I'm a PostDoc researcher working in the group of Dr. Mathew Magimai.-Doss on the SMILE-II project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The SMILE-II project aims to build advanced technology for sign language learning; it pursues the work done in the SMILE project. The research underlying the project is about continuous sign language assessment and integration of non-manual components (as sign language is a visual mode of communication based on manual -such as handshape, hand movement- and non-manual -such as facial expression, body posture- components).

I got a PhD affiliated to EPFL on January 2021 working at the Idiap Research Institute under the supervision of Dr. Mathew Magimai.-Doss. My work was taking place in the SMILE project financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The title of my thesis is "Explainable Phonology-based Approach for Sign Language Recognition and Assessment". The thesis provides, inspired from modeling of articulatory features in speech processing, a framework that enables to model the multichannel information inherent in sign language in the framework of hidden Markov models. The thesis demonstrates that this framework can be used in both sign language recognition and sign language assessment tasks and can be extend to cross-/multi-lingual scenarios. First chapters focuse on the hand movement channel of information where an approach that derives hand movement subunits is presented.

I obtained a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics (2014), where my complementary fields were Psychology and Neurosciences and a Master of Science in Mathematics (2015) at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland).

My research interests lie at the intersection of sign language processing, accessibility, education, child-oriented technology and human-computer interaction.

www.sandrinetornay.ch/recherche

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