Heather Pon-Barry

Heather Pon-Barry develops computational methods that analyze the acoustics and intonation of spoken language to augment traditional speech recognition — to move beyond just the words a person says and incorporate other signals. She uses these methods to create intelligent, adaptive speech interfaces in the context of human-robot interaction, human-computer interaction, and human-human interaction. Pon-Barry has worked on a wide range of projects including spoken dialogue systems, intelligent tutoring systems, recognition of uncertainty in speech, and analysis of acoustic-prosodic entrainment.

From 2013 to 2014, Pon-Barry was an assistant professor of computer science at Arizona State University. In 2014, she joined Mount Holyoke College as a Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor in Computer Science.

Pon-Barry received a Computer Science Capacity Award from Google in 2015 to establish MaGE (Megas and Gigas Educate), a new peer education and mentoring program at Mount Holyoke College. She also received a Computer Science Engagement Award from Google in 2015. Pon-Barry was supported by a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG), and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship during her graduate work, where she was named a Siebel Scholar (class of 2013).