WIN Research Spotlight

Dr. Angela Roberts

Professor Angela Roberts holds a joint appointment in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders and Department of Computer Science. She is also a speech-language pathologist. She is a founding Co-Director of Western’s Collaborative Specialization in Machine Learning in Health and Biomedical Sciences and is a Research Associate with the Canadian Centre of Activity and Aging.

Her impactful research program improves cognitive aging outcomes through rigorously validating connected speech signatures that detect and monitor cognitive decline, building phenotypes and predictive models of cognitive aging trajectories (dementia to extraordinary cognitive aging), and developing dyadic interventions that address communication challenges experienced by persons with dementia and their families. Her clinical research program uses robust randomized control trial designs and telehealth service delivery systems that have a global reach. Her influence extends to health charity organizations as a research board member for Parkinson Canada and an author of internationally distributed patient and family education materials.

Caroline Nettekoven is postdoctoral research fellow studying how the human cerebellum contributes to complex behaviours. She use neuroimaging, brain stimulation and computer models to understand the cerebellum.

During her postdoc at Western University, she developed a functional atlas of the cerebellum that can be personalized using a Bayesian Hierarchical model. And during her PhD at the University of Oxford, she applied a new spectroscopy technique to the cerebellum to show a link between neurochemical changes and cerebellar-dependent movement behaviour. Caroline also wrote a language algorithm that captures schizophrenic language while at the University of Cambridge.

Her research is funded by a BrainsCAN computational postdoctoral fellowship and a CIHR project grant.