach out if you’re interested in applying!
  • 01/2023: Our paper was accepted at EACL 2023, pozdrav ako si u Dubrovniku!
  • 01/2023: I’m running a lecture series An Introduction to Neural Networks on the Speech & Language Processing MSc this term.
  • 12/2022: Presenting a talk at SIGMEDIA in Trinity College Dublin.
  • 09/2022: Awarded Best Student Paper at Interspeech 2022!
  • 06/2022: Our paper was accepted at Interspeech in Incheon, Korea. 안녕하세요
  • 05/2022: Organiser for UK Speech in Edinburgh (9/22). Come and say hi!

Contact